jersey poet
after Damian Rucci

a jersey poet
says you know you’ve got the audience
when someone wants to stab you in the gut
just for doing your job

bleed black onto shag carpet
with cigarette ashes, domestic beer,
someone’s phony service dog,
and the woe of hopeful poets
dying to become like the older poets
who don’t bother with hope at all

he says let the girl from
a hippie van commune
sew your wounds shut
with her shoelaces

chicks love a scar and a good story
or a bad story told really well

————————

a tiny cage

the screen is dirty
the window too, but still
the gentle breeze
swaying August leaves

Noah told me
don’t focus
on the screen
if you’re looking
for magic,
or beauty,
or anything
that’s not
a tiny cage

An Anonymous Life and a Not-Well-Known Statistic

The poet’s rule is that no subject
for a historical dramatic monologue
can be a living person,
so I may
be a violation of that rule because
I may be alive in 2020
when this poem is being written
It is impossible to say for sure
because no one knows anything about me
other than the information that I am
what is represented by the poem’s title

The frontier did not end in 1890
as the Census Bureau said it did
when it declared the frontier closed
Nor did it end in 1920 when
another census showed that for the first time
more of the country’s population lived
in cities than lived in rural areas
No,
the true end of the frontier was in 1956
when I got a job, maybe my first one,
and for the first time in the nation’s history
more people worked for someone else
than worked for themselves
Both
my life and this fact should be better known,
though given the passage of time
the first is highly unlikely

other than ourselves

imagine if we learned from history

imagine if we taught the truth instead of
whatever you needed to pass the test

imagine if we were never taught to be greedy
to burn the fucking bridge before it takes
you down with it

imagine if we loved someone other than ourselves

imagine if hatred didn’t come naturally

imagine if loneliness didn’t exist

imagine if we aged gracefully

imagine if our fellow man was actually our brother

imagine if the cages had no locks

__________________

a bank robber

i grew up
wanting to
be a bank
robber

that used
to make
my father
laugh

he knew
what real
crime was

he worked
for the federal
government

Acetylene Inn
(it’s a gas!)

Hadn’t hardly had time to get settled in
at a old honky-tonk the Acetylene Inn
in the Oxygen Bar with a Nitro Gin
and another cowpoke named Mickey Finn.

Now Mick was a-wearin’ tennis shoes
instead of boots but he refused
to explain to me how come the change
(like socks on a rooster, looked mighty strange).

But T-bones was cookin’ on the propane grill
and life seemed mighty good until
a slam of the door and who walked in
but Minnie Sparks with a nasty grin
and a bone to pick with poor ol’ Mick
(who suddenly looked a little sick).

She slammed his boots down on the table
and spoke some words that I’m unable
to repeat without embarrass-ment.
(That woman shore was discontent).

Then things went from bad to worse
she whacked him with a big-ass purse
and in that purse was a .45
all cocked and loaded and man alive!
that thing went off and ricocheted
off the propane valve like a hand grenade.

That ricochet, it made a spark
before pluggin’ some bottles of Maker’s Mark
and Nitro Gin (one-eighty proof)
that exploded with a fart-like POOF!
while the propane tank shot out a flame
like the jet exhaust from a fighter plane.

I was not inclined to share the blame
so I bailed out a window and ran like hell
while bottles was explodin’ like shotgun shells.

A con-flag-ration was unfoldin’
when Mick ran out! He was proudly holdin’
his boots, two steaks, and a bottle of booze,
sat down on a rock and yanked off them shoes
so we ate and we drank ‘til things started to spin
and watched the demise of the Acetylene Inn.
A-men.

J. Molina.

The haunting
nature
of everything
is that years
after your death
you still remain
largely in
the shadows
and the fact that
you upheld such
artistic integrity
is probably
the reason why
and a sadness
washes over me
when I think of
all the great art
lost through
the ages that
could have
changed lives,
saved lives –
that will never
be known by many,
or any –
a ghost in the canyon
strumming away
for every
sad hard change –
you were ready
when the world
wasn’t.

Slay the Word

many may think that
the life of a poet
is carefree and reflective

full of contemplation
and observance

possibly one of a knight
drenched in medieval
fantastical realms

well that may be true
some of the time

but it’s also a life of shit
and utter redundancy

a stodgy and mundane existence

I’ve just spent the last 5 minutes
cleaning off dried turd particles
from the underside of a toilet

the brush

my sword

stuck in

this couple across the street,

they’re having it out:

she’s telling HIM to find work.

he’s telling HER to find work.

pretty mundane modern shit really.

he punched her in the tit

and she kicked him in the knee …

after a bit

he staggers across the road

and he says: can you believe her?

she’s out of order, isn’t she?

and before I can say anything

he yells over: there! see! he agrees with me!

WHAT? she steps into the road – 

cars swerve around her as she marches over –

the hate in her eyes for

me,

it feels like she’s known and hated me all my life,

like I’m married to her too,

albeit in a

mercifully sexless marriage …

I should tell her that.

Sgt. Pain exercises his right to petition the government to keep strip clubs open

Pain thought the economy was being
Shut down for no good reason: a disease.
Logic was unaffected by dying
Americans: “There’s no reason to cease

Doing business at restaurants, and
Doing business at barber shops, and
Doing business at theaters, and
Doing business at tattoo parlors.”

“Why should bankers, lawyers, and realtors
Be the only ones to survive the ban?”
He wrote, to his Mayor, Governor, and
His statehouse, Senator, and Congressman.

In his call for well-being, he mentioned
The strippers, adding that “they also spend.”

He and the President shared this same thirst:
Thinking the economy should cum first.

Rural Myth

After I skate off the last edge, bump into rough treatment,

fall off the cliff, the steady thump of boots-to-trail awakens

that spark, as I push up through bedrock, a lakebed

awaiting, through rocks, some shale, to start my frantic

swim to the surface where air stimulates: I feel the cold

water once life returns, but what did I learn buried so far,

sniffing the salt caves, alone at my age, noticeably nude

as I beat hypothermia to the leaf-barren trees, not yet

budding in the brisk new spring? Is there a precocious four

leaf clover rising at Onanda, the pine tree girl’s camp

turned into pristine, simple, non-electrified cabin resort? Is it

quick to be lost, cherished then missed by the heart of an

11-year-old boy, who, not having pets, wants to preserve it,

the fruition of a joke come true? “I see a four-leaf clover,”

he says, then reaches down and finds one to pick at once.

He’s not afraid to hand it to me, but, embarrassed by nudity,

I hand it back, borrow a towel, scamper to shelter, try to

find a phone, to remember the number of someone I knew

thirty years ago who might give up their sail, fish, swim,

trilobite hunt to take a funny trip to a clothing store, for starters.

   A Bad Juggler

I know there’s
something wrong
with me, but I
don’t know what.
All I know is that
I’m losing touch
with more and
more of my
emotions every
single day. It
scares me, but
what can I do ?
What could I
even say ? Who
the Hell would I
say it to anyway ?
I’m falling out with
my family, my wife.
It feels like I’m losing
control of my life.
I’ve known only
too well the pain
of depression, but
it doesn’t feel like
that, to me. I’ve
tried self-diagnosis,
but my suggestions
are way off, as far
as I can see. Drink
or drugs can’t be
the reason I’m losing
my compassion, and
empathy. Maybe in
the past, but those
days have passed,
now they don’t really
affect me.
Whatever it is, I’m
struggling, I’m starting
to dislike myself.
My pain, my emotions
I’m juggling, I’m
dropping the balls,
it’s not good for my
health.