LUCKY DISCOVERY

I pumped her until I couldn’t
hold on anymore and pulled
out and let it go on her tits
and stomach. I then went to
the bathroom and washed
my cock in the sink and took
a towel back into her bedroom
and gave it to her. “ God LOOK at
all that stuff. I’ve never been
with a guy that shoots out as
much as you,” she said then
started wiping it off. “ Its good
that I know this. Now I know
never to swallow when I give
you head.”

TOO GOOD TO RUIN

She was asleep on my bed and I
slid a finger inside her. It felt
strange. I then looked at it and
noticed it was in her ass. I
wiggled it around a bit though
she didn’t respond. She was
fast asleep. She slept with her
thumb in her mouth. She looked
so peaceful. So lovely. Like a
princess from a fairy tale. I
took the finger out and forgot
about sex. Just looking at her
asleep on my bed. Breathing
her gentle little breaths was
enough.

Preparation

—Well, I have known married parent and I have known

divorced parents. I was a Hulkamaniac before six-years-old. I

didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was eleven. When I was

thirteen-years-old, I smoked a cigarette for the first time while I

was walking to middle school. I sucked the smoke softly into

my virgin lungs and my walkman cassette player was playing DJ

Quik. It was early springtime—the worms that remained from

overnight left streaks of shimmering slime across the morning

sidewalks like sparkling veins. I sucked too deep and coughed; I

reached down and grabbed the crotch of my denim pants as I

coughed; I was gangster: young, rural, white-kid gangster. I got

my nose broken with a tree branch in my first fist fight (it was

my first, I didn’t know that sticks were acceptable) and in my

second fist fight my bottom lip was split in two.

I gave up gangster. I graduated high school while fighting a

rough run of acne—no junior, or senior prom, but I still managed

to fuck Lora several times just before I turned seventeen.

I probably should have pulled out. I didn’t pull out, I loved her,

and anyway, enough about my childhood, tell me about yours—

Moonmoth finished writing everything down in preparation

for his first phone call with Sunbug. He read it out loud to

Valentino, and Valentino laughed.

Moonmoth tore it out of the notebook and crumpled it up.

“What the fuck, Valentino?” he asked, “What the fuck?”

“Just call her and wing it,” Valentino said.

“I will for sure call her tomorrow,” Moonmoth replied.

