poem of the day 07.31.13

bastille day

then he said

in all seriousness

how do you impress a french girl?

to which i said

a lot of  wine

some edith piaf

some serge gainsbourg

a little proust on the couch

and if that doesn’t work

show her your cock

while whistling yankee doodle dandy

reach for the butter

and tell her to bend over

mon cheri

because it’s bastille day

all day

just for her.

                       

poem of the day 07.30.13

the funniest movie i’ve seen in a long time

my brother and i were obsessed

with stallone’s first blood

we’d seen it dozens of times

which was a feat for kids

and an r-rated film back then

but we used to set the alarm

to catch it at three in the morning

or we’d be bold and wait for the old man to fall asleep

then we’d quietly watch it in the living room

as he snored and restlessly worked the couch

i learned how to program a vcr

so that i could set it to tape first blood

in the middle of the night

that way we always had it

by the time my folks caught on to this

there was really no stopping it

we’d seen the movie too many times to forget the violence

seen stallone pushed around by the cops

and then seeking his revenge upon the town ad nauseum

when the second first blood came out

it was no surprise that my brother and i wanted to see it

we ran into the room like maniacs

from wherever we were in the house

to watch the ads of rambo taking down vietnamese soldiers

and saving p.o.w.’s by the handful

roaring with pleasure

as he blew up everything in his path

my old man shook his head at us and said

you just can’t hold an m-60 with one hand

he knew because he was in vietnam

still, it was a surprise to us when he agreed

to take us to see the film

we didn’t go to the movies that much

i knew who luke skywalker’s old man was

months before i saw empire strikes back

we came, we saw, we kicked its ass

was already a neighborhood mantra

before my family saw ghostbusters

such suburban problems

but still my brother and i were jacked to go

the movie was everything we’d dreamed it would be

the carnage was almost beautiful in its execution

stallone had done it again

a reluctant hero killing by the scores

as pure and rugged and right as america was to me

with those eleven year-old eyes

but while my brother and i watched the film

watched stallone give it to those vietnamese

and bring all of those soldiers back home

i couldn’t help but hear

my old man laughing to himself

throughout the film

occasionally i’d look over and catch him chuckle

or shake his head at the screen

i kept trying to figure out what he was laughing at

but i couldn’t

on the ride home

my brother and i wouldn’t shut up

about the movie

rambo putting the right end note to the vietnam era

you know, the way it should’ve been

with america on the winning side

when my dad started laughing again

what? i asked him

is so funny?

nothing, he said,

as we pulled into the driveway

with visions of blood and guts

dancing in my impressionable head

it’s just the funniest movie that i’ve seen in a long

my old man said

then he went inside to watch baseball

while my brother and i stood in the yard

all hot and bothered

with cinematic violence

as red, white, and blue as any two kids

chomping at the bit in the dull suburbs

                                                                        

poem of the day 07.29.13

breathing exercises

i have this window in my shower

low enough for me to look out of

and she is on her balcony

doing breathing exercises

in a turquoise top and shorts that are cut-off at her twat

it is weird to have

this window in my shower

but i’ve gotten somewhat used to it

watching the denizens of brooklyn

while i shampoo my hair

someone doing breathing exercises

as i scrub my face

the office drones racing for the bus

or slumping into their cars with coffee

while i get the armpits

the joggers and garbage men

sweating in the heat

while i do my legs and chest

the old guys shuffling with canes

doing their dance against death

the teenagers boasting with basketballs

as i hold the shower curtain and wash my feet

or the same dumb chick who pushes cigarette smoke

into my place

while she lets her pit-bull, marshmallow

shit amidst the summer flowers

and leaving

before she wipes up the stink

while i’m in here

gazing into the sunshine

dutifully washing my balls and ass

                                                                        

poem of the day 07.26.13

cold front

sixty-three degree morning

in july

which for new york city

feels like living in alaska

i go out

hungover on wine

and sick of stomach

but feel like gold

the minute the breeze hits me

watch the others go huddling by

in small coats

the dumb girls

in their sundresses in sandals

teeth chattering

almost crying

the old bat who barks at me

feels like winter out here!

all of these sour lumps of flesh

frowning

and waiting on the next ninety degree day

so that they

can sit indoors

with their air conditioners on

killing the earth

telling everyone

how beautiful it is

outside.

