poem of the day 07.30.15

my new friend

chung shows me his braces

he’s proud of the metal on his teeth

all i can do is stare

at a piece of something white caught in them

wonder if it’s bread or something else

i stomach a lot but certain foods get me

giving the cat tuna is enough to knock me on my ass

i tell chung, all right, enough about the braces

to get him to close his mouth

but he say, i don’t think my grandma loves me

my one grandma does, he says

but the one i live with, she just yells at me

because sometimes i forget to come home

chung volunteers here

sometimes he forgets to come in on saturdays

but we always give him a second and third chance

he says, why do you think my grandma yells at me

i don’t know, kid, i tell him

maybe you’re out of chances with her

i can still see that piece of white stuck in his braces

wonder how the kid is talking with that

a piece of lettuce in my teeth is enough for an epileptic fit

maybe she’s just worried, i tell chung

she’s mean, he says

but everyone is mean to chung

the adults in here

most of the kids i see him wrestling around with

he’s a good, dumb kid

the world will take advantage of chung

until he has nothing left to give it

but servitude and quiet benevolence

i just want my grandma to love me, he says

i’m sure she does, i say

but what do i know?

in america families gun each other down

like they’re taking on enemy combatants

you got something in your braces, i finally tell chung

he puts a whole hand in his mouth

works to dig the piece of white out until it’s gone

he flicks it away and i watch it slop on the floor

look up to see chung’s hand extended, ready to shake mine

thanks, he says

as we shake

but i’m not so sure which hand

he flicked that food off with.

                                                                       

poem of the day 07.29.15

intermediate fiction

taking fiction writing classes in college

could be very machiavellian

it was where you went to be in close quarters with your enemies

to read their drivel while they read yours

instructed not to destroy egos in the process

when all you wanted to do was smash everyone into pulp

stop most of them from ever putting down another word

i knew one kid in fiction writing 101

he wrote all of these sweltering tales of psycho-sexual taboos

then made a point to tell everyone

how much the stories were based in reality

looking around to see who was blushing

when no one gave a shit about anything

but people reading and commenting on their own crap

the classes were instructed

by a middling class of word spinners

people whose work you never would’ve read

never would’ve discovered

had they not shoved it down your throat for you

the teacher in my intermediate fiction class

was a world war ii influenced jew

he only wrote about the issues facing world war ii jews

or he wrote about the nazis

he loved and hated the nazis

he read us one of his stories about an old nazi commander

who hid out after the war in south america

he became a drug lord and did business with americans

one of whom happened to be a former concentration camp jew

the big payoff in the story was the two meeting

the subtle recognition and the horror of being face to face

even in a room full of youth and bad prose

we could see the ending coming a mile away

after the big payoff

my intermediate fiction writing teacher put down his story

he looked around the room as if one of us were hiding his pulitzer

then went back to scribbling something on the board

about plot and character

to a bunch of people whose writing no one would ever read

unless they became fiction writing instructors too

while i went back to writing bob dylan lyrics

in a notebook that wasn’t being used for much of anything else

wishing that i’d just learned to play guitar

or wondering if there was still room

in the intro to business class.                                                   