Why I Think I Can Understand What War Vets Think

 
I remember
a party
where
we teenagers
attacked a hippie
camper who had pitched his tent some ways away from our
teenage bonfire keg party
when I arrived the guy was bloody and on his knees, begging
Moss said to him like Billy Jack “I’m gonna drop this beer bottle
and kick you three times in the face before it hits the ground”
he got about two kicks in
as the guy fell over on his side
we were all standing around watching
the guy got kicked pretty bad
blood gushing from his face he then got up and ran
ran as fast as he could
in his underwear cuz they made him strip down
through the woods
left his tent and backpack all his belongings
behind.
bad part of his journey across America
coming across us
Ten Cole told Moss “What the fuck are you doing?”
“That’s uncool, man”
And Moss swung and smashed a Michelob bottle over Cole’s head
Then Cole wrestled Moss to the ground and proceeded to throttle
him with repeated punches to his face
bloodied him up pretty bad before Moss said he’s had enough and
Cole let him up
Later, when we were al sayin’ “right on! Cole!
thanks, man, that was cool.”
and we were calling out for the bloody camper to come back
after the rowdy element was gone back to the keg party
and bonfire, and we were trying to gather the guy’s scattered shit
together
Cole was streaming blood from a gaping wound in his head
“Shit,” Cole said. “The fucker hits hard” e gently fingered the
streaming gash in his head
“He hit you w a fucking beer bottle Cole”
we told him, but I think he was a little brained and he still didn’t
believe us
But man, he was our hero
Sort of small man he was
he bully group was made up of small people, too
I sort of imagined this bad group in high school
to be it like Quantrell’s Raiders in the Civil War
I had another run in with them, too, same group
one day coming to school
I always picked up Gary and took him to school with me
and we almost always smoked a joint on the way to school
one day we get there
find a place to park
and start walking toward the school
and we see a big crowd of people
a circle around something happening
so we go look
a freshman had whistled at one of these small thug’s girlfriends
so one of these small thugs, this time Reiner
when Gary and I got there the kid was on his knees
Reiner was holding him up by his hair
kid’s face was streaming blood
and Reiner was trying to kick his teeth out
I actually think he had booted in the kid’s front four
Gary and I couldn’t let this go on, we were seniors too
Most of the kids in the circle watching were younger, afraid of
these thugs
we were seniors and sort of bad men like the ruffians perpetrating
this crime
when I first arrived on the scene one of the younger kids did try
try to rush in and separate or restrain Reiner from killing the kid
but the other ruffians like the Hells Angles at Altamont grabbed
him and wouldn’t let him near the “fight” as they called “let them
fight”. The little killers kept every one from helping the blood faced
kid
Then Gary and me arrived.
And we don’t fuck around.
we good guys
do a lot a drugs and alcohol
but no stranger to a fight
We not known to be fighters
but relish a good one
we used to practice fist fighting with ski gloves on with one
another
and Gary carried a big piece of wood with him
to get to the point, we intervened
we pulled an intervention
I’m small too
It was a joy fighting this group of five
Versus Gary and I
Gary made good use of the woodshop project
and my fists sting and cut cuz my hands is small and my punches
sharp and fast
They gave up and walked away after we bloodied ’em up a bit
then we helped the kid, he was in bad shape
Three months later I saw the camper
working at Big Boy restaurant of all places
as a bus boy
he said he had severe throat damage from the kicks
but it was getting better now
he said he had to say here and work to get enough money to pay
for the medical expenses resulting from the incident
As for Moss and Reiner
the leaders of this group of thugs, you know
they used to throw pool balls
across the basketball court into the stands of the opposing
team
especially when it was an inter-city rivalry game
they would go the red Indian projects neighborhood of town
with BB guns and shoot Indians
Moss finally went too far; he used brass-knuckles and sucker
punched
the tuba player filing off the field after their halftime performance
knocked him out and broke his facial bones in six places
kid was in the hospital a week
Moss was expelled from school for that
But his rich Dad got him back in.
I sometimes wonder what these guys are doing now
and what they now think about their past actions
And I too think seeing what I saw
I can see how much worse this kind of shit would happen in
conditions such as US forces faced in
Vietnam
And I try to understand the Vets.
Of all wars,
including personal ones.

Poem published in “Floyd County Moonshine” Issue 7.2, Summer 2015, from Floyd, Virginia.

FOR THE ROSES

 
I wore Tea Rose and
often a black rose
in my hair that summer,
symbol of freedom,
a nod to the White Rose,
the German girl who
protested the Nazis,
gave her skin, her lips
and heart, her life. I was
flying coast to coast
to read, coming back
to an alone house. Named
for the rose, for an aunt
adventurous as Joni,
who danced in flames,
I dressed in rose. Deborah
of the roses. The stories
about her whispered by
grown ups behind stained
glass doors. Who wouldn’t
expect roses in my poems?
White rose, Bulgarian
rose. When I walked thru
airports with a white
rose from Allen Ginsberg
everyone whispered, “roses.”
But it was the rose scent
perfuming the air from my
body. You could almost
hear, as even now I can
almost feel the one who
touched me on that
coast, what Joni heard
in the wind, the end
of, the chilly now,
the last face to face

 
FOR THE ROSES

the way I scrawl my name,
the petals that don’t
connect to any center.
I felt like that
summer, packing and
unpacking my head,
alone in a hotel room
drifting like milkweed
dust. Rose on my wrist
and nipples. I think of
Joni, her blonde hair, a
fan on the rocks of the
Pacific miles from where
an ex-con poet sent me
keys to a hide-away. He
might as well have
been a rock star, Joni’s
rock n roll man,
the kind any blond would
flip her hair for, fall
and follow home. A man
you can’t hold long or
count on. Back in my room
I played her songs
over and over as moths
brushed the August
screens and berries
glistened. It was so still,
so much seemed too
good to waste and
I wasn’t even blonde
to the bone yet