                       

poemS of the day 07.25.13

hollis street blues

lord byron
your birth house
is now
a mcdonald’s
is now a clothing megastore
just off oxford street
is now
a glass construct
foretelling the future
of architectural doom
there’s not
even a plaque here
lord byron
we tried
to find you
amidst the commerce
and glam
amidst the union jack
tshirts
and plastic
london mugs
we really did
on hollis street
lord byron
on hollis street
but we’d have
been better off
in belgium or venice
where you whiled
away the hours
fucking all
of those handsome
girls and boys.
we should’ve
looked up
shelley’s withered ass
instead of wasting
the minutes
standing here
in the gray gloom
next to a coffee shop
that never even
bared your
name.                                       10.14.09

soft accents

you’ve got to do something

about all of this shit that you’re playing,

he said, getting right up

into my face.

but i didn’t play this, i said.

well who did?

he had a thick irish accent

and was drunk.

let me ask you something, he said.

are you canadian or american?

i always get the two mixed up.

american, i said.

from where?

new york.

new york?  well then you’ve got

no business being in here.

he was right, of course.

i had no business being in most places.

london, new york, places due east,

none of them really needed

my presence.

say? he said.  have you ever heard

of a band called therapy?

no.

there a bit like metallica, before

metallica turned to shit.

i didn’t know metallica had turned to shit.

of course they did, he said.  they

turned to shit

when they started playing music

for girls.

i moved aside and he started dropping

pounds into the jukebox.

i’m going to play you some therapy

he said.

fine, i said.

i went back to the table.

what was that all about? my wife asked.

it was just some irishman, i said.

he thought that i was canadian.

and now he’s playing me love songs.

we looked over at him.

he was playing air guitar and had his tie

thrown over his shoulder.

when he caught my eye

he came over

and leaned in close to my wife.

hey, he said.  he tells me he’s from new york

only he doesn’t sound like he’s from new york.

he’s got a soft accent.

i’m really from pittsburgh, i said.  pennsylvania.

well could you do a new york accent for me? he asked.

i looked at my wife

she smiled.

sure, i said.

and then i tried to remember what a new york

accent sounded like.

it was sort of like a canadian accent,

i thought,

only much rougher

and a lot harder on the ears than most.

                                    10.13.09

poem of the day 07.24.13

dragons

she wants a book on fairies

and wimpy kids

no, dragons, she tells me

as she chases me around the place

she’s been chasing me since we opened

books about monsters

books about mythology

books by james patterson written by other people

but still for kids

definitely books about dragons, she says

my kid likes to read

about dragons, i answer

but not matter-of-factly

while i calculate that new york city

public school children

have forty-two days until they go back to school

i wonder if i’ll still be alive by then

well, she says

she folds her arm and extends a leg

and i pity the person who had to go home to this woman

who has the task of pleasuring her

do you or do you not have any books about dragons?

i don’t know anything about dragons, i tell her

oh, just like you didn’t know anything about monsters

or mythology

or who wrote the latest james patterson novel

is there anything that you do know? she says

i know that i wish i was a dragon

i don’t tell her

a big fire breathing mother with horns on my tail

and yellow teeth

and i’d like to fly in here and scorch everything

including the books by patterson

then i’d like to pick this woman up by her neck

and swallow her whole

before flying off into the overcast sky

burning the landscape as i go

but i’m not a dragon

i’m barely half-human by mid-week

and today it is one-hundred degrees out

by the weekend i’ll have my electric bill

my rent bill and my student loan bill

i’ll need to keep this job for the foreseeable future

so i say to her

what about magic?

i know a ton of books about magic.

                                                           

poem of the day 07.23.13

but still the sky turns purple

and gold before the sun sets

we slaughter each other so resolutely

in actions and deeds

a whole world of blood and guts

spilling into the oceans

but still the sky turns purple

and gold before the sun sets

magnificent and calming

meaning there might be hope out there

for you and me.

