poem of the day 06.30.15

all hail the american bro

in the used cd store

            --for ben john smith

with his white sports coat

that has the american flag pinned to the lapel

with his bad cologne

his hair slicked back and his spray-on tan

wearing his shades in the used cd store

with his cell phone pressed to his ear

talking to some dude named, chris

with his ability to ooze through an aisle

bitching about how big his house in jersey is

with the way he tells chris

but, bro, we got a sweet deal on the place

with the way he cautions

is his boy getting married for love

or just because it’s the next step?

for his candor in admitting to everyone

that his wedding was his wife’s idea

because he’s been married for six years

he knows all of the tricks of the trade

and no one has the balls to doubt him

with his stack of dave matthews cds

that he hold like precious jewels he’s excavated

from the one-dollar bin

with his quest for adam sandler films

and the oeuvre of kevn james

for the way he tells, chris,

that jurassic world was the fucking bomb

and he’s a douche if he doesn’t go out and see it

before inviting chris to his fourth of july barbecue

out at that big-ass house in jersey

with the pool and the kids running around and all of that shit

for the way this american bro

has kept the country running amidst all the war and social turmoil

how comfortably familiar he is walking around this store

like he’s planning on buying everything

then heading over to friday’s

for the mid-day beer special and boneless hot wings

because, fuck this week, bro, he tells chris

before finding a john mayer double live cd

no, fucking triple live album

holding it up into the fluorescent lights of the store

like he’s found the holy grail.

                                               

poem of the day 06.29.15

 

                                   

poem of the day 06.26.15

the unluckiest man on the face of the earth

i’ve never bet one cent on sports

never played a slot machine

or rolled dice in vegas

i don’t like poker or gin

i wrote poems at the dog races

and drunkenly threatened to call the ASPCA

many editors have called me bukowski light

but the horse races can have themselves

when someone says, i’ll bet you

i usually balk, even if i know i’m right

my wife wants to bet me all of the time

but we share a bank account

so it makes no goddamned sense

i was in atlantic city once years ago

but i spent the weekend crushing ritalin pills

putting the powder up my nose

and getting drunk on vodka and beer

when i wasn’t in the strip clubs

there was a documentary on donald trump

that played continuously

i’m willing to bet no one watched it more than once but me

i tend to eat the same foods

and get drunk on the same shit night after night

i don’t even take any chances on people

i haven’t made a new friend in years

and the ones i have

i could lay some money down

on what their reactions would be

but whenever the people in my office

collect money for the lottery

i usually chip in a buck

not for the thrill of chance

but out of fear that they’ll win one day

when i don’t play

and that the next morning

i’ll wake up with the realization

that they’re all millionaires now

free of the stigma of having to work a job

and that i’ll have to go into work alone

die there in my seat until i’m sixty-five

end up on the front cover of the new york post

with a big headline in bold letters calling me

the unluckiest man on the face of the earth.

poem of the day 06.25.15

ashes of confederate flags

the devil went down to georgia

and he took me with him

fourteen years old and obese

but desperately in love with girls

friends of friends had a pool party

their fifteen year old neighbor

in a bikini broke my world

that i became such stuttering blubber

to her american blonde southern peach

but she played so nice with me that day

splashing and flirting and winking

she worked in a video store

when she wasn’t destroying

young boys like me poolside

stocked the comedy and romance

was in love with the standard 1980s pin-up boys

we went to visit her a day or so after

the pool party i hadn’t stopped thinking about

no bikini on her but blonde as the sunrise

she took one look at my spiked hair and pimples

double chin, a t-shirt that couldn’t fit

pink and blue shorts, socks pulled up too high

tourist white sneakers and hairless flesh

a smile that must’ve said a thousand sweet nothings

said, ya’ll must be kidding me with this

before she went back to a row of action films

that weren’t even her section

started stocking the stallone and bronson

until i got up the courage to turn and walk away

fighting back tears in the blistering southern sun

                                                

poem of the day 06.24.15

love’s travel stop (sunday afternoon)

