Screen Door Summers

Dusty and distraught the afternoon laid out
like a sun-shaped jewel ahead of us. 
Our marble eyes will fill up with salty tears 
and the rivers will swell until they drown 
the glittering meadows in madness. 
Our screen door summers will be like 
shattered blue china and so we will trudge 
through the day lilies and clementines 
alongside the infinite stretches of power lines 
that run the hillsides. 

We are the late bloomers and the daydreamers. 
The ding dong ditchers and the hide and seekers. 
The hopscotchers and leap froggers. 
Living among the star magnolias and mimosas. 
Our sun drenched world was full of fragrant bursts 
of flowers and pink clusters of fluff. 
Spongy moss and delicate wisps of grass served 
as our place to nap, right there below the copper 
stained sunsets. 

Take me back to the days we poured cherry soda 
over our vanilla ice cream and crunched on crushed ice. 
The evenings we gathered sticks to burn as defense 
against the insects and mosquitoes. There was never 
an issue with illness and that was all thanks to the 
tablespoon of apple cider vinegar we consumed daily. 
The best stories were told while sitting in rocking chairs 
on the front porch. We chased chicken hawks like wild 
hyenas and made up our own special calls whenever 
we lost each other in the woods. 

It seems we all lost track of time during all those fights 
and parties and birthdays and graduations and baby 
showers and weddings. It seems all we have left of those 
days are photographs and scars. Maybe even a little 
heartache. 

But one thing is for sure, we left our mark.



Speed Demons

I live for that feeling of complete 
weightlessness, when we speed 
down back roads lined with 
corn fields and rolling grasslands 
that stretch all the way to the foot 
of the mountains. 

I would tighten my arms around his waist 
as the speedometer touched 140mph. 
We zoomed through the darkness like 
screaming demons on two wheels. 
The sky peeled away like a panoramic 
screen unraveling past us. 

I drank up the crisp air, I saturated 
myself in adrenaline like a junkie. 
It was just the two of us, phantoms 
of the night, spirits of the asphalt, 
our souls aligning with the road beneath us. 

No one could possibly catch us. 
Dedicated to the ride, locking pinky 
promises with the highways and 
interstates, always swearing to return, 
to meet again with the meditative route. 

To me this is much more than a form 
of transportation, it's a lifestyle, a way 
to soak up your pure bliss, a form of 
peace and harmony. 
It's being born to ride.

Call It Lazy

Okay, call it lazy.  ‘Nother one of my pieces
Getting posted on-line and they want a bio.
Man, I’m tired of listing all my stuff.  Look,
It’s a lengthy roster of my published work,
Along with awards I don’t give a shit about,
Old enough to be, for me, incredibly boring.
I’m just into mixing words with the world,
Something you do while you’re still alive.
So, I’ll give myself a break and borrow a bio.
Slap it right up as if it were my own credits.
Yeah, use their catalogue of ‘published in’
Publications and their Push Cart etc. awards.
Even add their personal notes.  That’s easy.
Lives in a cabana on a west coast beach
With three kids, four cats, and a husband.
Husband?  Crap!  I’m stealing the wrong bio.

Beatnik Blues


The night moaning like a whore faking 
love, red neon pouring whiskey on junk- 
ies watching their blood ejaculate up into 
a syringe, eyelids fluttering on Whitman’s 
finger, dance boys dance, blow your har- 
monica until sunshine orange drenches 
the shadows, prisons, and asylums over 
flow, spewing detritus, talking rats with 
yellow jaundiced eyes and bebop cats 
 
William S. Burroughs cut off his finger 
in 1939 out of love for Jack Anderson 
and sent it to Arnold Gingrich at Esquire,  
later he said it was an initiation for the 
Crow Indian tribe, he hoped his words 
would be published, Gingrich sent Bur- 
roughs a note back reading, “I greet you  
at the beginnings of a wonderful career,  
when do I get the corpse?” William had 
love for heroin, morphine, and marijuana 
 
His work was of mystical, occult, and mag- 
ical themes, William’s totem animal was a 
green reindeer, his life was fleeing from one 
troubled place to another, he killed his second 
wife, Joan in 1951 while drunk and went to  
prison in Mexico City for 13 days, they had 
him for culpable homicide, he fled to Morocco 
where he was accused of importing opiates, he 
fled to a rundown hotel in the Latin Quarter of 
Paris, to meet Ginsberg, Corso, and Orlovsky 
 
Burroughs cooked the dragon with a burnt spoon, 
a step ahead of the law, snapping fingers, to the  
bongo beat, chasing daydreams down the street.




Cherokee Rose

 
Prolonging the heartbreak, baby 
baby, your love leaves me on a  
ten story ledge watching the side 
walk artists below creating master- 
 
Pieces vanishing in the rain, they 
smile like hundred-dollar bills are 
pouring down, they know that every 
thing is temporary even blossoms 
 
Floating on the xeric wind, apricots 
and nectarines make fiery love and 
replace the sun in the cinnamon sky, 
watching a video of Tommy Castro 
 
And the Painkillers, play his song,  
Ride, pretty ladies dancing, while he 
Kerouac struts past City Lights Books, 
keeping me alive like a Cherokee Rose.