                        06.04.10

poem of the day 07.22.13

sundown

she says i feel like a slave

pushing this old white lady around all day

she keeps telling me that i’m not allowed to sit

there’s a lot of racism in this job

she tells me

but i don’t know why she confides in me that way

i’m a white guy

and we created racism out of cotton and sugar cane

maybe it’s because i spent an hour

helping her with her resume

typing parts of it and having it emailed to her address

so that she doesn’t have to feel like a slave

pushing angry old white ladies around

maybe most of us really do want to be color blind

and in the bar

where i’m trying to kill an hour after work

this old whore

keeps shouting at the television news, saying

i’m so fucking sick of all of these riots and rallies

that occupy business

and this trayvon martin bullshit

like they’re doing it outside her front door

so i kill my pint and leave

hedge my bets on the bar up the street

but outside there are two black women

in florescent spandex

i’d seen them on my way inside

they’re collecting donations

for latoya jackson

no relation they smile and say to the cautious

a little girl whose only dream in life

is to be healthy enough

to see the ocean at coney island

although i don’t know why

little latoya would want to

because coney island is full of fat russian women in bikinis

and guys like me

staring at the asses on fifteen year-old girls

but who am i to argue with a sick kid?

only now the two ladies are standing across third avenue

one of them has her hands over her mouth

and the other is yelling at a group of valet parking attendants

huddled under the awning

of a restaurant too expensive for most of us to sniff

a group of good old brooklyn white boys

smirking and smoking away another lazy summer

while she shouts

i can call myself a nigger whenever i want

i have that right

what right do you have to do it?

but the boys answer her

by flicking their smokes and laughing

they know their rights like the back

of their soft hands

and at the next bar i enter

they are doing the same trick as in the last

screaming at the television

telling the crying visage of trayvon martin’s mother

to go the fuck back to florida

they might as well be wishing her

back into the fiery pits of hell

and when the president comes on

he says, thirty-five years ago that could’ve been me

well, with all due respect, mr. president

that shit didn’t happen thirty-five years ago

it happened last year

hell, it happened five minutes ago

but thanks for trying

still, i grab my new pint

thinking thirty years ago

ronald reagan said

it’s morning in america again

but then he deregulated everything

and with bill clinton’s help they finally buried the poor

and crushed the middle class

on a super bowl commercial

clint eastwood said that it was halftime in america

but all i can think

sitting in my second bar

and bracing myself for a new round of hate

as the news switches from trayvon to the economy

is fuck you

clint eastwood

go talk to another chair down in tampa

because it’s third and long

the fourth quarter with under two minutes on the clock

a hail mary from coast to coast

and detroit is as bankrupt as a politician

sitting in a sunday pew at church

the hate keeps spewing

while the bankers continue to run off with the bounty

and all i hope is that little latoya

has another destination in mind

because it’s sundown in america

only everyone is still acting like they’re at the beach.

                                                                        

poem of the day 07.19.13

and he says (part two)

and he says

you know the chinese

are taking over everything, right?

they basically own nicaragua

they love them there

the nicaraguans are letting the chinese

build a canal

so no one has to use ours anymore

and i say nothing

africa loves the chinese too

you know why don’t you?

diamonds, i guess

and he says

ivory

the chinese can’t get enough of that shit

and i say

right, right, all of the dead elephants

the chinese are killing them

or else they’re paying someone to

and he says

look around your country

the chinese are taking over america too

crowding our private schools

and our good universities

we have good universities in america? i say

and he says

what are you nuts?

a communist?

america has the best education system in the world

and the chinese are taking it over

because they want to rule the world

and i look at my co-worker who is chinese

she’s twenty-one years-old

she lost her dad when she was a kid

her mom just died back in february

she goes to school full-time

and every bit of money that she gets from this job

goes in the pocket of the insomniac grandmother

who keeps her up all night

she’s not trying to rule anything

but just get by like your average american

and he says

pretty soon they’ll be so many of them

that poor white kids will have to marry some chinese

it’ll be like an arranged marriage

everyone will be melted together

and you won’t be able to tell chinese from white

from black from indian from nobody

and i think

i know more chinese people and black people

than i do white people at this point in my life

the only people who’ve ever been cruel to me

were white people

so i don’t care if we all end up blue

with silver antennas

and he says

but look up that thing on nicaragua

some time when you get the chance

use the internet, kid

if you know how

because that’s where i get my information from.