poem of the day 07.28.15

the cockroach on my bathroom sink

as a metaphor for the iranian nuclear deal

i can’t draw a literal connection here

or maybe i’m not even speaking in metaphor

mostly i just hope the son-of-a-bitch wasn’t on

my toothbrush or my wife’s toothbrush

i’m not even going to tell her about this menace

morning sex and two hours of poem writing

happily making her tea in the kitchen

she doesn’t need to know about this bug

i guess then it’s kind of like the iranian nuclear deal

my wife not knowing about the cockroach

most of congress talking out of their assholes too

109-page report i doubt most of them have read

i tell the cockroach that he’s a dead man

just as soon as i’m done taking a piss

but that’s mostly hyperbole and posturing

what can i say? i’m a patriot through and through

still i grab a good wad of toilet paper to prove my point

maybe there’s something to that too

i sure as shit wouldn’t want this cockroach weaponized

imagine going toe to toe with something

that could survive a nuclear holocaust

it’s right then and there that i get it

we just don’t want iran to have a nuclear bomb

we don’t seem to want them to have an economy, a chance to survive, either

the united states has approximately 4,800 nuclear warheads

which is 4,8000 too many in my opinion

in truth, i’m more afraid of americans than i am iranians

we’re kind of like the cockroaches of the world

that is to say americans crawl on your toothbrush when you sleep

that is to say we kill civilians by the bunch and call them casualties of war

still, i don’t like the way this cockroach

is casually strolling around my bathroom sink

he’s making me look like an ass on my own little world stage

of course the fucker goes right into a crevice

when i’m all set to wipe him out

typical new yorker, typical american

always getting away with shit

i can see him there in the blackness between sink and wall

those two antennas or whatever they are, twitching

i can’t kill his ass, so i blow with all my might and he drops

take that, kafka, i say. take that iran!

it’s the wrong metaphor but a metaphor all the same

at the very least now i don’t have to change the title of this poem.                     

poem of the day 07.27.15

the cartoonist

renji sits in a chair in the back

drawing dinosaurs from a picture on a video screen

he’s a quiet and respectful kid

he spends more than enough time alone

in a sea of children who are always in each other’s shit

i generally like renji

but two days ago

he asked me one question too many

and i sort of blew my top

there was no excuse other than life getting to me

as it gets to everyone else at times

but since then renji stares at me like i’m the devil when i pass

he’s a decent cartoonist from what i can see

his dinosaur is a good facsimile of the one on the screen

i watch him thinking back to when all i cared about was drawing

superheroes and baseball stars

comic book rambo soldiers and mad magazine rip-offs

like renji i was a quiet and respectful kid

who spent more than enough time alone

it’s strange to suddenly become

confronted with yourself like that

like you never know when the past will pop up

thoughts of drawing lead to thoughts of my high school art teacher

who didn’t want me in his freshman visual arts class so badly

that when my pencil tip broke

he and i spent forty minutes walking my campus

until he found a nub thrown into some bushes

and made me use it for the rest of the week

adults have no conception of what they’re able to kill in a child

with the smallest of gestures

i’d like to think that i don’t have

that kind of effect on renji

it would be a shame for him to stop asking me questions

simply because i couldn’t handle my own business

i think i’d like to go over to him

and tell him how much i like his drawing

tell him what a fine cartoonist he’ll make one day

i think i’d like to be the adult in this scenario

but i wonder if it’s too late right now

to simply apologize.

                                                

poem of the day 07.24.15

we live

where you can’t go to the mall

we live where you can’t go to the movies

we live where it’s not even safe enough

to take your kids to school

we live where army bases are fired upon

we live where recruitment centers and churches

are used for target practices

we live in stink and filth and can’t even feed our own

we live where strip malls get turned into scenes of massacres

we live with politicians who take kickbacks from gun lobbies

where the president shakes his head and says we’re facing a reckoning

but then goes and drops drone bombs on kids

we live where people get shot in mosques

where teenagers take their own lives every day

we live with god on our side but not in our hearts

we live where rich athletes can’t even escape the taste of blood

where even actors commit murder

we live with staggering rates of homicide

where we have 4,800 nuclear warheads at the ready

to kill the whole motherfucking world

we live with junkies and violence in mcdonald’s

we live with gun upon gun in wal-mart

where cuckolds take up arms instead of walking away

we live with heavenly exception

we live without guilt or remorse

where babies get caught in the crossfire of humid gang warfare

we live where you can’t go to college

without the fear of maybe getting shot

we live where cab drivers and civilians get plugged in their cars

where food courts and parks are for genocide

we live with mass murder in prison riot gore

we live where mothers kill fathers kill children

then take out half the neighborhood

where gas leaks explode and kill your friends

we live with road rage and vets sleeping on the corner

we live where people go into work and kill their bosses

where even the goddamned nursing homes aren’t safe

we live with uzis in law offices

and handguns in immigration detention centers

where border patrol guards carry machine guns for freedom

we live where people get murdered for the color of their skin

we live in the blood-soaked glare of the world

we live right here in america

where we don’t do a fucking thing about any of it.                                

