Seek Dolphins along the Crest
Miami Beach sucks me in
with tequila
and tits
and I - always so easily enraptured 
duck into a bodega
seek the black door
find a plastic lover 

Get caught in a rainstorm
laugh wildly
run through the sweltering streets
meet my death
it sucked me in

While dying 
in Miami
pulled again through the black door
find solace in the needle
wake to the waves
wonder about dolphins
and if they will disappear
by the spear
or the many propellers
worry in such turmoil
as if this 
is my only problem

Again 
black doorway
run into my death
for the third time 
we become friends
he (death) asks 
why I’ve been a cunt all my life
I
not knowing the answer
reply
just give me more time
to get another hit

The wave 
more immense and glorious
than before
pulls me back to the beach
to see a school of dolphins 
and think this is what
I’ve searched for 
stumble to the shore
under speckles of sunlight
I bathe in it

I see a double rainbow
hovering over the Atlantic 
such vivid stripes
of purple
yellow
blue
red
it arches right into a sailboat bobbing
along the crispness of the sunset 

How lucky to capture this bundle of color
while battling horseflies
in fear of dolphin extinction
I croon
over someone else’s double rainbow
dip greedily into their pot of gold

 
I See What the Drugs Have Done 
I.
Hunch back 
postulating sores
the nagging itch
white jeans
low hung ass
red long sleeves
it’s eighty degrees
wiry hair 	
try to bouffant it 
to take away from your neck
but my eye goes directly to the loose skin
almost see the tracks
ever so light around your collar bone
face more of a hull
less of a face
around your mouth – smokers jaw
those wrinkles crown the lips like an army
when cigarette meets lip the lines craft together
in an origami of wrinkles

II.
Those mid-heeled pumps give you some height
the heels are wrecked and the top lifts
worn down to metal 
when you walk that hard tap echoes
so loud
you just kind of slide into your step
zombie-like
this is what becomes of the life
after drugs
life after paradise

III.
You’re sad about it
about not having “it”
anymore
I’ll start to shoot again you say
if they tell me I’ve got it
cough a deep and guttural phlegm hack
light another
and pucker for that deep 
lung-spray drag
whichever way will kill you best

 
High School Dropout
if I told you in my heart I wanted to go to High School - to finish - to graduate with a diploma and go on to a college, perhaps Ivy League…..if I said this I would be a dead-ass liar as I lay out in the sun on the roof of the old movie theater five of us would climb the fire escape to the top floor we kicked in a window found our way through a storage room to a ladder and out onto the slanted roof with pitch black tarp we smoked angel dust then cigarette after cigarette  we’d lay our dreams across the black someone would have to make the long haul back down to buy some bagels and a Pepsi for us to share our throats dry as sand the sun melted us into each other we could share two bagels between four or five of us we broke them carefully like the bread from the last supper what did we know then but nothing we didn’t have a watch we told time from the sun from the passersby down below we would trudge home guilt ridden glazed eyes to the ground when asked how school was we would croak out a word or two through a rasp next morning we’d meet at the bodega and do it all again