                                                                                    

poem of the day 07.18.13

and he says

ninety-eight degrees

eighty in this place

this city smells like body odor

rancid food and dog shit

and he says

it ain’t just about

stamp catalogs, kid

there’s a war going on out there

or didn’t you know?

a holy war

christians versus muslims

world war iii

shit, and you don’t

even have a security guard in this place

all these kids

you stupid clueless people

some towel head could come in here right now

and blow this fucking place to smithereens

hell, i’m in here now

i could do it

well, not me

but someone like me with time on his hands

some jew or muslim

brothers in arms to the end

only they keep tearing each other apart

like it’s world war iii, man

and he says

did you know we’re all jewish?

me

you

that little black kid on the news

who got himself shot

all of us descended from the twelve tribes of israel

bet you didn’t know that either

and he says

but it ain’t about none of that

because this world is just dirty and sick

and if i find out you people

took those stamp catalogs

and are the ones selling them on ebay

for two bucks a page

i swear to god

i’ll have your jobs so fucking fast

you won’t know what hit you

to which i say

ninety-eight degrees outside

eighty degrees in here

this city smells like body odor

rancid food and dog shit

have mercy on us, sir

please have mercy on the damned.

                                    

poemS of the day 07.17.13

heat wave

sitting here sweltering

the life of mozart in my hands

trying to keep from kicking on the a/c

to save a little bit of cash

eight o’clock in the morning

and the pavement is already crackling

with the blazing sun

a string of ninety degree days behind me

another set glaring on the horizon

this is a catastrophe,  i think

i want to yell outside at someone

but there’s no one on the street

they’ve closed all the windows

and locked their doors

they’ve all gone to the beach to sit in the shade

we’ve all hung this world out to dry

and now we’re paying for it in mercury

flushed faces and chafed thighs

even the pigeons have given up

opening up the window

the air hits me like a blast furnace

listening for the bird’s song

but it’s as silent as a morgue out there

good christ, i feel like a prisoner in this place

four humid walls and an old cat

crying for release

even the lazy flies climbing

on old sticky wine bottles

look ready to succumb.

                                                                                    07.04.12

heat

upstairs i can smell

the neighbor’s dinner,

something pungent

with garlic,

fried so that the oil

oozes.

in the kitchen it

reeks of dishwater

and rusted metal,

the pipes feeding

the corroded water

i am drinking.

in the living room

it’s cat shit

and in the bedroom

the scent of last night’s

impromptu sex.

nights like this i can’t

keep a meal down

nights like this

the young kids in young

houses

get rowdy.

everyone on the block

is insane.

sirens wail.

the cities are mad.

one could start a revolution

in the right kind of

bar.

but who would want to?

                        07.17.06

in heat like this

there is really nothing to do

i would say that it is akin

to being a prisoner

but there is no danger here

however, the smoggy brown haze

settling in over the city

is most certainly manmade

humans are by far

the most dangerous animals

there are some who would prefer snow

for others it is not hot enough

give me an autumn breeze

on a lonely pier and i’ll show you

my form of happy

the morning d.j. thinks

that this weather is a joke

he’ll keep on laughing

reading the thermometer

like he’s whipping off one liners

until the murders start

yet no one is on the street in this humid abyss

this is the only good thing about the heat

no conversation

no dogs

eighty-five degrees at six in the morning

no poems to be written

no stories to tell

in temperatures like this you almost want

to believe in a god

get on your knees

and pray for some kind of respite

even though you know

you’ll look like a fool

no, there is nothing to do

but sip the tepid weak coffee

nurse last night’s whiskey hangover

sit here and sweat

try not to spiral, worrying about

health and debt as the electric bill goes up

there are no emotions left except hate

hate for the calendar

hate for the month of july

the way that some hates are reserved

for certain people

i hate july

i think that t.s. eliot must’ve taken

a vacation to antarctica during this month

for july is surely the cruelest

in eliot’s april the average high in london

is fifty-seven degrees

and the only reason

that you’re carrying an umbrella

is to keep dry walking in

the mother fucking rain.