it’s already ninety degrees out

not even one in the afternoon

i curse the climate while taking a piss

in the men’s room at love’s travel stop

somewhere in pennsylvania

where every billboard on the turnpike is telling me

energy taxes are killing the working man

and that the bible is absolute, true and final

there’s a country music song playing

something about springsteen songs and lemonade stands

men on the moon and fireflies in june

the singer tells me that we don’t always get it right

but there’s nowhere he’d rather live than america

i’m glad that i don’t know the song

but there are a lot of men whistling to it

as they piss and wash their hands

back in the travel store people are in lines

paying for gas and buying cigarettes and snuff

i grab two bottles of unregulated water

owned by pepsi or coke

found in springs from out in drought-torn california

the country song is still playing

about high school proms and open arms on country farms

everyone in the love’s travel stop is white

except for one black dude

he’s wearing a blue chip in his ear

he’s got a big backpack on and is sweating profusely

he keeps asking everyone coming in and going out

how hot they think it is outside

i tell him it’s ninety

he says, it can’t be, it just can’t be

and starts pacing around the store cursing

i think maybe i should start getting worried about this

with the way things are going in america

but then it hits me that black people don’t usually kill in bulk

the way us white people do

so i smile at the cashier who calls me honey

pay for my gas and the water

start singing the country song

in the same disney voice as the singer on the radio

go outside and drop fifteen fracking dollars into the tank

along with every other picture postcard yankee

blessed to be living here in one nation under god

                                                                                               

poem of the day 06.23.15

ariana moaning

            --after chris hedges & youporn

ariana

crouched in the marble lobby

of nowhere

knees bent and jean skirt up above the thighs

playing with her hairless pussy

tells the camera that she’ll be banging six-five guys

in her cunt

in her ass and in her mouth

on her chest and face

her legs and arms will be glistening with semen

ariana says she can’t wait

she says her pussy and her asshole can take it

she shakes her shag of brown hair

and says it’ll be hot

it’ll be nasty

ariana says she likes it disgusting

takes a finger out of her pussy

and puts it in her mouth

as the men line up shirtless and in jeans

she goes over to them

and starts touching the bulge between their legs

ariana is someone’s daughter

she once did twenty men on a firetruck

admits she’s okay with ass to mouth

she’s twenty-one and is moving from man to man

sucking them off for the boys at DIRECTV

off goes the white blouse

off goes the jean skirt

naked ariana leading two men by their cocks

to a blood red bed in the middle of the marble lobby

as the other

sixty-three men

gather around

pants down and cocks out

jerking-off over top of her

to keep it hard

like a team of gonzo surgeons working to save a life

the first one of the day in her mouth

the first one of the day in her ass

oh ariana moaning

where did america go so wrong?                                              

poem of the day 06.22.15

hashtag nation

i sit here scratching bug bites

reading twitter posts from the moral majority

thousands of hashtags screaming out in protest

from behind their computer screens

sickened by this week’s tragedy

yet the streets of dissention are empty on this block

save the homeless picking through the trash

i wonder where the protest is

or is it enough to voice your outrage

in one hundred and forty characters or less?

is it enough to post a meme of some injustice

to feel all warm and self-righteous inside?

i look for the debate

between the ads for amazon and hot dog stuffed pizza

but it’s just trite bullshit and platitudes

no more than a collective shrug from the slaves

binge streaming episodes of the latest netflix

a candlelight vigil by proxy

a feel good moment before the next set of bullets fly

and when they do it’ll be the same crap

millions of smug illiterates opting for love and hate

hashtagging away their empire of illusion

###################################

as the presidents wags his finger in shame

and the corporate masters of disasters

push out another war or hollywood bimbo

drunk and stumbling from a neon club

dangling her like string in our hive mind

to help ease the dark moments back into the trivial

before the debate even begins

so we can forgive and forget the trail of blood

pouring into the dying ocean

just like all of the other ones before it

                                                                       

poem of the day 06.19.15

writing poems in the free world

having used google

to help me write poems

this morning

i’ve looked up

guns, hitler, nazis

mark david chapman

communism and genocide

i should be expecting a knock at my door

any moment now.

