HIatus

Winedrunk Sidewalk WILL return on Monday, May 6th.

Poem of the day 04.24.13

Trolls
    For Amanda Palmer

Rape her in gitmo, call her a clown face
These sons and daughters of liberty
Who'd sell their own mothers out for a sound bite
Who'd wipe their asses with the flag to save their skin
Ask, how high, when told to jump by preening ideologues
Cry on the media's command
I guess that's why they call 'em trolls, amanda
Those little lap dogs of freedom on these peep show streets
Hiding under the bridge for the next brave goat
To tear down when they come clomping along

poem of the day 04.23.13

fish oil and ketchup

this thai food tastes like fish oil and ketchup, i think

trying to flag down the waitress for my bill

a pitcher of beer, two bourbons, and two glasses of wine

and i’m done with the smiling faces of the other diners

watching them chew their food and talk common nonsense

i also think about how much i don’t like america or americans

because there’s something inherently dull and stupid about them

but i could probably never live anywhere else out of fear

and when the waitress comes i can’t tell if she’s a boy or a girl

but it’s all right because i’ve never been good a deciding on things.

                                                           

poem of the day 04.22.13

shit i call it shit

i could never put a positive spin on this life

the way that my mother tries too hard to do

thanking god for the good times and courage during the bad

there’s something in me that just won’t acquiesce to joy

because when shit is shit i call it shit without the spin

still, i feel bad when i get off the phone leaving her in tears

like a selfish drunken bastard with no regard

for the woman who gave me this mediocre life to make mine

the worst piece of flesh ever farted out between two legs

in a steel city snow and rain storm back in april of 1974

                                                

poem of the day 04.20.13

it’s 4:20 somewhere

new utrecht high school girls smoke pot on corners
watching dull thug boys slap box their brain cells
make squealing, excitable sounds when cop cars
come down the street to encroach upon their freedoms
america the buzz kill, american authority so anemic and lame
well, it’s 4:20 somewhere, i think, this gray morning
watching these kids visine their eyes before breakfast
readying their mug shot, mcdonaldland smiles in car windows
steadying their wombs for that jazzy welfare armageddon rag.

poem of the day 04.19.13

home of the brave

we, the vapid stupid flabby ignorant damned fetus-loving

children-hating ill-informed vain-glorious gun-violent

fear-mongering jesus freak jarhead-loving media obsessed

filibuster fast food calorie oil drilling megalomaniac

xenophobic racist pill-popping booze swilling star-fucking

illiterate profligate corporate-tit-sucking ludicrous third-world

mouth-breathing cable-watching flag-waving war hawk fuckers

every time i hear the national anthem

i sit there and laugh my star-spangled ass off until it hurts.

                                                            

                                                            

poem of the day 04.18.13

i’m not invisible

this black-hooded pre-teen abomination
sits in the back of the building
blasting his little video game to the point
where i want to commit a bloody massacre
so i storm over to him and tell him to mute the fucker
but the little douche doesn’t even look at me
he just keeps his head down and puts on his earbuds
doesn’t even acknowledge that i exist
or show me anything to prove that i’m not invisible
a useless ghost like the other aging, walking damned.

poem of the day 04.17.13

like passing pizzas

in the frozen food aisle

boston explosions like erosions of civil liberties

hang as we move gingerly from this new agony to the next

like passing pizzas in the frozen food aisle

as nitwit politicians and the merciless media

assign meaning to common and vile acts

as every village idiot with a ten-cent opinion

post their solicitous facebook status and meme hearts

then wait calmly for the next tragedy 

to come strolling casually around the block

to give them something to yap about over their morning coffee.

                                               

poem of the day 04.16.13

america the beautiful

watching myself on a video screen bigger than my tv

i’m like a mimic at my work station

a trained monkey working for the weekend

still, it feels good to be so photogenic yet safe

this corporate culture of minute monitoring is like a blanket

keeping me docile and warm, harmless for the playback

and tonight as the sun sets on street corner after street corner

under the ubiquitous reflection of police surveillance cameras

smile, open up your window and say cheese, buttercup

because it’ll be me singing america the beautiful to you.

