Silent But Deadly

Thought

bon mots

were French mints

and finally

after throwing mine out

figured out which is the

business end of a kazoo

the comb with toilet paper

is a difficult instrument

to master

spoons; metal-prong

dog brush ‘n’ small stone

armpit, cheek,

sphincter rat-a-tat-tat

sacred sounds

the music of necessity

blaring.

(First published by the German literary magazine Raven Cage Magazine, and editor-in-chief Jerry Langdon)

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He’s been widely published over the last quarter century, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Heroin Love Songs v2.0, Synchronized Chaos, The Scum Gentry and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com). and if you ever desire to hear him read a few of his poems, feel free to check out his SoundCloud page: (https://soundcloud.com/j-j-campbell).
Join the madness

stimulated

languid souls
wasting away
in this pit of fear

i never wanted to
know how the other
side lived

it never interested me

i was always stimulated
by deep thought,

neon colors,

an ass that made you
question all your
previous decisions,

the taste of sunshine
between the legs
of a goddess
———————————————————————-
the sun rise through a bottle of scotch

it’s a test of strength, of mind over
matter, how much pain can one soul
gather and hold until the boat takes
on some water

her love leaves as easily as it walked
in the bedroom

another broken heart that will never heal

never get to find anything resembling
whatever the same used to be

somewhere in that darkness, let the tears
roll down your face and rest on the floor

another breaking point conquered as soon
as the pen hits the paper and you see the
sun rise through a bottle of scotch

look in the mirror and understand you have
the will to die on your own terms
————————————————————————
an unsuspecting infant

the facts are not welcome here

innocence was lost the moment
a lit match met a bent spoon

love is a random bullet shot from
a moving car through the bedroom
walls of an unsuspecting infant
unaware of his new reality

hope is a middle finger from the driver
that just cut you off on the freeway

there aren’t enough bottles of alcohol
for the pain and the rich have kept all
the good shit for themselves

war is always on the tip of every
small-minded tongue

there is no room for failure or loss

our bellies only have a taste for victory,
freedom and whatever other lies we were
told in the prisons we took our books to
each day of our youth
————————————————————————

THE DAMNED PLACES

Love can be found in
the most damned
places:
in the ravaged souls
of those
whose lives have been
taken by poverty and
disease and
starvation,
in the hell-holes of
addiction, in the
corners and crevices
of the madness of
every day, in the
shadows of sex and
the silhouettes of
regret, in the
hearts of military
conflicts and the
exercise yards of
prisons, in the
hovels of dirty
desperation and
the quietness of
loneliness, in the
voices of protest and
the songs of
disobedience,
in the eyes of the
young, you can see
it, pure and
innocent,
you can find it
in this poem
and it’s for you.

Safety Net

Your once grateful presence, now fails miserably
to evoke those shock waves that once shattered
my spine and ankles, that left a residue like wet sand,
that would clog my arteries; slow down my tongue.

Those now defiant faces and groupings that kept
us within those spheres of false protection, that stifled
brain cells and ambition, but still offered a net of safety,
too weak to even hold one of us in place.

And our promises, that clotted over redundant scars,
are again inevitably peeled from their surface, allowing
the foundations to weep until septic; we slowly shift
from stained glasses and chipped ashtrays.

Those areas we shifted from each half decade,
leaving behind nothing but cobwebs and kicked in
doors with rusted hinges over indebted shadows;
it’s now time to let our memories release their dead.

Headlines

That resurgence of blisters,
that blight what should be
the easiest of walks, their
guides highly qualified in
deception; a repeated sentence
that promised lined pockets was all
they usually needed. A regular supply
of twisted verdicts from mouths nourished
on rancid vitamins. Their joyous “collective”
like wilting fox gloves, that sip
the given poison through perished straws,
to spit back at each other like frustrated Cobras.
Their nesting season (every four years),
eyes blinkered by their own hands, now
redundant till the final box is ticked; they
see everything at once, but never at the correct time.

Festivities

During that less that typical stillness,
that permeates only on this day, we drive
cramped in your van, that winter daylight
applying animation to the still trees and tower-
blocks; the fading white lines laid out across
concrete.

In that park as the light dimmed, stood
intoxicated, the streets that frame this grass
square still lacking movement like before.
The sharp windows hang like antique mirrors,
begging for reflections without vanity.

At our table, diluted whiskey amongst the half
finished meals, our claws un-clipped, yet sharpened
by the surrounding faces, the first in over two hours.
The bitterness on each of our tongues now turned
sickly sweet.

The avoided families and once a year bonding
escape our laughter and chatter. Each of us dressed
accordingly, we pick up the necessities, and nurse the
remainder of this eve, without the need for prayer.

A Nature Poetry Primer : for my sons

-after reading Guillaume Apollinaire.

“You can never say animals are stupid. You can only say it about other people.”
– Daniel , age 5.

He would butt your head when you fight.
He’s just being antlered.

His hairy belly is full & he is tall & his back is hairy, too.
He’s just a bear.

We sidle up to you . . . we come sideways . . . easy prey.
How you catch crabs.

He bares his teeth whenever he eats.
He deserves the dogfood.

Our heads inside are full of life, & outside easily broken.
We are all of us eggs, yet.

Slender, nuzzling, feeding, quiet, listening, ever alert, & attentive,
the fawn.

A speck of dust in the universe, still our biting leaves the itch,
as pestering as the gnat.

We daily sing of war, it’s our bloodlust. We laugh when old men cry.
We are such hyenas.

