She Says My Last Poem was Appalling

That’s me doing my finest Alan Dugan.

You think it approaches the profane,
but it’s the best I can do
under the present circumstances.

Yes, it stretches the bounds of good
taste and decency.
But what better subject to explore
than one’s own decadent desires?

Dugan crapped
on the couch cushions
after his mind burglarized
a couple of homes,
honoring art in all of its stinking glory.

Poems should be full
of such fecund imagination.
If I write about uncouth things,
it’s a bit much, I confess.

I aim for an elegant way to express
the inexpressible power of animal
lust in one man’s body.
I’m not always proud to admit it.

I should slink around like a dirty
old man, but the poem’s the thing
and it has to sing its own song.
I’m just trying to stay out of its way.

Damn poems run around
and grab ass and tease
until the shrieks reach my ears,
then I have to express regret
for the way my hands
touch you through the lines.

Anthem


If we think history’s anthemic,
think again. 

The soaring black anthems of jet engines
and nation-states from hell. 

They speak of transcendence 
but what of vacant lots 
with chainlink perimeters
and in the midground
the ugly human soul
and for me,
the paranoid itching 
of dull afternoons,
what of that? Do 
we contain the inventory
of agitation and irritability– 

The myriad cruelties
don’t bother me today. 
Neither do manic energies
reach me, like I’m 
plugged into the wall– 
today sunrise looked like sunset
more red than yellow
the ocean its ambient self, 
everything’s a landscape. 

All these years I’ve
written nothing
yet failed to see 
I thought 
in verse, 

an ashcan went full floral bloom, and bent. 

Education

 
After you forget
everything taught
at school
what is left
is your education

Someone once said so
How sharp that is
I feel the pain at once
as if I were cut
by my missed education

A Real Beauty


Sitting on the grocery store 
Parking lot and not expecting anything exceptional to happen 
I do this so much while looking 
At my phone 

And I see her, a real beauty walking,

Young cute face, long model-like legs 

I work in a large building with many women 

And she's easily more beautiful than them all

It's always unusual to see a pretty woman walking, they so many options, someone will always give them a ride

Whatever I was thinking about is not even a memory

But…

When is she getting out of the store I wonder 

Should I offer her a ride?

She comes back and she's staring at me the way a panhandler would stare at me, so she's friendly 

Greet me and greet her back, putting on the charm

She says, “ I look like the guy from the movie House Party.”

Oh yeah, i get aroused even more

I get her name, and she gets mine. I could use a friend 

She's carrying frozen packages of meat chicken steak roast as if she stole it

She's on a mission and wants me give her a ride to a local motel known hookers and drug dealing 

I tell her I can't go there 

Something bad can and will usually happen, along with the cops watching the hotel.

If I was ten years younger maybe I 

Would have 

But not now

This safe middle aged man, I am now


I go back to looking at phone,

And she walks away, heading towards the hotel

Away from me and my desire

a pending waterfall


sometimes writing is like
squeezing water out of
a rock

if you're lucky, you can
get lost in a lazy river

i prefer the chance for
death

so a canoe and a pending
waterfall will do

they think this is easy

just take a blank page
and throw some shit
down

decide if it should rhyme
or have the occasional use
of the word fuck

cross the t's and dot the i's
and there you go

they tend to forget the
sweat

the blood, the angst

the perpetual fear that it
will never be good enough

and they wonder why only
a few of us ever live long
enough to be remembered
-------------------------------------------------------
on a blank canvas


yet another rainy night

arthritis is the reminder
that you are old

make a drink

put on some jazz

and break out the
watercolors

let the pain drip on
a blank canvas

they say this is the
kind of therapy that
helps the insane

might as well try it

too poor for cocaine

too lazy to make some
coffee

a little red for the horizon

blue for a drying lake

where to put the fucking
happy trees

you have to wonder if
bob ross ever just told
someone to fucking find
another way to deal with
stress

i have found art is for
the depraved

the souls lacking
something

may they eventually
find it

“Letting the Light In”
 
Even the light needs to creep sometimes
under a door or through some curtains
on a Sunday morning,
when the whisky can do nothing
but remind me it’s never enough,
and sickness from a hangover
becomes just another sad sunrise
I tell myself I didn’t want
because it’s always been easier
to hate instead of love. 
 
“The Madness We Shared”
 
Seeing my friend who is now sober
is a sad feeling- not for the madness
we shared on those nights
when the days seemed too long
and the only answer we had
was Christmas Brass
on vinyl and rye whisky,
but for how it all makes the past
seem more past, while the present
does a drunken bellyflop into a pool,
splashing my grey hair.

COLD FRONT

Dance, the crush! Like a wind of navels, its womb kept quiet, as if
swallowed! And fingered at the source bitter, tight. Criminals,
crowned by much weight, wrap their weapons and poems in skin and graze
the streets brightly like queens. For the moon is empty, here, as an
eyeball, playing with its freshly streaming colors. Stupid, and of
"impious sweetness to the lip". Run, oh run! Your flaming divining
tongues for the sake of orphaned suns and their wailing and raining on
fantastically pale foreheads. Oh, pure blue of a footprint, have
you wasted the dance? And, with your demonizing guitar, strummed afar?
Do you pretend that I have, fingers?

Faith, Hope, and Dope

Sunday mornings and
Wednesday nights are
The time to get high
With Jesus.  The rest
Of the week is for doin'
Dope with your friends
Hoping that the law
Don't catch up with you.
A good Christian man
Knows how to hide his
Stash.  Always has his
Head raised well above
The common man, the
Filthy devout main-liners
And all the humanistic
Heathens.  God is love,
Dope is hope. Especially
In jail.

Walk Back Kiss

On the walk back to my car, I told you about how I probably killed my hamster. They play dead when they hibernate because I wanted to stall the kissing part of the date. I haven’t kissed anybody since I felt good, and what if I show you what could happen? Maybe you’d be flattered by my hives. Until I fall and have to tell you more. Male giraffes punch the female’s stomach to taste her pee before mating. My dog died before this. I didn’t kill her though. I have something. My dog never knew I had something. For the entirety of a family vacation to Las Vegas, I was seven and convinced I was pregnant because a friend and I had played house a little too hard. In the reflection of every slot machine, I would cup my bump and ask my Samantha doll if she was ready to be a big sister, ask myself if I was ready for TLC and then hell. Could I be on I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant if I definitely knew? They’d have to lower it to Seven and Pregnant just for me. The streets were doused with cards of naked ladies and my parents kept telling me to look up, only for there to be billboards with more naked ladies. Crows remember faces. God remembers sin. The something I have is not a baby, by the way. I don’t know if I like you. I’ll get back to you on that. Thanks for understanding. But I do think we should have sex. 

Fable

 
Some sages say
marriage endures seven years
beyond that, forever
or nothing at all 

America, NATO, Europe
sharing one cold bed
the sheets smelling of dust
their heaven thinned to air

Treaties yellowed, vows forgotten
the old union leans to flame

Far in deserts beyond chapels
Arabian brides lift their veils