Honeymoon at a cheap hotel

it was the 3rd weekend  

of the month 

but we were going at it  

anyway. we sank,  

gone oak to bedroom floor; 

careful so as not  

to stain the bedsheets. 

I was on my knees 

while she was making herself comfortable 

and I slid in, 

feeling around and wondering 

at all the stupid 

male questions, 

such as the effect 

someone’s blood might have  

on the urinary tract? 

and it was slippy too, 

wet as a well-washed tile, 

but warmer, 

and when I came  

I came hot and soft 

and onto her belly 

just to be doubly safe. 

on the whole 

afterward 

there was very little blood – just the red shadow 

of my penis 

printed on her navel 

like an old round tower 

rising to cemetery view –  

but when she stood up 

and went to shower 

there it was – blossoming on the floorboards 

like we’d been fucking  

on rose-petals, 

and bright red squashes 

brushed across her ass. 

as if we’d been on our anniversary 

or a honeymoon 

at a cheap hotel 

and trying 

very hard 

to be romantic. 

Profit Motive

We need to get our kids back in the schools

profit motives, business-friendly tax-relief, entrepreneurship, growth

schools must open

even if classrooms become receptacles

for corpses. human anatomy anyone?

Prizefighter

1980,
lying in bed
staring at the ceiling

in the middle of a
Chicago February night,
I thought,

If I’m this depressed
when I’m
twenty-one,
what will I be
like at thirty?

I assumed
my despair
would multiply
like fungus,
devouring everything
in its path.

No one
could tell me
about giving birth,
or buying my
second house,

or the first time
I would see
my poetry
in a magazine.

No one
could divine
my trajectory
of fortune

from highest
to lowest,
and back again:

a loop repeated
over and over,
like a cartoon rerun.

Still, forty
years later,
I wonder what
I’ll be like at seventy,
and if I’ll be able to
withstand the pressure.

I can’t imagine
a worse ledge
than the one
I cling to now with
my perspiring hands,

but for some
goddamned reason,
I won’t let go
without another fight.

I Went to Prison

I went to prison today.
‘Go there most every day.
‘Work there from three to eleven.
Just another medic in the
Joint’s Health Care Unit.
I go in the cell houses and
The cons say, “How ya doin’, Dan?”
I usually reply, “Terrible.
Could be better, could be worse.”
“Yeah,” they say,
“It could always be worse.”
We all readily identify with that.
Some inmates got a different
Outlook on ‘caring’ for their
Fellow man, or woman.
Like my man what blew the back
Of this woman’s head off ’cause
He couldn’t stand to see her suffer
After he shot her twice in the gut.
Is that a tender heart or what?
Proof positive, chivalry is not dead.

Cowboy’s Mirage

My horse died,
but I keep walking
When will it rain?
I ask the Arizona sky

I pass the bone dry rivers,
abandoned crops,
and dying cacti
that barely stand

I’m the only one left,
while others go in panic,
abandoning their homes,
ranches and cattle,
and probably their brides

As I keep walking,
the mirage is ahead of me,
the pool of glistening water
invites me to strip naked,
as I cleanse myself
of all the desert dust.

renting

Argentina on my wall.
Argentina of light
on my wall.
splodge of sunlight shaped like Argentina
on my wall,
projected from
the rip in the curtain.

lovely, that.
but it’s not my wall.

neither’s the curtain. I’d say I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it
but at this rate I might have to.

The Neighbor Left

The neighbor left
Not saying a word.
Not so unusual
But not even a wave
Of the hand.
I guess that was her
Under the blanket.
The men from the
Coroner’s Office
Didn’t wave either.

THE HEART BEATS

The heart beats
Like tiny fists on the wall of a padded asylum
In the otherwise silence of the night.
The wind whips outside
And you lie in bed untouched by it,
Kicking off the snake of a bedsheet
That is no longer either warming or cool.

You’re nothing in this moment
But a housewife who sees ghosts that aren’t there
Or a businessman who will call in sick to work tomorrow
Even though your body is well.
You are as infinitesimal as the mysterious itch
That comes to the small of your back
As soon as the lights go out.

Well, it’s beginning to rain now
And there is some thunder in the distance.
The clock becomes nothing
And you can no longer hear the tiny fists in your ears.
Your eyes close and the world becomes just dark enough.
Lightning illuminates the bottles of vitamins that line your nightstand
And, suddenly, the sheets return – warming now and just exactly cool enough.

You sleep.

THERE IS NOT A ROSE LEFT ALIVE

There is not a rose left alive
With the sun dripping blood
Through the running fingers
Of the clouds and onto the
Gardens and streets where
You and I try to live without
Life killing us inside and woe-
Fully dreadfully failing every
Day the blood red roses dead
In the blood dripping orange
Sun as the clouds laugh between
Their angry gray rainy fingers
That allow rays of death to fall
Onto our roses with the subtlety
Of a sun making a compact with
The moon to keep us in our
Perfect and unsurmountable

Misery

And
There is not a rose left alive
Not one

Life and Nothing But

The police nowadays consider a gathering of three or more people a riot. I try desperately to speak out, shriek like someone warning of an approaching fire, but can’t, because of a sudden terrifying lack of breath. All these events, crises, dramas, convulsions – literature pales by comparison. When I cross any border, there is always an uneasy moment when I feel myself automatically regarded as an enemy. We are surrounded by murderers. Like those jellyfish on the beach. Children stab them with sticks without realizing they are living creatures. Life is nothing but being stabbed, knifed. We are the wound.

After the Bomb

A former beauty queen has been found in her bedroom decapitated, limbless, a chainsaw nearby.  The floor is littered with discarded gloves and face masks. On the wall, a decorative wooden sign says, “Breathe deeply and calmly.” How do you do that? This might not be hell, but it definitely isn’t heaven. We need a plan, an intervention, something. In Hiroshima after the bomb, they piled the bodies in the swimming pool at the college and cremated them with scrap wood. The smell of smoke chokes us; the heat scorches our eyeballs. Sirens scream in the distance. Assume the monster is everywhere.

Two Dollar Talisman

I have never professed to know much, although what I do know,
is there’s a distance between want and need, the road is plagued with rain that in time causes your ambition to rust, and your ego to bleed, your hunger doesn’t entitle you admission, to take part in the soul feast, believing no one’s pain is greater than your own, you’ve paid your dues now fate owes you, but you’ve defaulted on the loan.

If ever your want becomes a desire, for someone other than the image reflected in a selfish mirror, then you’re damned to keep counting blessings, always coming up short, feeling cheated out of what was never yours.

Still you ask why your prayers go unanswered, self indulgent wishes are ignored, worshiping the two dollar Talisman, bought at the thrift store, it has exhausted any cosmic goodwill it never had before, turns out to be just another poor choice, as a last resort. if a line between right and wrong ever existed, you snorted it long ago, and conscience you considered an encumbrance, was shedd in liability’s shadow.

I’ve lived in the underbelly of an existence, the reward for addiction and a troubled mind,
been to places where Jesus was afraid to visit, acting on some drug’s bad advice, I learned the less I wanted, the more I understood what it is I need, it rains diamonds on Neptune, and there’s blue sunsets on Mars, but what do I know,
I’m just an imitation of me.

Judge’s poems can also be found here, check it out!
https://5d1dd405a81e9.site123.me