day ONE HUNDRED and ONE

It was a Town Called Yukon

It was a town called Yukon that led me astray
Trashy little coal camp hamlet with a one way street
                        half a stop sign
I miscounted lefts and completed a circle

At the beginning again with a chain restaurant
dropped at the road side, I realize how hungry I am

The last time I ate at one of these was a year ago
after a shit reading for twenty dollars in a deserted bend in the river town
The girl who was with me had just finalized a divorce, now she has cancer

The waitress’ name must be honey
all the businessmen call her that
They gawk at her too much make up, no ass and push up bra
            She asks if I’d like a drink
I swear it’s the first word in English anyone has said to me

She delivers, I take a pull, realize a mistake
Air conditioning made me believe a shandy was a good idea
now I’m positive it wasn’t, a headache crawls in with the sweetness

Another businessman calls honey
I think all my crushes are on barmaids, baristas and waitresses
women who talk to me on days when I’ve fallen map
if only  'cause I pay them
            Today, I have fallen off the map

Three boxers sit at the corner
I listen, half ass watch soccer, nurse my Shandy
They talk Christian girls, diets and hangovers
           I can’t take anymore
I call honey and ask for a to go cup
surprised when she hands me one
I pour the remnants in

Now I can nurse the too sweet taste
           for the next forty miles
tugging at the edges while the beer gets too warm
when it does I’ll stop on a hill on a red dog road
a dead black snake stretched nine feet across
hit with such force it blew the skull clear of the head
I lean over, pour the dregs on the corpse
          stare sun blind at nowhere
wait on a resurrection that never comes

--Jason Baldinger

day ONE HUNDRED

Poem for James Baldwin

Reading Baldwin
in a well-lit bar
of a chain Italian joint

because I'm hungover
because shit service is everything
because your words are beautiful
because humans never learned how to be
beautiful
because hope is too much
or because

The woman in her sixties
leans over leans in

touches my arm
asks
How's the chicken parmesan?

--Jason Baldinger

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in TrumpLand week FOURTEEN weekly wrap-up

After One Hundred Days

Happy one hundred days folks! Somehow the unthinkable happened, somehow we’re still surviving even as democracy as we know it is limping, somehow reality is still inverted, somehow even with the lowest approval rating of any president after one hundred days the motherfucker’s supporters still haven’t come down with a case of buyer’s remorse, and somehow the motherfucker is still ballyhooing about an election we’d all rather forget. Oh, the motherfucker is still tweeting away and now commenting about how he never expected the goddamn job to be so hard.

            After one hundred days it’s hard to measure a president and that should be no surprise as the “democratic process” is slow to change. The motherfucker came into office and immediately shut the door on half of the country which makes that process even slower. He’s governed by executive order mostly, twenty-nine so far, ten more than that villain obama, still less than truman or even FDR who walloped out ninety nine during the worst of the depression. Like FDR, who was branded a traitor to his class for his executive orders, most of the motherfucker’s orders are being met with resistance, or are already being subverted by a justice system that to some extent still believes this is a democracy and that liberal forward thinking may not be the worst thing.

            After one hundred days we’ve seen three attempts at muslim bans although none of the countries included in those bans has ever produced a terrorist attack on american soil. All three muslim bans have been stuck down. The aca has been attacked once and survived, the second attack is coming but the government shutdown has waylaid that vote until after a budget has been produced. The motherfucker has also tried to shout down sanctuary cities for not working with/ sharing information with immigration officials. He’s threatened to withhold federal funding for these cities but even in that threat he has been shut down this week. If we could all stop at this moment and give William Orrick a round of applause, I’d say he greatly deserves it.

            After one hundred days were still talking about a wall which will never be built. The wall was a big issue this week, considering it was a campaign promise. That fucking wall that mexico won’t pay for, the wall the democrats won’t support, the wall there is no reason to build, the wall that would be an environmental disaster. There are currently about eleven million illegals in this country, that’s the lowest in almost fifteen years. The truth about it is there are only a small number of illegals coming from mexico, most are coming from central and south america so ratcheting up anti mexican rhetoric is  absurd. Also take into account that the crime rates among immigrant populations are around ten percent, and incarcerated rates for immigrant populations come in at about half of what our “native” population. Yes there is crime along the border, but the more I read the more I find that crime, at least on the u.s side of the border, is down mostly because of the police state that surrounds it. 

            After one hundred days the motherfucker considers the news an inconvenient truth. To be straight folks, when you read news think about what the organization passing that news has to gain by the story it’s presenting. In this country the fifth estate was a noble place. We shan’t be so naïve to state that that reporting didn’t at times play fast and loose with facts. Over the last twenty years news has become infotainment. The surge of reality tv has infused the news room and tightened budgets have insured that real hard hitting investigative journalism is for the most part a thing of the past.  The problem is is that we need good hard hitting investigative journalism. Politics, race, economy, the environment, employment or unemployment, the war on drugs, mass incarceration are all incredibly difficult, incredibly complex issues. They don’t take to sound bites, they don’t even take to minute long stories. If we really want to understand issues we need a fifth estate not motivated by profit, we also need a working class with enough time and enough at stake in a political system to want to be informed. Until that happens we can only ask where have you gone Woodward and Bernstein? Until that happens I would say the first question anyone should ask, especially when listening to loudmouth pundits and conservative ball carriers is how much money do they make to talk? After that answer has been established, then compare it to your own income and wonder: do these asshats have your best interests in mind or are they proverbial snake oil salesmen?

