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.

Entrepreneur Jailed

There’s a moral to this story.
Police in St. Louis have arrested
a teen for felony auto theft.

They asked her why she did it.
She said the owners didn’t
pay her for sex so she took

their cars instead, saying
she doesn’t have sex for free.
She took one man’s car

while he was sleeping,
another man’s car while
he was showering.

Now the young lady needs
an attorney, which proves love
and lunch aren’t always free.

Donal Mahoney

 

America Wants to Know

What will she do with him?
That is, if she’s elected.
She’ll have to take him

with her to the White House
after keeping him in the doghouse.
Maybe the FBI can put

the doghouse out on the lawn.
He shouldn’t be a problem there.
Only men jump over the fence.

Donal Mahoney

 

The Big 62 and Everyone Else

They have a few bucks,
the 62 richest billionaires in the world.
The Big 62 have half as much wealth

as the bottom half of the world’s population,
according to Oxfam International.
(Oxfam tracks the rich and the poor.)

Oxfam also points out that the top 1%
of the Big 62 have more wealth than
Everyone Else In The World Combined.

Oxfam released this information
ahead of the 2016 World Economic Forum
held in Davos, Switzerland, where the rich

from all over the world gather every year.
Capitalists at the Forum who read the report
had to be embarrassed, if that’s possible.

Perhaps they told workers back at the office
about the need to find more tax breaks next year.
Or face unemployment. But if layoffs occur

unemployment comp and food stamps might help.
In some states Medicaid remains available, too.
Just don’t let your boss drop out of the Big 62.

Donal Mahoney

SERAFINE ROSE DANCES FOR THE TSAR OF ALL RUSSIAS

Serafine Rose pulls up her hair
With a red gancho
Lets fall
A thin black dress

Wearing coral on her toenails
Silver links around her waist
And nothing else
Dances for the Tsar of All Russias

Staring with green eyes
Into his blue
Thus unveiled
To a very slow waltz

Like fingers around his throat
Searching for bone.

 

BUSINESS AS USUAL NUMBER 2

Benefit design.
New turf.
Algae bloom.

Global weakness.
Data breach.
Deportation.

Shared needle.
Razor blade.
Closed circuit.

“There’s a trade off,”
The executive said.
“The cost goes up somewhere else.”

Some glimpse of salvation.
Automatic override.

 

EVENTS OF THE DAY

Leslie Narum homers in his first at bat.
Eddie Murray homers.
Charlie Macwell hits four in a row.
Willie McCovey homers in his last at bat.

The Old Man in the Mountain topples over.
The British execute Patrick Pearse.
The British execute Thomas McDonagh.
The British execute Thomas Clarke.

San Francisco burns.
So does Jacksonville.
Egypt seizes the Sinai.
The silver fleet sets sail.

Byron swims the Hellespont.
Goya paints.

Under Their Thumb

Each city becoming like all other cities
Crowded rush for the fleeing dream

Each country becoming like all other countries
Government control with false ideals

Shrinking earth and core of consciousness
We the slave allowing vampire flies upon our face

Burning sun upon our bent backs
Making-love when it’s merely making flesh

Humming entertaining songs in our hyped heads
Deaf to the crying of consequence

Wanting bland contentment in the continuing chaos
Accepting the snuff of the fire within our hearts

But there’s always a few rebels beyond the grip
Pinpricks to the heavy thumb of the elite

And we’re gathering strength under their cocky blind eye
As they’re beginning to know what it means to bleed.
 

Dark Days

They are blinding us

So many starving and undernourished
So many fighting wars against ourselves
So many entertained into inaction
So many tortured with screams unheard
So many trying to resist what they don’t understand
So many stumbling

But still seeking the light.

Isn’t it nice? Our lofty analysis, that is. Scouring what is said, done, looking for patterns of wisdom. The Colombian Gold Stairway to Heaven, a new sense of a permanent now. Zero tolerance for future and past. The arresting of all those whom fail a drug test. For profit prisons, for lucky, arrested folks. For time spent in an educational institution comes with life-skill choices mandatory. One may learn 1) constant curious/continuously wanting or 2) waiting. You know it has been said, dear readers, those in prison should be freed and those that put them there should take their places. But of course with the new university prisons to be either free or in school matters not. But then again, it’s all a prison if you think about it, and freedom is after all the freedom to control, the market, drive your competitors out of business and charge whatever price you like. I know the answer, of course, is blowin’ in the wind, but I gotta ask: what is your stupid conclusion? The aforementioned sentence, was most uncalled for. And dammit, God-fucking dammit, I’m sorry.

