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
Author: The Beatnik Cowboy
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
Ed Brickell
How the Words Come Sometimes they parade like naked children perched on ponies. Sometimes they ooze from a golden cup in a godly hand. Sometimes they bust in with guns gripped high. Sometimes they dart from the sky like blind birds. Sometimes they are revealed by reverent servants. Sometimes they are hammered out hot on a workbench. Sometimes they are gifted by grinning demons. Sometimes they just bud and bloom in our eyes. Sometimes we must come to them, the smug bastards.
Howie Good
A Deep Dive As robots with only one thing in mind pursue women up and down the street, the police watch from a safe distance or scroll through the photos on their phones. The I Ching says, “Free yourself of your big toe.” Ah, I think, interesting, and then feel a tingling in my feet. It's probably just a matter of days before someone in the family is diagnosed with cancer and the Internet recommends the healing power of dog saliva. We’re like sailors trapped in a disabled submarine, furiously eating pancakes on the finest porcelain in our dwindling moments.
Alan Catlin
After graduating from high school, the Kiwanis invited the seniors to a yacht club dinner as a reward for years of Key Club service. The food was passable, conversation with the red neck suits, surreal, and would have been unbearable if most of us weren’t stoned. After dinner, showing us around, I stood before life-sized oil portraits of the founders: my grand- father and great uncle, who never had a real job in his life. I debated sharing family lore of how they were bootlegging rum from Cuba and Canadian whiskey from up north. Business must have been good given Uncle Manny’s resume and our relative affluence during the depression. I thought: we were men now, in a smoke-filled room, sharing man talk, after a couple of three underage cocktails but decided some things are better left unsaid. In a few years, two of us would be busted for on campus drug sales, another would be a Green Beret and one guy dead. The rest of us would be draft dodging and heavily involved in perusing our college majors in substance abuse. It was the 60’s and we were hell-bent and crazy like everyone else. By the time Doug was 16 he was more junkyard dog than anything else. Spent half his time working the motor shop and the other half as lord of the landfill. Knew where all the stumble bums hid the good stuff like Mexican cigarettes you could get high from, naked women with men, white lightning tequila with the worm in the bottle. Said, “You weren’t a man if you didn’t eat the worm.” not that anyone had actually seen him do it. Still, he always had the goods people wanted. Those real fuck books, not the air- brushed commercial American bunny ears crap, the hard core stuff he’d sell you for a price. No one knew where in the hell he got them but I had a good idea. The musty odor was a dead give away, not that anyone cared about that, it was the pictures they wanted. Doug always sold out faster than he could steal them.
Ken Kakareka
civilization I went to Starbucks one morning during the week of Christmas to write for a change. A lit tree beamed through the window as I was walking in. A small part of me felt hopeful, which is the best feeling you can hope for during Christmas time. I hadn’t been acquainted with civilization for some yrs. – the mountains are my home now. But an obligation lured me into town. The drive-thru line was a freight train. I thought about making a joke to the barista, but as I opened the door and our eyes met, the jolly warmth in my soul shivered. She was a big, dark woman and the color in her eyes was sour. “What would you like,” she demanded like she was Santa Clause at the end of his shift and I was a screaming, nagging toddler behind a long line of other screaming, nagging toddlers who already sat and pissed on his lap. “A small, hot coffee,” I said, spitefully. “You mean tall?” “I mean small.” Our eyes locked until she rolled hers and scoffed. “Whatever.” She spun the machine at me and fetched my coffee. I inserted my card but nothing happened. She returned with the coffee. “Can I have a packet of raw sugar?” “Inside or out?” “Just the packet.” She scoffed again and fetched it. “The machine isn’t reading my card.” “Just give it a minute.” I gave it 2. An option to tip the barista appeared. For doing her job, rudely? I declined. She scoffed again. “Next!” “Oh, and can I get a stirring stick, please?” Her eyes really came after me this time. She marched away and lifted 2 sticks over the window of the pickup counter. “Down here!” I am a short man. She had a few inches on me. She held the sticks just high enough so that I had to humiliate myself on my tippy toes. It was a brilliant move. I gave her this round. In fact, I gave all of civilization this round. I was rusty now that I was a mountain man. I found a table and wrote this poem. Then I got in my jeep and said, “Take me the hell home.”