poem of the day 07.23.15

This poem was inspired by and informed by Ben Norton's great piece in Counter Punch. You can read it here

how’s the fish?

at whole foods

unions are like getting herpes

at whole foods

they’re always open on thanksgiving

whole foods cares for community

whole foods cares for animals

whole foods cares for the planet

but they sell over-priced fish and milk and cheese

made by prisoners in the colorado prison system

prisoners get $1.50 an hour to farm organic tilapia

they get sixty cents an hour for your milk and gourmet cheese

at whole foods you can have your tilapia

crispy and baked southwestern style

you can have tilapia tostadas on cinco de mayo

you can have tilapia with fennel and tomato

or do it cajun style with some broccoli and brown rice

over at whole foods they believe the stars predict the future

over at whole foods climate change is good

over at whole foods it’s conscious capitalism all the time

ask john mackey about his one-hundred million

ask steve easterbrook at mcdonald’s

about the prisoners making frozen beef patties and chicken nuggets

chit chat with a con over at sprint and verizon

have one book you an avis car or a flight on american airlines

have a starbuck’s holiday blend on the backs

of the prisoners in washington state

ask signature packing solutions how much they’re paying per hour

or go international and eat an apple with foxconn in china

in south carolina female inmates are sewing

your sexy victoria’s secret underwear

they’re sewing confederate flags

replacing sweatshop tags with “made in the u.s.a”

at wal-mart they’re clearing barcodes and reselling plastic junk

back at whole foods

they’re only selling the best organic money can buy

they’re satisfying, delighting and nourishing their customers

back at whole foods

they’re creating wealth through profit and growth

they believe that corporations are people

just like the supreme court

back at whole foods

they’re practicing advance environmental stewardship

whatever in the hell that is

they’ve got millions of recipes that they want you to try

some meat

some chicken

those cheeses and milk

at whole foods they’re cooking up the tilapia

with a roasted garlic crust

with parmesan and herbs

they’re food is low fat and gluten free

over at whole foods everything is natural

but in the end it all ends up tasting like the new jim crow.

                                                                                   

poem of the day 07.22.15

pop-up poem

(concerning planned parenthood)

that moment

when the pious catholic

always been a sheep

virgin til he was twenty-three

(minus a blow job from a whore)

ex-friend of yours

posts some article

on his facebook page

about the great devils

at planned parenthood

supposedly harvesting fetal flesh

for cash profit

because planned parenthood

is so fucking flush, right?

and you wanna comment so bad

because the article the dumb fuck posted

negates his entire argument

so it’s obvious the twit didn’t read it in the first place

tell him what a pious catholic

always been a sheep

piece of camel shit he is

only you remember

that you and he aren’t facebook friends

because you aren’t real friends anymore

because he became a pious catholic

always been a sheep

piece of camel shit

and that you’ve killed

twenty minutes trolling his dumb ass

reading the comments

of the other wrong-headed zealots on his page

getting pissed off and angry

political and shit

instead of writing poems

working on your novel

like you should’ve been doing

in the first place

blues.

                                   

poem of the day 07.21.15

ripping the military recruitment brochure

out of a young woman’s hands

i couldn’t tell if it was army, navy, air force or marines

to tell the truth they all look the same to me

especially when in uniform

the soldiers on the brochure probably aren’t even soldiers

they look more like fashion models playing dress-up

the point is, i got it away from her

this young black-latina mix on the R train

with golden brown curls and cherry red lips

she was startled at first, she looked like she wanted to hit me

but then i said, give me a minute

you got about ten seconds, asshole, she said

i shook the brochure at her

i said, you don’t really want to do this

she said, but i don’t have any other choice

i said, we all have choices

she said, spoken like a white man in america

what am i supposed to do with my life, work the register at mcdonalds?

