The Manly Thing to Do

 

Aw hell
I think I’m just
gonna pack
it all in
start taking
female growth
hormones
and live the
rest of my
life
as a lesbian
woman.

 

And There Was A Super Eight Across The Street!

 

Me going native
I remember I asked a hotel keeper
A Mexican lookin’ guy
In a Ma and Pa motel
In New Mexico
If he had clean rooms
He looked at me sideways
Like I was supremely uncouth
a real Bozo
Like I was thinkin’ the color
Of his skin
Made the room dirty.
“Yeah,” he said, coolly, and I feeling
foolish, feeling a racist,
I immediately took the
Room
No questions asked.
And goddammit it was dirty.

 

Haiku Time

 

Time,
Bottles of shampoo,
A clogged drain,
And a ravaged Judy Garland barely making it through the
performance
still belting out one hell of a show.
Through the Dryer Hole

He wore shaving cream,
about his genitals,
naked,
running screaming through
the streets
down to the bar.
Started Wounded Knee.
“Careful. He’s gonna puke!”
“He won’t puke.”
“He always pukes when he does shots.”
Pukes. Spurts a dollop. Arcs
majestically. Barfs copiously
into his hand.
Dam God.
Tells you it’s his name
spelled backward
Head through the dryer
hole, poking into the
laundry slash bathroom.
No dryer.
Laura, peeing.
Michelob bottle in
hand.
Head, just a head, grinning
bald head, poking through the
Dryer hole into the laundry
Slash bathroom,
“Heeerre’s Johnny!”
Laura, caught watching herself
drink beer in the mirror, sitting peeing,
Flings
the bottle.
Michelob bottle collides with
Bald head flesh poking into the
Laundry slash bathroom
through the dryer hole.
Johnny’s got a headache
and the girls down the
hall are stripping,
comparing breast and
nipple sizes, awaiting the
Next suicide.

Circa 1985, Vermilion, South Dakota, USA

 

Sheeple

 

I wanna join a cult!
And do cult things!
Like kill myself,
With fifty others,
Instead of doing it
Alone,
In the closet
Belt tied tightly around my neck,
Hanging from the same metal
Cylinder
As my clothes.

Cuz’ I Spoke No Russian

“With or without nucleus?”
the Soviet man
asked me
as he was helping me
buy my olives.

“Without,”
I said.
He translated
and the store-clerk
handed me a
can of the
“pitted”
atomic greens.

 

The Maintenance Man (formerly titled: “the Janitor”)

 

Knows less about stuff
that don’t mean nothin’

 

Stocking Stuffers

 

What’s black and white
and red all over?
Slaughtered interracial
orgy. (or slaughtered interracial couple).

 

Return

 

Watch the faces in the crowd,
Look at the explanation beyond the
Intonation
Know the need beneath desire,
when you break with tradition,
Tradition breaks you,
Deny the calm and
Serenity of God,
You see only hypocrisy,
Foolish restrictions,
Proscriptions,
Denying a fulfillment,
Repressing and killin
The spirit of man,
Leading a life of jazz,
Syringes, broken worlds, cigarettes,
Lenny Bruce and a comedy of
Breasts and ears and death
That winds a little finger
About a shooting star…