 
FOR THE ROSES

When I see hers
sprawled across the album,
explosive brush strokes,
guava, blood and green,
her wild petals not
connected to any
stem. I can’t help but
feel those slashes
of light in your poems,
how sometimes if seems
your words could be mine.
I’ve heard those lost
lovers in the wind. Maybe
I heard then last night
when I couldn’t
sleep. I think of the
photograph of you with
a rose in your hair. You
could be my sister those
nights when I am the
rose I was named
for, Raisel Devora.
And why wouldn’t some
one pierced by words,
turn addict for a
sense rare as Tea Rose
or Rashimi rose incense.
Those lovers, like
applause: I found them
addictive too. I think of you
crisscrossing the country,
a cigarette dangling,
leather and suede,
tawny earth colors
(you could find in my
closet), eyes few would ever
be as blue as. Aching for
something you can’t
still hold and knowing
from that raw wound, pain
and piercing beauty explodes

 
FOR THE ROSES

sometimes what stays
is the odd way one
said “Albany.” Or
another’s print on the
wall no paint hides.
You hear “honey”
in the wind. So few
called me that as
many years. As in
her song, that
sound, like applause,
face to face. Tristes
and joy. I can feel
her feeling it. Some
times what stays
is the fog the
day after, a voice
on the radio like
skin, days when her
words were like
lips on the air. No
more shiny hot nights
of rose petals, but
that touch that will
stay, last if it has to, as
long as your
heart beats

 
LET THE WIND CARRY ME

like tumbleweed, like
milkweed. Wind
blown, drifting between
hands. Oh she’s a
free spirit boys use to
sing to me too, shaking
their head. No one
can hold her. My mother
tried to, my father didn’t
care. Joni knew you
could be so drawn
and quartered. Wanting
a home with candles
around the door,
wanting a man who’d
be there to hold her and
then packing in the
night, eloping alone with
strangeness in a short
skirt and heels, fuck me
shoes and a hooker
sequin mini: a mask a
moat only the wind catches

 
ROSES, BLUE

when I go back and
look at those poems,
it’s as if Joni
dabbled in them.
A little jazz, a
blues riff. I think
of the woman on
the metro, sobbing.
I think of rain.
I think of roses.
Of blues my baby
left me. I think
of Joni’s woman
with her Tarot cards
and tears, of all
things that did not,
could not happen,
more haunting than
so much that did

 
TIN ANGEL

her words are my
words: “tarnishes,”
“beads” tapestries.”
I think she’s my
doppelganger with
her letters from
across the seas
and her roses
dipped in sealing
wax. Was there
something in the
water those rose
and butterfly years?
The white rose
Alan Ginsberg
gave me flattened
in a Shakespeare
Folio before wax
caked its leaves
could have been one
her tin angel sent.
The columbine
I planted in the
house I’m rarely in,
color of her lips,
her crying. I too sat
in a Bleeker St Café.
I used “tarnish” over
and over that year

 
FOR THE ROSES

when I hear butterflies
and lilac sprays, the
glitter, the what she
heard in the wind,
a fierce lullaby.
I think of Virginia
Woolf keeping
fragments, scraps of
images, tossed
them in a drawer. I
think if I cut lines
from a random
number of songs,
Chelsea Morning,
California and esp.
Blue, color that
leaks thru my writing
and put, like slices
of colored glass
or velvet squares from
a quilt into kaleidoscopes,
into a bedroom drawer
and waited to see
what would coalesce .
Each time I dipped
the verbs would
keep changing and I
don’t think I could
tell Mitchell’s
words from mine

 
READING SONG TO A SEA GULL

When I read about the
photo retouch expert in
Japan, taking what’s
blurred and faded, torn,
assumed lost and how
removed from debris,
as I’ve pulled some of
Joni’s songs from a
dark room in the house
I’m rarely in and what
was, blooms again, brings
back the most vivid
memories. I listen again
to her words, the
lyrics raw and direct,
chunks of what I
thought I’d lost and I’m
astonished, as those
locals in Japan who come
to look thru photos that
were found, cleaned
so they can hold
what they no longer
have, touch, bury
themselves in