i said, what about college?

she said, have you seen my high school?

i was practically strip searched before homeroom

so i said, in the military, you have a twenty-five percent chance

of being sexually assaulted…before boot camp

she laughed, she said, you really don’t know shit

about women in america do you, uncle sam?

i said, i know that women have a higher chance of getting PTSDs

she said, come visit my neighborhood some time

well, i said, it’s not worth it

taking a bullet for some oligarch in a mansion

she said, the systems already stacked against me

she said, look around they’ve already won

guys like you are just the last to catch on, professor

i said, they’ll treat you like a slave

oh man, she said, i don’t even know what to say to that shit

other than give me back my brochure

i said, you’ll be just another automaton in khakis

she said, or just another welfare mom

toting a baby around before i’m twenty

and hated by dudes that look like you

we should work on this together, i said, and find an answer

too little too late, she said

this is the system you set up

it wasn’t me, i said, i’m as much a victim as you are

tom joad you ain’t, she said

snapping her gum and checking her nails

i said, but…..

she just held out her hand

until i took the brochure from behind my back

and gave it to her

she slapped the glossy folder on her knees

and then got up when we reached her stop

wish me luck, uncle sam? she asked.

but i couldn’t

i put my head down and let her go

i looked up only when the train started moving again

into the crowd hustling along on the platform

for nothing but a paycheck and a pipe dream.                                        

poem of the day 07.20.15

charles bridge

at times

i try to hold you out of my heart

you’re too heavy for it, baby

at times

i think of the years

that have passed between us

and then

to save my composure

i don’t

believe it or not

i like the simple things

ice cream

cold beer

the sun in its early moments

your hand

as we cross the charles bridge

fooling them all

we’re unburdened.

                                   

poem of the day 07.17.15

lulu

america

is the fat face of benevolence

forever smiling but never really listening

i try to think of this, lulu

watching you walk around here

taking fliers for art exhibits you won’t attend

bus maps for places you aren’t going to

i know it’s only a matter of time

before you’ll sway my way with that vaseline smile on your lips

i know you’re going to ask me where jimmy is

the security guard who retired ten years ago

before i even got here

lulu, i’ll tell you what i always tell you

what everyone here tells you

that jimmy is on break

jimmy is on vacation

so that you’ll stay calm and not have a meltdown

start screaming and knocking things off the shelf

so that you and i can achieve peace

i watch you, lulu

sway between the aisles

in the same dress you’ve been wearing for months

how you’ll grab the same stuff off the shelves

examine them like you’re seeing them for the first time

wondering what to throw

only to put them back and do it all again tomorrow

or the next hour depending on how bad you are that day

i want to be benevolent toward you

i want to be your america

to smile and lie to you and tell you i’m listening

whatever fallacy it takes, lulu

but i’m running on days of no sleep

hangovers and six work days straight

plus all of the poems are coming back rejected

all i know is when i retire from here i’ll remember you

lulu swaying around this place bent and confused

or when i begin to die here, sweating and pale

on the dirty, stained floor

i know it’ll be you leaning over me

taking my hand in yours, lulu

the bus maps and art fliers scattered all about us

telling me softly, as i breathe my last

if only jimmy were back from his break

if only he hadn’t taken vacation this week.                     