                                    

poem of the day 06.18.15

to beyoncé

i’ll admit

i’ve only heard your music in passing

have tried to keep the bile down

in front of people who call you an artist

but beyoncé

there’s a pack of girls sitting here

maybe they’re eleven, twelve tops

who think you’re a dream

they love your body

they want your body

the fat one says, if i slimmed down

i’d have beyoncé’s body

her friend says, no you wouldn’t

in that sharp twelve year-old way

she says, all i have to do is diet

another says, i am dieting

i haven’t eaten lunch for two months

they’re sucking pepsi, beyoncé

so that fifty million they gave you is safe in the bank

the one girl looks painted up like a clown

i don’t know how she got

out of the house looking like that

maybe her friends fixed her

in the bathroom at school

while they were singing one of your songs

although to be quite honest, bey

none of the girls have mentioned your music

but they’ve talked about how beautiful you are

that air-brushed skin on those l’oreal ads

those legs in twenty-foot tall h&m ads

your blonde wig in the toyota ad

hell, even the president says

that you’re a role model to his daughters

so in his drone-strike daydreams

you must be doing something right

…and toni morrison be damned

beyoncé, i don’t mean to pick on you

i know you’ve done some philanthropic work

but you’re one of a dozen of no talents

fortunate enough to make a buck in the oligarchy

and ordinarily i’d say take the money and run, babe

buy yourself a vegan paradise

a million dollar fruit flush and detox diet

only, maybe, think of the kids

the next time you’re shaking your ass for the big money

signing on for another fortune

to sell sugar drinks and fairy tales to little girls

who can hardly breathe from the fumes

of your perfume

and are too weak from starvation

to get up and dance

when one of your infectious jams

comes on the radio

in between the commercial breaks.

                                   

....and this oldie seems fitting this week:

fat poetry editor

the fat poetry editor

has his face on a dozen web sites

standing in front of a microphone

like some third-rate comedian

he’s not fooling anyone with that tweed blazer

and a faded concert t-shirt

that he bought at target or wal-mart

the fat poetry editor

is short and squat and hairy

he belongs eating potatoes in middle earth

instead of looking at my poetry

but the world isn’t fucking fair

i’m not rich or good looking

or very talented

plus i’m kind of overweight too

and the fat poetry editor gets to look at my poems

then send me back rejection notes

telling me that my shit sounds like a bon jovi song

usually after something like that

i sit in front of my machine

and think of ways of getting back

at the fat poetry editor

like i’ll google him and read his shitty poetry

just to make myself feel better

or i’ll jack-off to internet porn

to stave off the thoughts of creative suicide

but the feeling doesn’t last too long

because i still have that rejection letter

sitting in my inbox

thus proving that the fat poetry editor wins in the end

i’m sure he gets his poetry rejected too

with poems like his he must

but i’m also sure that the fat poetry editor

has made a lot of friends in this shabby business

so he’s assured himself a place in many an online rag

plus there’s some quid pro quo going on there, i think

the fat poetry editor scratches someone’s back

then they comb their fingers through his furry haunch

it has to be like that

otherwise i sound like a bitter man here

and bitter men

never have their pictures up

on literary web site

the way that fat poetry editors do.                                 10.12.12

poem of the day 06.17.15

this is a hallmark moment

it’s like something out of disney

this is a hallmark moment

that i’m getting down here

a little oasis from nutbags digging through trash

and every teenager thinking they’re a rap star

just a mother and child

playing a cutesy game of stepping on each other’s toes

and blowing kisses in each other’s face

this is nice, i think

america needs more of these moments

turning my head away to wait for the N train

i hear someone scream

it’s the mother

she’s bouncing on one foot while the kid laughs

she spits, you think it’s funny, you little fuck

grabs him by one arm like she’s lifting him to god

belts him a good one across the ass

so now he’s screaming too

that’s more like it, i think

more of what this city has to offer

still, i can’t help but wonder what would happen

if one of those PC parent brigades

from one of those idyllic towns and cities

were underground with us animals

those diligent voters who’d never hit a child

who think there’s a child molester around every corner

the ones working over-time

to sell their PTA partners down the river

for keeping their kids in the car ten minutes

while they buy anti-depressant meds

or, god forbid, let a kid walk alone to school

what would happen then if those cowards were down here?