                                    07.22.11

paranoid in the heat

is it slowing down?

i don’t know but the heat

is a bad dream

like bad poems

like bad poets.

how bad is it getting?

man, i can’t think.

so what do you do?

i sit there in the dark

with sweating beer mugs

dripping

on shirts and couches

and the scotch giving me

a headache.

and then?

and then, i stay up

all night

outlining wine rings

on the nightstand

with the feeling that

i have to piss.

with the shits

and paranoia.

with the fan blowing

hot hell fire up my ass

humming because

it is dying.

i think i hear classical

music

in the white noise

of the blades.

but what is it?

i don’t know.

it is probably nothing.

it is always nothing

which can get you

just as badly

as when it really is

something.

                        06.09.08

poem of the day 07.16.13

boycott you

in his bitter end

jack kerouac became a racist

and an anti-semite

he went on tv and blamed his jewish friends

for everything

the same can be said for eliot, wagner

degas and crazy ol’ ezra pound

picasso drove two women to madness

two others killed themselves over him

and ernie hemingway pushed through four wives

and two fucked up sons

before he finally took a bullet to his head over breakfast

on video i’ve watched bukowski kick his wife off a couch

over and over and over again

in a fit of drunken jealous rage

while norman mailer tried to kill his wife

hell, caravaggio and ben jonson actually did kill people

villon and genet were thieves

and rimbaud ended up nothing but a smuggler

nabokov wrote lolita and lord byron fucked his half-sister

of course flaubert paid to fuck little boys

dickens, the immortal charles dickens

for all of his philanthropic work

chuck had a taste for the whores

just like vincent van gogh

and those are just the men, ladies and gentlemen

let’s not even get started about what virginia woolf

put leonard through 

before she took a pocketful of rocks to the river

the point is for all of their blemishes, heinous words

or despicable acts

i wouldn’t give one of them back to this slush pile life

i’d rather their art over their good conscience

and citizenship any day

because some of them have given me more light and life

than my family or the closest of friends

so to you people boycotting this artist and that

over their personal views

orson scott card or whoever you trolls have lined up next

someone whose views aren’t yours

or aren’t the fashion of the day

do me a favor and sit down and try to sweat out

thirty novels in as many years

or a handful of operas

a symphony or another wasteland

hell, try to write out your grocery lists

do something other than pounding out your inane

uneducated opinions behind the safe mercy of internet anonymity

your dull bullshit in 140 characters or less

and then we’ll talk

about who’s boycotting who

you motherfuckers.

                                               

poem of the day 07.15.13

play money

the little girl

sitting opposite me on the bus

is playing retail store with a real five dollar bill

that her mother gave her

so that the child won’t be bored

while mommy texts and plays games

on her cell phone

the little girl is cute, i guess

the way she pretends to pay for things

from the old bat sitting next to me

before snatching the money back from air

to do it over and over again

it proves that if nothing else

this kid has some semblance of an imagination

which is more than can be said for her mother

she’s so cute

the old bat sitting next to me keeps saying

snatching at the money and cackling

but the old bat looks whacked

keeps singing church hymns

and she’s carrying a garbage bag full of brown rags

so i don’t know what to think

i don’t think i’d let my kid play with her

maybe i’d like to have that five dollar bill to play with

or i think i’d like to do something untoward

like snatch that five dollar bill from that little cutie’s hand

right when the bus stops

and then hop off and book it until i’m out of sight

that would be something

maybe that would show the little girl

that money isn’t the thing to be played with

or maybe that would show her mother

to pay more attention to her kid

instead of pounding away inanities on the internet

or maybe my thievery would even show

the old bat how fleeting beauty really is

how anyone can take something lovely

and turn it ugly in a matter of seconds

but i think i’ll keep this moment somewhere

in the back of my head

i’ll use it on payday

when i have my own play money to mess around with

a few tens and twenties

that i’ll take to the bar or liquor store

and maybe i’ll pull a couple bills back from the bartender

when he hands me my pint

or snatch my twenty back after the liquor store man

hands me my bag of whiskey and wine

life like an impish little child

see if they get the innocent humor

in all of this.