poem of the day 07.16.15

sonic youth

i won’t lie

back then the muse

was pretty slow in coming to me

i grew up in a neighborhood

where all of the kids listened to rap

dressed like rap stars and tried to prep the role

by adding that ghetto inflection

to their suburban drawls

now everybody does it these days

white rappers, the spawn of rich white actors

are online justifying their use of the word nigga

but back then it was penetratingly dull

to be around this even if it was new

it felt hollow and unearned

i got a job closer to the city

that kept me out of my neighborhood more and more

the people i worked with painted

or drew comics, or made some other kind of art

a lot of them were in bands

they made me mixed tapes with the kind of stuff

i’d never heard before

bands that put on scream shows

or jangled low guitars that felt like the sunset

some of it was bad some of it was good

the point was that it was different

it was a coming of age story, i guess

but i remember one time

riding around with my old neighborhood friends

we were going for pizza

or to kill another night

at the chain diner we all went too

someone would hit on the waitress

someone would spike calvin’s coffee with salt

someone’s ex-girlfriend would show up

with her new boyfriend on a leash

and as we rode off toward

the same exact night that we had last week

i put on one of my new mixed tapes

let the haze of sound fill the car

thinking that i was taking us all

into a bold, new direction that we could share

when one of my friends

ripped the tape out of the deck

he tossed it in the back seat

and put on the same old same old

something with a beat

enough bass to poison a neighborhood

and finally whatever else

had kept me tied up

to that time and place.

                                                            

poem of the day 07.15.15

chasing yesterday

we are

chasing yesterday again

here in hamburg

running the reeperbahn

snapping the life out of grosse freiheit

in search of the beatles

photographing pizza huts

that were once famous clubs

as drunk punk kids shout

hey, america, photograph me

photos we’ll blow up

into 8x10s

to hang up on our walls

like animal heads brought back

from a great hunt

in alleyways where the once famous stood

we emulate poses at the wrong doorway

only to do it again at the right one

in berlin

it was bowie’s apartment

the gay club he and iggy pop went to

the ruins of schopenhauer’s old pad

i think of all of the gravesites here in europe

and back in the u.s.

countless bars and cafes

apartments ticked off the list

bukowski’s bungalow

and composer’s homes

the miles and miles we walked off the map in paris

to find where henry miller lived

crying over kerouac in lowell

deathmasks and locks of ancient hair

chasing yesterday so much

as i stand here

setting up another shot

i begin to worry

if i’ve made any history

of my own

                                   

poem of the day 07.14.15

lady liberty

she comes in

about once a week

a stars and stripes sunhat

on her pointed head

she asks the asian kids

if they’ve learned the difference

between their Ls and Rs yet

even though most of them

are more american

than clichéd slices of apple pie

she says, imagine having to give up

a whole section of book stores to spanish books

if they’d only learn the language, she sighs

she once sang the star-spangled banner

over a russian man who wanted a newspaper

asked him how

his good buddy, putin, was doing

she likes to fan herself with an american flag

and when she farts in line for the bathroom

it smells like freedom

in the shitter she belts out

america the beautiful

as she drops atomic bomb turds

into the toilet

before waddling her patriotic ass

back out into the sun

toilet paper caught in her pants

without even having the decency

to flush away her sovereignty.

and....one for bastille day 

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.

                        07.30.13

poem of the day 07.13.15

another poet in new york

it’s too hot to write poetry

in the summertime in new york

it’s too hot to do anything

but read rejection letters and listen

to the morning d.j. tell me

gee, it’s going to be another scorcher

before playing something pleasant

to mix with the bass from the asshole

parked outside my bedroom window

rejections letters that tell me

i’m not fit for publication or much else lately

one tries to butter me up calling me a poetic badass but…

i don’t feel like such a badass

being in your slush pile, dipshit

and just for the record

i think it’s an act of cowardice

to sign your letter, “the editors”

you might as well sign it “the assholes” too

i want to know who’s rejecting me, pal

there’s four of you on staff

i know because i’ve studied your fucking faces

one of you has to have a set balls

enough self-confidence to pound out your name

and say, this is what i believe

i mean let’s stand toe to toe at least once

but it’s too hot in new york

to fight with poetry editors anyway

fighting with poetry editors

is like slapping an old women around

to be honest i never read

the magazines until they reject me

and then i just feel justified

thankful not to be a part of their clique

really, this morning i have

more of a bone to pick with this d.j.

laughing over the weather

as i sit here in sweat and misery

another poet in new york

with nothing in the world to write about

except his every injustice

probably not even the only poet on this block

which is just a cold comfort

on such a hot and lousy day.