SONG FOR SHARON

I think of that long white
dress of love. I think of a pale
Mexican dress I lusted for
in Guadalajara, perfect
for my long ironed hair.
If it was lacy, it was a lure.
It was like poems. It was
like using words for skin. I
think of being that young and
of her in her 20’s singing
how first you get your
kisses and then you get your
tears. Her musty LP like
my still white lace spills from
my closet instead of kisses

THE WALL PULLS ON VIETNAM VETERANS

One man who was never in combat,
spent his tour in Hawaii where his
duty was to process replacements.
“My job was to read casualty reports
and find replacements for those
missing, wounded or killed.” He
said his job was to search the Marine
Corps world to find the right person
with the required occupation skill.
“I simply pulled a name from a
stack of IBM punch cards,” he wrote,
“those chosen were fed into a card
reader. Within 30 days, sometimes
sooner the marine I selected would
receive orders. “There he was,” he said
a 20 year old lance corporal playing
God. “Throughout my life I have
suffered survivor’s guilt from my
IBM punch card selections. The
secret yellow colored casualty reports
started every morning at 8 sharp.
Out of respect, we would sit
quietly without anything to eat
or drink, no candy, no gum, just sit
there quietly and read the horrid news.
From the message board I would
know what my work load was to be for
the day. Some days it was out of
control. Other days it was a few casualties.
I hand those cards as though they were
priceless. I really tried to perform the
selection process at a certain time
of the day because I would only have to
dread a small section out of my day”.
Once the replacements were selected he
tried not to look at their names a
second time and tried to forget them.
He couldn’t always do that. “As
fate would have it, one of my placements
was killed less than 60 days following my
selection. He had been killed in an accident.
However it hit me the same as if he had
died in hand to hand combat

 
ONE MAN WAS AN ARMY DRAFTEE

who was taught Vietnamese
during a 40 week Army could
and worked as an interrogator/
analyst—he was in his early 20’s.
His job was to get intelligence
from papers taken off dead
enemy soldiers. “I saw more
than my share of photos,
most from parents and girl
friends and were accompanied
by letters telling how much
he was loved and missed. They
too were soldiers just doing
what their country expected
of them

The Margarita Machine

Quick moved in with a
beautiful woman, she
screamed and bitched
about the movers losing
her margarita machine

Two weeks later when she
found it, she swore the
movers had broken in
and returned it, Quick

Loved her crazy ass, but
got no peace to write, one
night while working on a
poem, she read what he had

(Burroughs cut off his left
pinky at 25, Hitler lost a
testicle in WW1 and farted
so much he got his ass
kicked by his own side)

That sucks she said, that’s
not like any birthday card
I’ve received, Quick packed
his duffel bag and split.

Felony Littering

One night he came back for
his bowling ball, at Margarita
Mama’s, he finished a burger,
fries, and a milk shake

The burger bag fell onto her
lawn, she kept Quick waiting
on his ball until, the cops she
called arrived, she insisted he

Be arrested for felony littering,
Quick said the bag wasn’t his,
one of the cops offered to throw
away the bag, but she wanted

It to be checked for Quick’s DNA,
they refused, she tore the bag
out of the cop’s hand and started
looking for a receipt, she

Slammed the front door on all three
men, then jumped in her car and
raced to three nearby hamburger joints
she wanted the workers to pick out

Quick’s photo from her cell phone
as a customer or to examine their
security tapes, when the management
refused she started screaming bloody
murder, they called the police

Unlucky for her the same two
cops arrived, they decided her
bullshit had gone on long enough,
they gave her an electricity cocktail.

Faster Than Sound

Quick’s lady friend Debra Pickleliquor
enjoyed a glass of whiskey or port, so
he went to buy her some ignorant oil
and milk for his cat and hamburger

He had onions, garlic, and rye bread,
when he exited the store it sounded like
a plane was diving from the sky, then
it felt like Thor’s hammer hitting earth

Quick turned the corner and saw the
flying machine in flames jutting out the
window of his flop house, he’d miss Ms.
Pickleliquor, her name suited her well

Jimi, Quick’s best friend a black cat
was singed but survived, he poured
milk for Jimi and drank some vino,
they slept until the rain came down.