i watch the mother

she’s still limping around the platform

screaming like someone stole her purse

rolling a list of expletives that’ll hang over this city

the whole maddeningly humid summer

while the child cowers in corner bawling

his little beach sand bucket overturned

she goes over the whack him again

but stops and picks up the bucket

says, my god, i can’t do this shit no more today

then gives her kid her phone to play with

just to shut him up.                                                      

poem of the day 06.16.15

                       

poem of the day 06.15.15

peanut butter

i was the fattest

of the fat kids

i jiggled my sadness

down the block

and slathered peanut butter

on thick slices of bread

at my grandmother’s house

i had no clue

how much the loneliness

was setting in

i had no clue

until the first time my head

was turned by a girl

but i had that knife

and the bread

and my god the peanut butter

spread like thick tan waves

shoved into my fat mouth

the fattest of fat mouths

the loneliest mouth

that i knew

choking and spinning

around my grandmother’s kitchen

face red

and cheeks puffed out

like dizzy gillespie

as grandma screamed

and tried smacking my back

over the sink

where the cold water

was running

like life

for me

for me

for fat little old me.

                                    

poem of the day 06.11.15

future drone pilots of america

watch them blast away

on handhelds in parks

at museums on field trips in packs

watch them shout die! die! die!

in restaurants as their parents

slip slowly into their own cellular SOMA

future drone pilots of america

smacking keyboards of rage

pulling on their mouse like a noose

locating pinpoint targets on the screen

dropping bombs of capitalistic conquest

young soldiers who at twelve years old

could take out an entire town

yet aren’t smart enough to know

their age, their birthdate, or where they live

have a body count that would

make the pentagon proud

but couldn’t articulate themselves

if they tried.

                                                          

poem of the day 06.10.15

pop song

inside i’m like you

i taste like doritos

my blood as sweet as processed sugar

or maybe i taste like drought dirt

genetically modified

i waddle around like the livestock we raise

high on methane and pumped full of antibiotics

we’ve given the grass cancer

but i’m still standing up for coca-cola

bringing crystal pepsi back from my bunker

hiding from the koch brothers

and the boys at lockheed martin and boeing

a walking open carry law

slinging in the rain of a deluge in texas

keeping up with the kardashians

i want to know what miley

and beyoncé and taylor and kanye

are all doing on a saturday night

because i’m sitting at home getting drunk

just a cisgender stiff easing out of the workweek

as the dogs bark loud into the soiled, bass-filled air

and thug sirens wail the fear and mendacity

of the law of the land

because there ain’t not cure for the summertime blues

but i gotta tell you

this monsanto shimmy in the morning

ain’t making me no money off the street cams

i’m broke as a joke, my nigga

and i got so many friends

i have to save up my dollars

to purchase their defense funds

but, oh, i promise to look the other way

should it all go to shit

or i’ll fight a proxy war with my neighbors

cash in my trillions in war bonds

wine and dine the french and the germans

start a revolution from my bed

call the pentagon and give them six-hundred millions reasons

why they should lend a hand

fly my drones in the park

on a sunny sunday afternoon

relaxing in the rubbery zeitgeist

until my stomach aches

then it’s twenty miles above the speed limit

back into the insatiably hungry abyss of america

looking for the golden arches

with god on my side at the drive-thru

riding shot gun to a motherfucking pop song     

                       

poem of the day 06.09.15

killing time

the thought

of losing all of these hours to jobs

valuable moments that’ll never come back

all those good years wasted

sitting in offices making money for someone else

hauling junk in warehouses

dying on retail and restaurant floors

is the true horror show of human existence

the greatest influence on our cruelty

it is a daily war

to not want to blow the brains out

to not strangle our neighbor or the stranger on the train

no wonder people

make their jobs their lives

what choice do they have but to submit?