poem of the day 07.10.15

kim kardashian is not the enemy

these streets smell like murder now

the rancid garbage piled high enough

to create a new manhattan on brooklyn

pavement the way the gray water mixes

the soiled napkins and soda bottles and

wet brown bags oh and the plastic i think

we all must sweat chevron millions i wish

someone would come along and lobby me for

my thoughts i’d tell them to clean up

their shit their filth maybe not eat so many

bananas on hot summer days to add

to the scent because there’s three dollars

burning a hole in my pocket and i know

exactly who i’m blowing that on these

endless wars these solar panel armies

in the desert where what’s mine is mine

and what’s yours i’m gunning for head-on

like a wall street shutdown another death

on the nightly news in between advertisements

and stories about rich rappers pounding persian

pussy the greased asses of trust fund babies

on every glossy from here to los angeles

but from rich to poor we all end up

swimming in the shit now my friend

i tell you kim kardashian is not the enemy

she just plays one on tv.

                                    

poem of the day 07.09.15

fire

what

a stupid kid

i was

back then

standing there

returning books

at my library job

nineteen years old

and smug

because i’d read kerouac

just like all the others had

because i’d written

a bunch of poems

that i declared genius

but that next to no one would read

so smug

yet too dumb

to realize that i’d signed

my life over

to student loan predators

for the kerouac

for the college campus

for a piece of paper

that it would take me another fifteen years

to even remotely justify

i must’ve looked

so stupidly content

to him

coming in that night

with a couple of books

warped beyond repair

that smelt

of hickory and mold

his eyes red

how did he take me?

placing the books on the counter

waiting for me to check them in

assess his thirty dollar fine

that maybe i’d put into the register

or maybe take because i needed gas money

to go and see a girlfriend

that i wasn’t really into

he must’ve wanted

to kill me

when i smiled and said

well, you’ll have to pay this fine

before you can use your card again

like i was waiting

on a financial windfall

i was so smug

so dumb

nineteen and king of my little disney world

standing there

with my hand out

as he softly

slowly

casually

told me

that the books belonged to his friend

that he’d died

in a fire

before tossing a crumpled twenty

at me

and walking away.

                                   

poem of the day 07.08.15

the jared fogle blues

it’s all bad

it’s all a horror show

from birth until death

ask the cab driver

ask your dentist

ask the pitchman peddling kiddie porn

or ask the librarian playing on facebook

for the new york times

then read it for yourself and weep

if i tell you i won’t lie to you

you wouldn’t believe me anyway

because i’m the american myth when i stand naked and true

but, kid, life is only glimmers of softness

in this unendurable rough

truthfully i wish i’d been smarter back then

twenty-two, twenty-three years ago

before the noose tightened on my verve and idealism

when i could piss away my life like nobody’s business

i wish my old man had told me

what a holy terror it was out there scrapping for a dollar

instead of coming home tired from a late bus and crap job

a can of beer or two and the nightly news

but what then?

what would i have done with that knowledge

except eventually assimilate into the grind?

so i tell you it’s all bad to try and save you

find some alternative, child

because life is a wreck of a wreck

heaped upon a dung pile of disappointment and pain

and watching little kids grow up just makes me sad

all the misery and debt they’ll inherit

all the death and destruction

all the senseless, needless violence

all the watered down drinks on lonely nights in this abyss

just to cope so we can get up and do it all again

i tell you it’s all bad

it’s so so bad

it’s all a horror show to the tenth degree

find your way out of this madness now

before we’re both two walking suicides

lumps of flesh eating salad in florescent tombs

clocking in and clocking out

unable to look each other in the eye.

poem of the day 07.07.15

ben affleck’s divorce

is killing the european union

or it would appear so

online and in the paper’s this morning

ben returning bewildered from the bahama’s

sans wedding ring

got top story over the greek debt vote

and the civil war in south sudan

batman beats male child castration!

should’ve been the headline

holy drachma, batman!

was it his blonde movie co-star that caused the fracture

or that old latina flame from the block?