                                               

poem of the day 07.12.13

virgin at work

everyone knew

that i was the virgin at work

because i was never with a girl

never talked about the girls that i was with

could never answer their questions about girls

because there were no girls

because i was the virgin at work

spending my weekends riding around suburban pittsburgh

with the other losers

searching for girls

trying to talk to girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day

but mostly drinking coffee in the eat’n’park

because i had nothing to offer a girl

maybe there was another virgin at the job

the one kid who could talk about nothing but baseball

even i knew a guy had to talk

about something other than baseball

to get in a girl’s panties

i just didn’t know what

still i was just nineteen

and i’d been working there since seventeen with no action

i felt like a leper in that retail store

full of college aged gigolos

the sales clerk men who talked about

eating out their girlfriends

or fucking downtown club chicks in bathrooms

men who had swagger in a way that i didn’t

mall magicians who could turn a coat sale

into a parking lot hook-up in a matter of minutes

hell, even my boss was getting his

going through a divorce and sleeping on his couch

he could still talk game

about all of the girls that he used to bang in college

plus we all knew that he’d been putting it

to the manager of nine west for months

but i was the virgin at work

you could smell it on me

you could tell by the way i stuttered

around the female clerks

fumbled everything in front of summer chick customers

in tank tops and shorts that rode their ass

all of that young shopping mall ass and i was rendered

mute and impotent

it seemed a ceaseless, lonely existence at that age

being the virgin at work

i even quit that job without having been laid

until two months later

when i fucked my first girlfriend on my bedroom floor

to a boyz ii men cd

that afternoon we took a trip to the mall

and i paraded her around the joint like the homecoming king

at a high school reunion

we hit the old store so that i could show her off

but they’d had a huge turn over in employees

even my old manager was gone

it was a brand new pack of faceless 17-22 year olds

some getting no loving like it had been for me

the others talking about all of the pussy

that they were sure to get

in between selling baseball caps and t-shirts

to gang members coming up from the city.                                 

poem of the day 07.11.13

jezebel’s

was a strip club off the boardwalk  in atlantic city

calvin and  i went there after he won

four-hundred bucks on the slots

and we were tired of drinking watered down

drinks in the casino

tired of walking the boardwalk

looking at older women in slut clothing

smoking my cigarettes and taking ritalin pills

that i’d stolen from a guy at work

calvin was tired of spending his winnings

on palm readings and 2pac t-shirts

he said, man, i wanna see some pussy

can you see pussy in a strip club in new jersey?

but i didn’t know

because the strip clubs that i had been to

were in pennsylvania (no pussy)

and west virginia (pussy)

i wasn’t exactly clear on strip laws around the nation

and i considered pussy a nice surprise whenever i saw it

i watched the ocean and the waves crashing

thinking about amanda evarts’ pussy

how calvin had been in love with her for over a year

only i’d been the one fucking her for a month

because i had a room in an apartment building

and calvin still lived at home

plus he was a virgin and going bald at twenty-three

two things that amanda evarts said turned her off

but the women at jezebel’s

didn’t seem to mind calvin’s baldness

especially when he started tossing his money all over the table

buying drinks for me, drinks for him, drinks for the strippers

throwing down a hundred for a lap dance

which they did in a narrow hallway outside the men’s room

with no privacy

just six couches and six guys with their heads back

six strippers bouncing on their laps

or pushing their asses in someone’s face

when calvin was done with his dance

he came shakily around the corner and said, let’s go

so i shot down my drink

and we walked back out into atlantic city

somewhere between jezebel’s and the boardwalk

calvin let slip that he’d come in his pants

in front of all of those strippers and horny men

he asked me not to tell anyone

he only told me because i was such a good friend

despite the whole amanda evarts things

i didn’t tell anyone for twenty-four full hours

until a group of us got plowed on long island ice teas

and i told everyone how calvin came in his pants at jezebel’s

but i told them that only after i’d blabbed on an on

about how good amanda was in bed

how tight her pussy was

and that calvin had no clue what he was missing

and when we came home from atlantic city

not only had calvin blown his slot winnings

but he was down nearly eight hundred dollars of his own

money that he’d been saving for a new car

so i gave him two of my smokes

and bought him a whopper at a burger king outside of philly

before i went to call amanda

thinking had i seen pussy or not in new jersey?