Cuo bono, and Sonny two. It could be the sound, the meaning-effect, of one hand, one arm, of a one handed person, clapping, flailing away. The sound, the fury, what audacity to live! It is Patton-esque! It is what marks men, and makes them scratch. Newly fightin’ female U.S. soldiers, enjoy their company. Time spins an uncertain circle, wobbling, and needing linearity like the Invisible Man needs clothes. Or bandages, or eatin’ something, or wearing glasses on an enormous erection! Speak of it! In thine missives!! Live it! In thou slovenly graces! Oh idiot!! Come to me! Love bomb me baby!!!

Okay, a couple twenty years ago, I was lookin’ for a cult to join. Or one that would have me. But then, of course, like Groucho, I then couldn’t join that one. Sacred weed use, and sexual freedom with ugly guys, had to be high. LSD and mushroom ritual was a plus. Hippie freaky sexual nymphs and MLF bazongas. Bodacious tatas. Bhagwanger-Rashneesh-like, I wanted. But, as things would be, no cult would take me. I tried the Hare Krishna. I was still high on acid, had seen a Who show the night before, stayed up all night looking out my darkened room window. Saw someone with a can of gas go round an old Victorian house across the street pouring gasoline. Saw the house go up, fire engines, police, gathering people. Then, the house burned down, a charred ruin, everyone and everything gone. Dawn and hour away I still sat, tripping. Spewing “Wow”. That was weird. Then I got up, went to my 8:00 class and met the Krishna, dancing and chanting, playing the little finger cymbals. I inquired critically, and apparently deep introspective questioning of all critically is not their bag. I studied cults, or new religious movements, as they are less acerbically called. Couldn’t find one I didn’t like. Like at the fraternity, I was black balled by them all.

But hey, these poems we’ve published and those coming, are, more than quite simply, let us say, they are poems of courage. Tough little buggers. Poem for poem, I’d put ’em up against anything, say, Updike did, or Whitman. Poems of a coward, they are not. Mere Haggard fightin’ poems. Riverboat gambling poems. Whiskey rivers never runnin’ dry…. We encourage, good-bad, bad-good, solid trans-valuing work. Trans-value your values is the idea, in order to get closest to truth. Think of it, everything is its opposite, in truest reality. Big is small and hot is cold. In an infinite anything, like the universes are supposed to be, it all works out. Infinitesimally small from a certain point to never nothing is supposed to be larger (smaller?) in area more than the outward immeasurably large. When something is strong cold it burns hot. I don’t know if hot burns cold; a question probably best unsolved, by me at least, in self-experimentation. Personally.

So read! Submit! Subscribe! Get a Cowboy blog-published poem in and you may be in hard copy zine! Yee-haw it’s another day! A really, one big chunk ‘o’ a never-ending wake. We are timed here, on Earth. So get writing and remember. Hemingway said when asked how to succeed as a writer: “Stay healthy, and keep writing.” Vaya con aetheismo.

Randall K. “Doctor” Rogers 9:38 P.M. 1/24/2016 Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.A.

Darkness on the shore

 
The person on the shore – stands motionless.
Turned away from the seas action
As the viewer still blind to seeing
The wave overwhelming…
Then drawn; – viewing the rear of the beach.

Slowness of the animation: The creeping the crawling
there is disaster about, lurking…The clear
black and white, dissolving the coloured world.
The unquestioning, of being there at that time
And time. What is it that is here? This black against white.

Even the white fades in to a clear eternity as magic glass.
Revealing those whose eyes who see in…
And your all unknowing eye that must see out
That ocean all able to take the essence and leave.
The dregs swill around the seas bed and wash up – along, tomorrow….

The World in the Year 3000

There are pockets
of them everywhere,
quiet and discreet.

Usually they meet
once a week
in private homes

in basements
some call catacombs.
Depending on the group

a minister will preach,
a priest say Mass
a rabbi teach.

Elsewhere you will find
a mosque on almost
every street.

Donal Mahoney

 

 
Bullies and the Wimp

They laugh at him
because he’s weak
by their standards
but they don’t realize

they’ve signed a
contract with him,
a lifetime guarantee
for recompense.

It will be fulfilled
perhaps tomorrow or
maybe on a wedding day
or years from now at

the funeral of a loved one
when they’re as vulnerable
as he appears to be
and for the moment is

but they don’t realize
the spider in its web
looks slow to any fly
circling overhead.

Donal Mahoney

Morning Wood
At sunrise I find I have already risen
after swimming in a sea of wet dreams,
to see that my appendages are stiff
and damp drops of dew have formed indoors.

I come to notice that I’m affixed to my sheets,
as all the blood floods towards my head
and tangled hairs dangle like icicles from my follicles,
while peeling off caked layers from my encrusted eye.