all the same another bennifer has gone up in smoke

i find myself caught up in the zeitgeist

reading the news, looking at the pictures

poor ben outside a starbucks

with his gallon of GMO harvested ice coffee

his sad million dollar eyes

his gray beard and gray hair unkempt

homeless and broken hearted by way of beverly hills

this is better than reading about racists and confederate flags

or all of that stuff going on in yemen

there doesn’t seem much for ben to do now

other than gamble and binge drink top shelf for a while

bang a few up and coming starlets to take away the pain

tell them, i’m batman

as he rides the wind of losing america’s sweetheart

was jennifer garner an american sweetheart?

well she should be with her dimpled cheeks and wet eyes

another girl next door wronged by the dark knight

it doesn’t matter how much you have in your bank account

divorce affects us all

if you don’t believe me, go and ask angela merkel

or alexis tsipras what they think

ask them about how ben affleck’s divorce 

is killing the european union

and if they look at you strangely

wave your flag and tell them you’re an american news reader

tell them, from me, that the euro is only trading

ninety-one cents on the u.s dollar these days

and that you don’t have to take their effete european bickering

not when batman’s back in town.

                                              

poem of the day 07.06.15

nyc summer

hopscotching shady sides of the street

that i know better than train times

the sidewalks a mess of garbage strewn

the smell of rotten bananas, stale beer

dog shit, moldy cardboard and rancid meat

zigzagging fat tourists taking pictures

of ISIS landmarks and over-priced

dirty water dogs and pizza

tossing their trash to the pavement

because it seems like the thing to do here

new york, new york, like a sinatra song

times square lit up like a belligerent drunk

another nyc summer in the shit

where murder seems entirely plausible

the idea of spending years in corporate prisons

pounding ass, pounding patties for mcdonald’s

seems preferable to one more day on these streets

sweating for five hours straight

sweating from sun up to sun down

packed on work trains like cattle trains

singing the millennium blues to the homeless

waiting for the climate to change completely

burry all of this madness in the deluge of salt water

then nothing left to do here in gotham but

swim swim swim swim swim for the dollar.

                                              

poem of the day 07.03.15

the homophobe

back in the day

calvin was a homobphobe

which is like calling someone a nazi now

i had no clue what calvin’s opinions were on jews

but he didn’t like gay people, especially gay men

calvin had a playboy magazine idea about lesbians

of course this was back when people

still bought playboy to get off

but calvin was the annoying kind of homophobe

you couldn’t sit next to him in a theater

we took up a whole row just so that calvin didn’t look gay

if three of you went to get something to eat

calvin could never be the one who had to sit male with male

if he did, as soon as the third wheel got up to piss

calvin switched to the other side of the booth

so it didn’t look like two queers were having wings and beer together

once, an ex-girlfriend of mine told cal that he

and his friend, tom, made a cute looking couple

i heard about it for months after she said that

for sport i called him a fag in front of some girl he liked

just to see what would happen

and later on that night calvin pulled over his car

to tell me what a bad friend i was being

in atlantic city we shared a huge bed

and he slept on top of the sheets

just in case maybe i was gay

even though back home i was fucking this girl he liked

we aren’t friends anymore

not because of calvin’s homophobia

but because i made fun of his facebook page

for having on it all of this 9/11 we-will-never-forget bullshit on it

when it wasn’t even september

calvin told me he’d pray for me

and then deleted me as his facebook friend

he’s really religious these days from what i’ve been told

the kind of catholic who wishes his pederast priest

a happy father’s day

apparently he says shit like

hate the sin, love the sinner

when talking about gay marriage on his facebook page

he has three boys now

and he’s trying to bring them up the right way

sometimes i wonder if they’ll

grow up to be homophobes too

or maybe even gay

i hope not, for them, at least

but sometimes i wonder what it’s like

when calvin takes the boys to a movie

do they sit together like a family?

or are they old enough now that he makes them sit apart?

taking up a whole row in the theater like we used to do

so that they don’t all look gay

and give people the wrong impression about america

while being mindlessly entertained in the dark.