because i just couldn’t remember much

from the couple of nights before

and i still had a hangover from all of those

long island ice teas.                                                       

poem of the day 07.10.13

drunk and hungry

i check a pan

of breaded chicken

cooking in the oven

our dinner tonight

my lunch tomorrow

when i accidentally knock

the top rack back the other way

almost toppling everything

in the process

burning my forearm

in four places

when i reach to save the food

my pale flesh blisters upon impact

shit, you didn’t even flinch,

my wife says

while i run the arm under cold water

look

i’m no tough guy, i tell her

i’m just a guy minus

the brains he was born with

a fat drunk

with a hole in his belly

the size of texas

who lacks the stamina

to open up that goddamned

refrigerator

to try and find something else to eat

in this sweltering apartment

that’ll last

for the next two days.

poem of the day 07.09.13

all right

i

turn on my

r&B mix

it has music on it

that i’ve been

listening to

for longer than some drinking adults

have been alive

i

do this

to tune out

two screaming kids

and thoughts about the woman

who threw a library card in my face

first thing

this morning

and said

you should know me by now

as if that would offer her some kind of

courtesy or service

above the norm that i’m paid to give

i

listen to this music

as the bus stops at 13^th avenue

letting off two girls in short shorts

who don’t care if the world sees their asses or not

watch them laugh at men

who watch them

thinking all of the pretty young girls in brooklyn

get off at

13^th avenune

while i fondle my whiskey and wine bottles

hoping to put another night

in the record books

as mary j. blige coos in my ear

don’t you know you’re my sweet thing

a cover of a song

that might as well be her own by now

and in my heart

i’m dancing

with this day done

and only six avenues left

for this bus

to go                                                   

poem of the day 07.08.13

coward

and then i tried playing football again

for the grade school varsity team

even though i never really liked football

plus i had a bum left leg

from running through a glass door

the previous summer

i still couldn’t lift my ankle well enough to run

but my doctor had cleared me anyway

the coaches understood this to an extent

but they needed guys

the head coach kept saying to me

you’re coming back right?

even though i rode the bench

and drank all of the gatorade when it rained

i couldn’t do laps for shit

it was too hot in the full uniform

and my ankle kept giving out

the coaches thought that i was lollygagging it

that my leg injury was ultimately bullshit

that i just needed to get tough

so they set three eighth graders on me when we ran

they trailed me

and tried to scare me into compliance with their chants

they called me a pussy and other colorful things

they tripped and pushed me when they caught up

or because i’d finally quit running

a few of them got overzealous

they would try to get me the next day in school

brushing me with their shoulders in the hallway

telling me that they

were going to kick my ass in the bathroom

or at practice that night

but nothing even happened

when i returned my uniform to the coach

midway through an undefeated season

he looked at me as if i were a piece of shit

then he spit on the gym floor and said

you’re such a coward, grochalski

you know that?

you’re a little girl

we should put you on the cheerleading squad

nothing but a goddamned coward

maybe i was

but he was a small man in a small school

and at thirteen years-old i already knew that

so there was no harm that he could really do

and all i could think about

as i tossed him my helmet, my pads

and my high numbered jersey

was how free i suddenly felt

to cower or persevere

to walk or run as i’d like

or waste my saturdays laying on the couch

watching shadows spider across the walls

while somewhere else

some other kid was riding the bench

drinking all of the gatorade

or getting yelled at and pushed around

while he ran pointless circle after circle

in the hot sun and dirt.

poem of the day 07.05.13

management training

she tells me

you gotta watch these kids

once they hit a certain age

they don’t wanna work

i look at her

she looks like a toad

and before this she’d been talking my ear off

about parking

maybe the kids have it figured out already

and we’re the fools, i tell her

she frowns at me

her mouth looks like a shit smear

spilling down her three chins

kids these days

have no responsibility, she says

you have to enforce it

like hell, i think

looking at the gray stain on her blouse

we’ll be fine, i say

you can’t think that, she tells me

they’ll walk all over you with that attitude

trust me

these kids are looking for nothing but an excuse

to screw around

aren’t we all? i say

i take my job very seriously, she says

someone has to

she squints at me

what did you say your title was again?

casual overlord, i tell her

she slams down her papers

and looks outside at the rain

while i sit there thinking

well, we’re either done here

or now she wants to talk about the weather.