                                                                        

poem of the day 04.15.13

zack

is a little pug-fisted fat russian bastard

maybe around four or five years old

who keeps screaming on the bus his holy madness

pulling the yellow tabs, stopping us at every block

while his fat pug-fist mother yells to no avail

zack, whom i’d like to explain my bleeding skin tab neck

the hemorrhoid itch up my ass, my jock-itch balls, my bum knees,

my fungus chest, my ulcer stomach and the ceaseless work hours

zack, this waste of sperm, pulls the yellow tab again and screams

looks at me with no mercy, no mercy in his heart at all.

                                                                       

poem of the day 04.12.13

technophobe in me

the technophobe in me
goes into a staples store to buy a printer
but can’t understand half the information on the box
gets ready to ask the clerk
don’t you have printers that you just plug-in and print?
none of this wireless, eprint, iphone junk
but the technophobe in me stays mute and confused
fondles a typewriter at the end of the aisle
then leaves the staples store in placid empty-handed ecstasy
dreaming away these twenty-first century blues.

poem of the day 04.11.13

the bitch

hat crooked, he talks in text language

exasperating phrases like, mad cigarette butts’n’shit

some jumbled new american language created by steve jobs

and the failure of the american education system

tries to make eyes at some young mother

playing video games on her cell phone with her son

tells his buck-toothed buddy she’s, mad hot,

loud enough for her and the rest of us to hear

then calls her a bitch when she doesn’t smile back at him

bow down to his kingly anointment or offer reciprocation in kind.

                                                

poem of the day 04.10.13

national poetry month

april is the cruelest month so said eliot
and in chile they are digging up pablo neruda
to see if it was pinochet poison that got him instead of cancer
but then april is also national poetry month
which is cruel in and of itself
so maybe it makes sense to dig up a great old poet
four decades later, like he's dinosaur bones
expose his rotted corpse to a world full of countless literary journals
full of living poets who really should be buried six feet deep
instead of boring everyone with their words.

poem of the day 04.09.13

39

there has been no trick to it

just a plain and uncomplicated existence

a good immune system thus far

perseverance and toughness when needed

boatloads of furious doubt and copious amounts of alcohol

enough glimmers of success to keep me going

as each year ups the ante on my mind and body

love and lust and women and friends few and far enough between

with most everything else simply something to suffer quietly

like constipation in the dull spaces of hard-lost time.

                                                            

poem of the day 04.08.13

life without parole

i feel furious, gutted emotionally

sickened by guilt and glue and floor wax smells

but still he comes at me like fresh meat

calling me a fuck of a fucking low life, as if he knows

grabs the laptop out of his woman’s hand

like he wants to hit me with it

but instead storms out into traffic like a madman

leaving me there hands shaking, violence made manifest

knowing if that guido prick tries to come back in here

i’ll be doing life without parole in no time flat

                                                            

poem of the day 04.05.13

she got it black-lit high

she got it black-lit high

burping away her lunch in techstasy

parked in front of ipad and iphone and cell phone

playing loud games with a stylus

as her phone beeps capitalism triumphant

she got it so black-lit high she don’t know

that march is gone and the sun is shining

and the birds outside aren’t angry

just a little mournful on mornings

when they can’t catch that little brown worm.

                                                            

poem of the day 04.03.13

bad guy archetype

i’m the villain with the twirling black moustache

the black hat and the black suit

the shroud walking into town in the fog

snidely whiplash tying you to the railroad tracks

the eye-rolling, cackling, leering, hand-rubbing

bad guy archetype of your nightmares

who dreams of ruling the world in wicked bliss

the scoundrel, the crook, the rascal, the rat, and the rogue all in one

the cloaked ghoul sitting here before the dawn

dropping poems on your head like middle eastern bombs.

                                                           

poem of the day 04.02.13

definition of new kind of love

eating falafel over rice

in washington square park

trying to wish the spring

through frozen arms and sex fingers

i can still hear him shouting a block away

about killing the man who put it in his baby’s mother

saying, i’ll kill, i’ll kill him with such passion

that his wailing into the echo of nyu dorms

sounded like he’d found the definition

of a new kind of love.

                                               

poem of the day 04.01.13

march is ending with a cough

-after kristofer collins

march is ending with a cough

a backwards resurrection of old poems

the rattle of the morning window shade infinite

as joggers hack spring allergens

and dogs whine their piss and shit walks

march is ending with a cough of gloom

with every word that i’ve written this month

sacrificed to the exploding cherry red cosmos

of my idiot boy-heart.