                                                          

poem of the day 07.02.15

america the beautiful

(or)

moloch for too early in the morning

                        --for governor scott walker

w/yr piss rivers of chemical bliss and choking fishes

w/yr burning black churches under hate banners and history

w/yr monsanto breath and methane fields of slaughter

w/yr profit prisoners pounding patties for the golden arches

w/yr cholesterol face and your hardened artery empathy

w/yr endless wars and infotainment conjuring hollywood machine

w/yr ceaseless streams of comment page ugliness

w/yr starbucks sunrise in the Dow Jones calculated sky

w/yr terror warning telephone roll calls and clown car candidates

moloch! yr limp liberal hand washing! moloch! yr police march activism!

moloch! the taste of blood in yr streets! moloch! yr holy gun cock!

w/yr bigbox discounts that have boarded the main street

w/yr boulevards of broken dreams for lost generations

w/yr kid faces plastered into candy crush diets and digital quagmires

w/yr 24/7 news cycle of doom selling Disney democracy

w/yr right wing renegade time lords stone aging the future

w/yr NAFTA heirlooms of slave labor artistry

w/yr Thorstein Veblen eyes on the trans-pacific partnership prize

w/yr gerrymandered cartography and yr common core ignorance

w/yr sewage system drinking water by the unregulated gallon

moloch! i’ve seen what your future holds, america!

moloch! who made me hate yr very scent! moloch! i can’t breathe!

w/yr perfumed ladies masking noxious hearts

w/yr man child adulations and violent video game hard-ons

w/yr gun fixations and lobby dollars soaked in fossil fuel chains

w/yr ghetto concentration camp benevolence

w/yr melting pot mythology leaning on yr leaden mind

w/yr cheap gas suburbia going up in smoke

w/yr marijuana boogie men getting high with street boys in shit stalls

w/yr homophobia constitutional amendment propaganda

w/yr supreme court of lies and fixations

moloch! the long endless streets of rising rent bailouts!

moloch! your immigrant walls and detention center holiday inns

w/yr patriot acts acting up in glass strewn playgrounds

w/yr capitalist colleges on legacy campuses hustling for a buck

w/yr drought river and climate deniers sitting on boards of influence

w/yr koch brother sugar daddies and their fascist sway

w/yr Fox News sitcoms running into nightmare finales

w/yr blockbuster carnage that’s too risqué for the big screen

w/yr streaming services for the dead

w/yr DIRECTV porn girls being jizzed on by uncle sam’s small cock

w/yr free market fallout and trickle down legacy

moloch! for being too big to fail! moloch! yr dirty angel infrastructure!

w/yr rusted pipe logic resting on the broken beams of bridges

w/yr potholed highways of summer vacation dreams

w/yr airplane incarceration and free headphone garbage piles

w/yr NRA kindness and semi-automatic lusts

w/yr millionaire sports idols and luxury car holograms

w/yr anti-union, anti-family, anti-intellectual jamboree

w/yr rain check ambitions and kudzu global scarf

w/yr rape joke love and right-to-work consciousness

w/yr oligarch family picnics and fireside book burnings

moloch! yr flag flying outside every single door like a noose

moloch! yr morning radios of hate and innuendo

w/yr SOMA culture lollipop milky tit not allowed on instagram

w/yr orwellian cameras on every single block

w/yr closest snowden shame and chelsea manning fashion parade

w/yr holy wars and yr frankenstein ISIS game shows

w/yr military industrial complex money suck abortion clinic blues

w/yr libraries housing the dust of progress

w/yr cities filling up with sea water smoothies

w/enough carbon dioxide in the air to choke yr revolution christ

w/yr hateful beasts claiming they were born to lead

america the beautiful full on fat, sugar and salt with a rip in yr seam

as inmate congresses continue to run the asylum

moloch! the horse you rode in on in one of those dull westerns

that you used to love.