A mass of chemicals dropped from the air can kill us,
as if we were not insects.
A footnote to hunters, like packs of wild dogs roaming the night,
we are jackals.
Unable to quit . . . eucalyptus leaves or anything else,
we enter the world of Koala.

We could benefit from your work-sweat, or know that you bleed,
like capitalists, or leeches.

We can move atomically freely among ourselves without separation,
like liquid.

Imagine my molarity or imagine me hairy without language, extinct,
one mammoth mastodon.

It is a dark blanket our special being lays over us all so late,
our Night.

We are as soiled & as showy as a major political party convention,
we might as well be orchids.

It seems our memories may exceed our minds.
Parrots can seem like ditto signs.

A President’s death needs no gun. Apparently one animal does,
when hunting Quail.

He’s just thinking about tail, tonight.
We’ll not use the other name. Say he’s a rooster.

I shine, but I could be dead to you, as far apart as we are.
Read this now – you are a star.

Even great poets do not know who created my fearful symmetry.
But the tyger knows what the tigeris.
Scientists & logicians agree: we only exist in children’s dreams.
But we are, and we are unicorns.
A photo could frame our circles, on a tumbling ghost town paper,
when we are vultures.

Thick skinned, mustachioed, fat fanged, formally tusked,
at the reception, tuxed, I am a walrus.

Having claimed as my own the home of the tribes of South Africa,
by manners, I should introduce myself – wildebeest.

We’d lap our own tongues’ blood from the blades of knives, for living,
being wolves.

A number, statistic, axis, chromosome, generation, or a big unknown,
hardly natural the illiterate sign us: X.

Shaggy stock in life, we stare back, patient as pre-history, still here . . .
Yak, Yak, Yak!
How many of us do you recognize here?
After all this is our zoo.

just like Buk

reading Bukowski
and I don’t want
to knock him
too much
but,
upon reading a couple of
biographies
about him
it seems that
all of the times
he wrote about
working in
slaughterhouses,
he actually only
did half a shift
in one.

literally
hundreds of poems mention
sleeping on
park benches,
this happened
less than a handful of times,
apparently,

I’ve slept rough
once or twice,
having walked out
on my missus and
having nowhere
else to go.
expect to see it
in my poems
for the next forty years or so.

Business Professionals

They didn’t even make love
face-to-face anymore.

Just sex
in the dark
when they are drunk.
Thinking of others
to get off.

But they stay together
for the finances.

It is very sad.
Each saving up to afford
the absence of
the other.

Was I Insane?

I spent years trying to get over here
I don’t know if I ever did
I don’t know if I ever will
She still has a starring role in my dreams
sometimes, just to torture me upon waking.
I cringe when I remember all the petty,
childish ways I tried to hurt her, but at the
time it didn’t feel like that. I felt like I was
fighting for my sanity, or my life.
I thought that if she didn’t take notice of me I’d fade away to nothingnes. If she loved
me or hated me, I had to know that I mattered
to her. Was I insane? Probably. Some women can do that to you. It doesn’t have anything to do with how strong
you think you are. Some women
just get under your skin,
just like scabies.

Modern Day
Toilet Reading

It was refreshing
to see Dostoyevsky
staring back at me
in that dirty,
but lemon scented
bathroom.

In bygone days
I would
have called you
a filthy fuck if
I’d found a book
in your bathroom –
whilst
simultaneously
knowing
that deep down,
I couldn’t
be friends
witah anyone
who didn’t toilet read.

Nowadays it just
felt incredible
to find another place
where books were
still being
read.

New Orleans Pride

 

it was a long Labor Day weekend

although weekends never feel long

I took a few days off in

preparation for said weekend

that Wednesday I hurt my knee bad

so I hobbled with every step

fucking great, I thought

I’m going to have to do

a lot of walking this weekend

Thursday

I took the dog to the vet

I watched as my dog took shots

like a champion

a cute blonde with a lip piercing

and tight scrubs hugged my dog tight

and let him lick her in the mouth

as the doctor shot him up with drugs

and inserted a long cylindrical tube

into his anus for a fecal test

this lucky bastard, I thought

tests were negative

the dog healthy

I emptied my wallet and

we went on our way

Friday

the wife and I left for Ocean Springs

ate great barbeque

drank good bourbon and soaked

in a large tub by the bed

the next day we went to an

art walk where I purchased

an original piece from a hipster

I won’t hold that against him

because his work is amazing

we then headed for Biloxi

we gambled a little

ate a lot

and saw the comedian

we were there to see

I had strong drinks from the bar

and weak drinks at the slots

I ran into a coworker who was

feeding machines with hundred after hundred

“push it” he told me

“maybe your lucky”

I wasn’t

I never am

Sunday

we drove to New Orleans

as we were getting off on our exit

I turned to my wife and said

“I just remembered, it’s pride weekend”

we made our way toward the hotel bar

rumors have it that Bukowski stayed

there when he was in his twenties

we found a spot on the street to park

less than a block away

we entered the bar and ordered drinks

as we drank we watched

girls and guys walk by with wings attached

dressed in wigs, dresses or much less

I ordered another round and

we decided to take a walk

I fired up a cigar as we walked

I knew what they were probably thinking

me sucking on a long brown stick

many males and females in thongs

and jockstraps

chest harnesses abound

no problems among thousands of people

everyone was so festive and joyous

dancing, laughing, and singing

it’s then I realized how they

probably got their title

I was proud of New Orleans once again