The Reaper Sooner or later, the Reaper’s Coming for you. No big deal. Did you want to live forever With all the disappointments In life, all the jerks and a-holes Making you miserable? There’s some comfort in the Thought of checking out and Leaving all this behind. Of course, breathing is good. You can always appreciate some Agreeable cuisine. And there’s That occasional piece of nookie That still curls your toes. Think about it. The good times Didn’t outweigh the bad. But, Damn, some of those good times Were damn good. Maybe, I’m not ready to go just yet. If Death shows up, I’ll just Send him next door or to Handi Mart for a latte.
Author: The Beatnik Cowboy
Alan Catlin
Doug’s Life of Crime started almost as soon as he was able to know what thieving was: taking stuff that didn’t belong to you and not getting caught. We were maybe 13 when he said there was this empty house up the road where they had free stuff and you could just go in and take what you wanted. When we got there, I saw that meant climbing inside through a broken window to load stuff onto a stolen shopping cart; stuff you scammed from inside. It was pretty obvious this wasn’t stuff people were giving away. “I’m not going in there.” I said. “Coward.” “Damn straight, I am.” The cops nailed Doug wheeling a cart load of radios, toasters, clocks and whatever else was small enough to fit in the wagon and looked like something people could use. He had to appear in court and his old man went way beyond ballistic. That’s how Doug learned his old man knew how to beat you silly and not leave marks. It was skill he learned in the army during the war.
Guy Roads
The January Effect The years grow shorter as the winters get longer Yesterday I heard a rock star say he might only have ten more summers He didn’t sound confident Who knows what life sees in us— what it wants to be in us or how to make time a friend you love to hate when spring is so far off and the days keep running away without ever saying goodbye.
Elise Neuman
Cattleman I find myself fiddling with my poems Picking and poking and prodding Like some cattle rancher Pushing the heifers to greener pastures. I shove the words together Hoping they feel like their inspiration Shoved through a tiny gate, one word at a time Perhaps a poem of poems is cliche But it is one I don’t think I will try to move Let it graze these lands to dust
Judge Santiago Burdon
They Can't Kill Me They can't kill me Although many have tried All disappointed by the results When they discovered I had survived The Police and gangsters, Mexican and Colombian gangs And even Drug Dealers I failed to pay Ex-husbands of girlfriends Ex-girlfriends that felt betrayed Car accidents and a plane crash But I walked away I've lived through Earthquakes Hurricanes Volcanic eruptions Even Tornadoes that caused devastating destruction I've been bitten by Scorpions a Brazilian Wandering Spider A Rattlesnake and Jelly Fish All painful reminders Survived Prostate Cancer A Sepsis Infection a 30 day coma Tuberculosis when I was just a kid Two heart attacks and Double Pneumonia Maybe now you'll understand And may possibly believe They can't kill me I'll never die Due to my immortality
Noel Negele
Old boy Restful days of uneventful contentment meddle into one like obscure parts of a life lived through the peripherals of one’s eyes hard to believe it but you can become numb to boredom only reason of knowing the date you’re living in is the obligation of a job. Ian, the forklift driver goes: “ work hard and have fun, kid. Took forever to get to 18. All of a sudden I’m 49”. it hits in full time goes by fast, too fast, sometimes I’m afraid to sleep to blink how does the galloping time equip you against the incoming loss of your parents? “loss is the standard trajectory of all things” how to endure it how to cope with it A natural fear coats your thoughts but you have to follow the fear otherwise it starts following you there is so much waste in most people’s lives as they age as they so irreversibly age that it pains to look at and yet your waste is just as big some times I don’t feel like a 31 year old adult but more like a boy who grew older. sometimes it rains for weeks sometimes I’m starving for a meaningful conversation some times I’m so lonely I make small talk with my barber and when he cuts my hair I look at my puffy face in that mirror staring into my own eyes for twenty minutes with the knowledge that I have to lie a lot about who I really am to get some pussy.
Terry Trowbridge
Lime slices Bespoked green wheel of Gaia where a knife cut open the tropical citrus oil equator and for the rest of the day left the urgent aroma of verdant, wakeful gulps of clean air right where you traced an equator by turning the slice over one complete rotation rolling it across the tropic line in the palm of your hand.
J.J. Campbell
swimming in our imaginations sometimes i think about the old girlfriends when i'm trying to fall asleep it's not very sexual in nature i miss more of the long talks the time swimming in our imaginations the excitement of seeking something new with a beautiful soul by my side don't get me wrong the sex is very missed as well but not as much as a i love you at four in the morning from the other side of the world ------------------------------------------------------------------ that still loves you a little snow in the air as winter tries to hang on for a few more weeks you think about the only woman that still loves you wonder when she will get up the nerve to tell you to grow the fuck up and say yes you think of your father the worthless piece of shit that never provided any example of a loving relationship or how to treat a woman at all your mother doesn't want any grandchildren running around here try finding the right woman that is just fine never having children like finding cheese on the moon
Damon Hubbs
A Girl and a Gun We grow accustomed to the Dark / when Light is put away Emily Dickinson these are borderless seasons. The butter & egg man reads the daily as the boys play Risk, these are borderless seasons stitched together with cement & steel-girder bridges. The skin-loosened water ankles by like a narrative hook crook, tick, hiss fuse these are borderless seasons & the couple with the cover story rent a room cash-in- hand at a tenement on Acre St., loaded gun in the landlady’s drawer the scrap-salvaged car scrapped again. Another getaway, clear the grid. The sun burns ticks, hiss, crooks boom Backtrack the little red caboose is enshrined in the city of the hills it’s the most historic railroad car in America a bronze plaque affixed to the caboose lists the names of men who organized the first railroad workers union kids slip behind it to drink 40s and smoke weed and now the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen share shelter with dick doodles and nudie cartoons the layers of scrotty scribble its own youthful union Cock Lobster You Can’t Buy Cool I Fucked Your Mom and Satan Lives bringing up the rear
Donna Dallas
Lady Fortune Her face ghosts through me out my window back into me then down my spine sickening like a guilt that spawned a root prickly vines wrap and twist around my gut as we watch each other age Her touch a cancer her gaze a cigarette burn as I stare back and smoke her