at the very least get medicated and drift

we the people

so full of swagger and self-immolation

while sitting in morning traffic

bound to paper systems

that are seemingly too powerful to rise against

we the people who should be rioting in the streets

tearing up constitutions and burning down the very cities we tread

having golden copulations of kindness, peace and understanding

on the white-hot bones of our profligate leaders

we, the fat, waddling balls of prescription drugs

with insomnia or the shits

so hungry for understanding and liberation

who hide in video game dreamlands and run from killer cops

who accept hatred and division as compensation

who accept a pittance for our lives

because we simply don’t know what else to do

scared from the promise of birth

beautiful dullards killing time

until we get sick and die

or live long enough to retire from this madness

into the hell of old age and senility

whatever comes first.

                                                            

poem of the day 06.08.15

captain america strikes again

the last time grigory and i met

he put down his broom

and interrogated me about my life

then we had a serious conversation

about the direction of america

grigory said he didn’t like the kids

carrying all of these phones or tattoos on women

he said that people in america

are a lot dumber than they were

when he came here from russia thirty-five years ago

grigory said, why do you think this is?

i shrugged, i told him that it’s taken me

over forty years to know what i know about america

and most of it i don’t like

so i blamed cell phones and the internet too

and we sat there like two old philosophers

yesterday i saw grigory again

for the first time in months

he was pushing a mop through another hallway

that would be dirty again within an hour

he didn’t remember me or our conversation

usually when this happens

it gives me a small satisfaction

that i’m at least doing something right

but grigory stopped mopping long enough

to see what i had on my computer screen

it was a comic book web site

he said, how old are you? forty?

and you play games, yes?

let me guess, you don’t have children

yet you read kiddie books?

i really didn’t know what to say to this

i thought maybe i’d go into oligarchs and plutocrats

reality stars changing into women

corporations and candidates and all of the endless wars

something to jog grigory’s memory

of our time together as great western thinkers

but i had nothing

i had another bad actor dressed as batman on the screen

and captain america running through a field of fire

in movies expensive enough to end homelessness

feed children and fix the national debt

i said, grigory, it can’t be proust all of the time

then i laughed my biggest fourth of july sale laugh

as grigory shook his head at me and walked away

so disgusted that he left the mop.

                                                           

poem of the day 06.05.15

to a social worker

i don’t wear

my emotions too well

so maybe that’s why

you didn’t come over to comfort me

lean in and put a hand on my shoulder

while i was waiting for my wife

to get her first breast MRI

since cancer came calling last year

i don’t get teary-eyed in public

or look much like a man whose had

a train run over his entire life

which is probably why

i was the only one in the room

not to get one of your fliers

i can’t morph into the pensive daughter

or the crying kid with the mom

whose hair is just starting to grow back

no matter how much you looked my way for some fragile sign

and i’m most certainly not

the little old man with the cane

the little old lady who still wears

plastic on her head in a rain shower

the ones finishing off their lives with our universal disease

mostly i look like i’m never bothered by anything

so why even pretend?

i just would’ve refused your flier anyway

your frown of sympathy

what is there to say

that i haven’t thought a million times before?

so keep all of it

your whole act

or take it over to physical therapy across the street

i’m just going to keep sitting here

if you don’t mind

and wait for my wife

watching that wooden door with the diamond-shaped mirror

that keeps opening and closing

pushing people back out into this harsh waiting room light

where you stand at the ready

with all of your guidance and support

the chance for people to talk…for free

as you benevolently remind everyone

who gets in your path.