Every day I erect my cotton tent,
which is the perfect place to hide in.

 

Previously published in Poems of Pain Volume 2: Emo (C) from Scars Publications.

The Manly Thing to Do

 

Aw hell
I think I’m just
gonna pack
it all in
start taking
female growth
hormones
and live the
rest of my
life
as a lesbian
woman.

 

And There Was A Super Eight Across The Street!

 

Me going native
I remember I asked a hotel keeper
A Mexican lookin’ guy
In a Ma and Pa motel
In New Mexico
If he had clean rooms
He looked at me sideways
Like I was supremely uncouth
a real Bozo
Like I was thinkin’ the color
Of his skin
Made the room dirty.
“Yeah,” he said, coolly, and I feeling
foolish, feeling a racist,
I immediately took the
Room
No questions asked.
And goddammit it was dirty.

 

Haiku Time

 

Time,
Bottles of shampoo,
A clogged drain,
And a ravaged Judy Garland barely making it through the
performance
still belting out one hell of a show.
Through the Dryer Hole

He wore shaving cream,
about his genitals,
naked,
running screaming through
the streets
down to the bar.
Started Wounded Knee.
“Careful. He’s gonna puke!”
“He won’t puke.”
“He always pukes when he does shots.”
Pukes. Spurts a dollop. Arcs
majestically. Barfs copiously
into his hand.
Dam God.
Tells you it’s his name
spelled backward
Head through the dryer
hole, poking into the
laundry slash bathroom.
No dryer.
Laura, peeing.
Michelob bottle in
hand.
Head, just a head, grinning
bald head, poking through the
Dryer hole into the laundry
Slash bathroom,
“Heeerre’s Johnny!”
Laura, caught watching herself
drink beer in the mirror, sitting peeing,
Flings
the bottle.
Michelob bottle collides with
Bald head flesh poking into the
Laundry slash bathroom
through the dryer hole.
Johnny’s got a headache
and the girls down the
hall are stripping,
comparing breast and
nipple sizes, awaiting the
Next suicide.

Circa 1985, Vermilion, South Dakota, USA

 

Sheeple

 

I wanna join a cult!
And do cult things!
Like kill myself,
With fifty others,
Instead of doing it
Alone,
In the closet
Belt tied tightly around my neck,
Hanging from the same metal
Cylinder
As my clothes.

Cuz’ I Spoke No Russian

“With or without nucleus?”
the Soviet man
asked me
as he was helping me
buy my olives.

“Without,”
I said.
He translated
and the store-clerk
handed me a
can of the
“pitted”
atomic greens.

 

The Maintenance Man (formerly titled: “the Janitor”)

 

Knows less about stuff
that don’t mean nothin’

 

Stocking Stuffers

 

What’s black and white
and red all over?
Slaughtered interracial
orgy. (or slaughtered interracial couple).

 

Return

 

Watch the faces in the crowd,
Look at the explanation beyond the
Intonation
Know the need beneath desire,
when you break with tradition,
Tradition breaks you,
Deny the calm and
Serenity of God,
You see only hypocrisy,
Foolish restrictions,
Proscriptions,
Denying a fulfillment,
Repressing and killin
The spirit of man,
Leading a life of jazz,
Syringes, broken worlds, cigarettes,
Lenny Bruce and a comedy of
Breasts and ears and death
That winds a little finger
About a shooting star…

Human Rights

And remember if you ain’t getting
Jobs and peein’ in the boss’s coffee
For the first three days before the
Results of the urine test come in
And you get fired
You ain’t doin’ shit for human rights.

 

A Not So Fullness of Being

Humans
Will never
Stop making
Up
False Gods.

God made it
This way
And if the current
God ever
Were proven to
Not exist
Humans would
Create
Another one,
And if this
New God
Ever tried to
Show Herself
And walk the earth
Like Jesus
Did
Well, we’d kill
This new God
Too.

It’s like they said
In the
Bar down the
Hill from
Golgotha
The day after
Jesus
Was
Executed: “God sent
Jesus
Down to
See what
Earth was
Like;

And we gave him a taste of what
It’s like to be human.

 

Men With No

You either kill
Yourself or
Nature kills you,

Either way,
It’s kinda
Spooky,

Funny though,
When you feel
Like killing yourself
The thought of
Dying maybe isn’t
So bad:
I guess it’s only
Better to be sad
When you’re happy,

Cause when you’re happy
Man,
The fear of
Dying creeps in…

And sadness makes
Death
…more like a brother.

 

Dear Lord

Today,
may my eyes,
and the way I use them,
be beautiful.

Poem previously published by Yellow Chair Review No. 4