I Want a Redo  
 
So we have these discussions. Me.  
And Amelia. (Who knew Chihuahuas  
were such good listeners?) Not that  
she’s a barker. She’s not. But I can  
tell. You know. When she agrees  
with me. Yeah. I can tell. Like  
when I say I want a redo. When  
I was eighteen. Back then. When  
I chose tech. You know. As a career.  
Geez! What was I thinking? So, so  
stressful. That job. Who knew?  
Instead, instead. I’d do something  
different. Now. Like work at a hotel.  
A desk clerk. Yeah. That’s what  
I’d be. Make a career of it. I would.  
I’d work my shift every morning.  
And then, and then. I’d leave. Done!  
Stress-free. With the rest of the day  
to enjoy. See? A redo. That’s what  
I want. And Amelia agrees. She does.  
Especially when I give her a treat.   

SEGMENT
—For CK

I could live in the woods like Thoreau, off the grid,
and reality would be looking out the window
each morning, and actually stepping outside to

test the temperature without first consulting my
phone’s weather app. I hope to put down all devices
at some point, though it is not possible to fully

unplug right now and decently survive, plus get
medical treatment. But a cabin in the woods, stocked
with supplies and a full library, would be a 

good break from all the hype. It is very Philip K.
Dickian, and breaking news is just gossip to
the philosopher, but Glenn Armstrong Spills

the Sugar at Breakfast is as real and 
valid as whatever the headline reads on the
digital newspaper this morning. My wasted

sugar is not nearly as important as 
national and global strife, as cable news blares
downstairs about key issues. Though on one level,

I look out my window and I do not see any 
tanks or missile strikes, but another sunny day.
The palm trees stir slightly as I parallel track

the larger issues, and realize that troops are
not jackbooting down the street at this time. I 
process the more immediate reality first,

before absorbing news items squeezed into
seven-minute segments, in between advertising
car repair insurance and toe fungus removal.

 

Working Girl
 
Her stilettos tap Morse code
along the sidewalk
near the river, tell men
who stand on street corners
or wait in cars, with grins
on their faces, that she’s ready
for service. Skirt hikes
up her thighs, red lips plump up,
blonde wig camouflages
the short, dark locks
she keeps for herself.
Men with alcohol on their breath
ask how much as the water
quietly slaps against itself.

 

Good For Nothing 

I’ve taken enough shit from you today. Listening all morning to you verbally attack me with the same agonizing torment of a Monday morning hangover. You’re fucking lucky I’m heavily sedated and not paying close attention to almost anything you say, otherwise I might take offense to your condescending soliloquy of derogatory comments concerning my character. It always seems to be complaints about something I didn’t do, rather than what I might have done. These rants of unsubstantiated grievances only lend proof of your self-righteous demeanor. You haven’t told me anything I haven’t heard before. You’re just an echo of all the women I’ve known in the past that didn’t last.

If this is an attempt to cause me emotional pain, you’re shit out of luck. You’re heading the wrong way down a one way street. You can’t hurt my feelings. I used to hold the flashlight for my father.

I would however like to inform you that your statement of being ‘good for nothing’ is an invalid premise. I don’t profess to be knowledgeable in the field of philosophy, I’m more of a Barstool Philosopher at best. 

Understand, by declaring me to be good for nothing proves that even being good for nothing is actually being good for something. Hope you’re able to grasp the concept.

There’s one swallow of patience left in the bottle, a cold shoulder of icy give a shit in the syringe. I was hoping to end this malicious prosecution with some type of profound quote. Unfortunately, all I can think of saying at this moment is; “Shut the fuck up.”

right before i wake up

 
early in the morning

i always had the dream

of you sitting on my face

right before i wake up

 
i have no clue if this is

sexual or you trying to

kill me

 
i'm sure you have read

my poems about the most

amazing ways to die

 
but my tongue still moves

fast enough that i'm not

dying just yet

 
although, i like the way

your brain operates at

four in the morning

Mon Paris

I gotta say that I love Paris.
France, itself, is cool but
Paris is full of the zanies.
I dig the women but most
Smell like the armpits they
Don’t shave.  Perfume?
Good scents too expensive
Like most of the stuff there.
I always shop at the hidden
Tourist-free areas for food
And anything else that costs.
My French is tres le crap but
Good enough that I get by.
Summer in the ville is insane.
Everything shuts down in
August, shops and factories.
People not having to work
Mill around like millionaires
Without enough money to
Actually do anything fun.
Nobody riots like Parisians.
I get off on building those
Barricades and tossing rocks
And cocktails…Molotov.  I
Guzzle wine like a fool doing
My part providing empties.
Makes for some rowdy ass
Nights alleviating boredom.
The boredom that always
Comes when you’ve stayed
In one place too damn long.

 

Suggestion

They
Suggested
That I
Should use
A pen name.
But, I
Never name
My pens.

Reliable Sources

 
Reliable sources say everyone is dying completely wrong, so now I do whatever the internet tells me to do. Although your blood may be too big for your body, you must try to keep it inside. Even at zero hour, all bodies fall to Earth at the same speed, like led feathers. As the universe expands, its emptiness can’t help but swell like puff pastry in a night-black oven. Say, I’ve noticed you’ve got a number of psychiatric knives stuffed into your desert camo adventure belt. Of course, I have to admit that living alone must have its advantages.