poem of the day 06.04.15

jim dandy

jim used to work

at this sporting goods store in the mall

he was some fat schlep in gold chains

who talked ghetto talk even though he was snow white

me and some friends

would prank call his store weekly

one of us would call from a payphone

while the others would go into the store

and listen to jim on the phone

make his tough guy idle threats

then laugh

as he waddled around his retail kingdom

red-faced, cracking his knuckles

telling his employees what he’d do to those punks

he was great entertainment

when you had little else to do

a couple of years later

jim and i ended up working together

in another sporting goods store

where i learned that he thought

he was a ladies man, too

jim hit on anything that moved

he made up tall tales

about the girls working in the food court

all the head that he was getting from

the assistant manager at lane bryant

the kind of stuff that one could dispel

in a brief conversation with a chipper blonde at the taco bell

jim used to try and bust in on our female clerks

whenever they were in the bathroom

he claimed he always tried the locks first

i used to have to wait

for this one female clerk who closed with me

because she was terrified of him

jim thought that i was sweet on her

he made kissy faces at me as he rang out the register

and told me that i’d never get in her pants

he was right

but he was a good lesson in what not to do

about a month or so after that

jim finally burst in on a female naked

and was fired the next day

but no one pressed any charges

a year later i was at the mall

jim was working the hallmark store

still swinging his gold chains and cracking his knuckles

a store manager again

because america was a constant clean slate

if you had the right kind of swagger

so i went and found the payphone

and the number of the hallmark store

then i dialed and waited

for dear old jim dandy to pick up

releasing the right kind of ire

that could only remind him of the past

thinking if only i could see his face

                                                            

poem of the day 06.03.15

the paperboy

twelve years old

my old man had me out

before five in the morning

toting stacks and bundles

of all of the hell the world had to offer

he’d sit in the car

listening to news radio

while i walked dark streets

slinging papers on pavement

or hard against the doors of those customers

who were never around

when i came to collect

scared of the dark and the rustling trees

dogs barking or a random deer

trotting across a suburban lawn

scared of everything five in the morning had to offer me

passing the homes of kids i went to school with

dark mansions that looked like

they’d been closed-up for years

dodging ice in the winter

dodging sprinklers in the summer

in the mix of every season that bloomed

occasionally a random person would come

walking down a block

i’d hide where i could

watching as they moved off into the distance

wondering why in the hell

they were up so early like me

to make the almighty dollar?

but i always imagined something more sinister in mind

as i moved from house to house like a careful creep

suddenly aware of all of that slumbering vulnerability

behind those doors and windows

the turn of a knob

the touch of a dusty screen

at times emboldened by my power

as my old man drove the car blocks ahead

reliving the job of his youth through me

the trail of his gray cigarette smoke

more pronounced as the red sun began to come up

and the lights flickered on

in all of the homes

i’d sacrificed sleep

to inform.                                              

poem of the day 06.02.15

a few shorter ones:

big payoff

finding

a crumpled

dollar

in my poetry

notebook

i finally

know how

all the great ones

must’ve felt

dead me

dead me

almost

hit by cars

twice this week

dead squirrel

splattered

on 75^th street

not nearly

as lucky.

hamburg in panorama

all of hamburg in panorama

is no match to you naked

and breathless above me

in this strange eternal bed.

uninvited guest

come the summer

the sun stays

later in the sky

like an uninvited guest

taking up your place

on the couch

shaking a tumbler

full of melting ice

asking, would you mind getting

off of your fat ass

to get me another drink.

                                    

                        

                       

poem of the day 06.01.15

newborn

in the paper route days

i had this one house

i always tried to collect from to no avail

they’d just had a baby

there were notes on the door

about not knocking, not ringing the bell

they hadn’t paid me in months for the morning paper

and because of those people

the thirteen year-old in me

was missing out on baseball cards

cassette tapes, gum and soda

magazines that had pictures teen starlets

that i was starting to fantasize about when alone

on saturday deliveries

when i didn’t have to be up before the sun

sometimes i’d catch the husband outside

drinking coffee

he’d take his paper

but would never say a word about what he owed me

you added three or four more homes like that

and some weeks it was like i was doing the job for free

after a few more weeks i decided

that i finally had enough of the newborn

i ignored the signs and warnings

and began pounding on the door one afternoon

my mind caught up in slices of pizza

french fries at mcdonald’s

about the money that i was owed for my troubles

and even though i expected it

i was pulled out of my revelry

by a baby’s wail and by shouting and cursing

the father opening the door

with his face red and his eyes about to explode

pointing like a silent film star at his notes

but i just held up my collection pad

and waited for him to fish out

the twenty bucks he owed me

fingering the green

as he slammed the door

moving down the block not giving a damn

because i was starting to learn

how america really worked.