            After one hundred days we still don’t know all there is about russiagate. This week the shite house refused request for documents relating to the disgraced michael flynn. As such flynn was warned about taking payments back in 2014, and lied about payments from a russian television station. I do love that spicer blamed obama for the clearances that his administration gave to flynn. There’s so much more floating with this investigation, such as the motherfucker refusing to release tax records because he took sizeable payments from the russian mafia after his latest bankruptcy. It seems to me every time this investigation gets a little too close to getting traction and more complete coverage something else happens to distract us. That something has been the muslim ban, the a bombing in syria, then afghanist and now much saber rattling in north korea.

            After one hundred days we are still at war. We are at war in afghanistan and iraq. We continue military actions in syria and across the middle east. The motherfucker hasn’t yet started a new war but things are heating up. We may be at war in syria in no time although we have backed off after our most recent (illegal) bombing raid last month. Then we dropped the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan (how fucked up is it that this administration cuts women’s funding but then names a killing device a mother? fucking priorities right?). Now we're threatening war with north korea. North korea has the bomb and they claim we are being aggressive so they have the right to use it. We claim that north korea is being aggressive and we have sent aircraft carriers as well as threatened to use our own nuclear arsenal. Now let’s stop here for just a moment. The united states has been involved in one war or another for over ninety percent of its history. I was born in 1976, the year after vietnam ended, and since then, prior to the war on terror, we have fought afghanistan, nicaragua, granada, the persian gulf, panama, the philippines, iraq, haiti, bosnia, and somalia. While we were fighting those wars there was a war on drugs, a cold war, and dozens of other skirmishes, strikes etc all over the world. I’m gonna go out a limb here and say that the u.s is the aggressor. We haven’t fought a world war in seventy years, yet omehow the u.s is always fighting, always policing, always antagonizing. It’s always the other nations fault,  more than likely because they are impeding united states business interests.

            After one hundred days I have never heard a president invoke the nuclear option as if it was going for a sunday drive. The last time the united states was on the brink of a full scale nuclear war was the cuban missile crisis. I know that over the course of the cold war things ratcheted and vacillated and there were a number of near misses. I know that the only time the united states, or any country, has used nuclear weapons in an assault were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombs were dropped after japan had sued for peace. Those bombs were a message from truman to stalin. Those bombs showed u.s military might and started the cold war. Those bombs killed, on a conservative estimate, two-hundred and fifty thousand people. Those bombs killed, on a conservative estimate, two-hundred and fifty thousand people. I said that twice for a reason. Think for just one second. What would happen if two-hundred and fifty thousand people were there and then they weren’t? This is not a fucking video game. This is real fucking life. The real fucking lives of humans, and I don’t give a flying fuck what color those human are. Is there a good, unassailable reason why we should drop a bomb that could conservatively kill two-hundred and fifty thousand people? Can you think of a good, unassailable reason to kill two-hundred and fifty thousand people?

            After one hundred days the motherfucker is still at war with the environment. We are reaching a tipping point for humanity yet capitalism seems to believe we can play chicken with the earth and not expect disastrous results. Throughout the course of this administration we have seen the relaxing of epa standards. This week the motherfucker signed yet another executive order that will review the latest twenty one national monuments. Most of these national monuments are in places that are difficult for humans to visit, yet the motherfucker claims that these are a criminal federal land grab. The most recent national monument is Bears Ears in Utah, which was controversial when obama signed for its protection. The reason why it was controversial is because the site contains oil and is of interest for other mining as well. It is also a treasure trove for geologist, dinosaur hunters as well as containing a number of american indian tribal artifacts. On friday the motherfucker also relaxed off shore drilling and I’m sure some of those national monuments may be sitting on land ripe for fossil fuel extraction. The problem here is that the age of oil is over, or ending quickly. The need for renewable energy is obvious. Solar is growing in leaps and bounds and other forms of efficient energy are being explored mostly in other countries but to some extent here. Why is it that we are denying the reality and not progressing into fuel alternatives? The answer once again is money, but  there is no fixing a place once it’s destroyed. There is no bringing back species after extinction. We are headed to a mass extinction and that mass extinction will include our own species if we do not stand up and protect it.

            After one hundred days the republicants are still unable to govern. The motherfucker rules by executive order and even with majority, legislation is stalling and dying in committee. This week the government was ready to shut down without a budget, which was finally averted Friday when a one week funding compromise was reached. I’ll leave this topic here since I’ll be writing next week’s recap and I’m sure more shenanigans are coming soon.

            After one hundred days the rich are still getting richer. The motherfucker finally trotted out his tax plan this week which, as promised, would give the largest tax cut since the reagan era. The motherfuckers tax plan would reduce the corporate tax rate to fifteen percent, it would eliminate and inheritance tax, it would cut the tax tiers from seven to three and would allow companies  to report their taxes as people so as to qualify for the fifteen percent tax rate. Of course, most of the tax cuts go to the wealthy which includes the motherfucker. He claims this tax cut will promote investment which is another version of trickle-down economics and if you remember the eighties you know how that went. Eliminating the inheritance tax is flat out ridiculous. Most of the people affected by the inheritance tax are the rich, and when you do away with that tax that means money stays at the top. When reagan reduced that tax in the eighties that when this era, this new gilded age started. The fabulously wealthy got to horde more money and the gap between rich and poor widened to the chasm it is now. One more problem: our corporate tax rate is high in comparison with first world countries (we could argue we are a third world country with a first world military which is what keeps American influence relevant but that’s another essay) but there are huge tax loops for corporations right now. We could also argue for government largesse is part of the reason that those tax rates are too high. The problem is is that largesse isn’t because of social programs which really amount to a drop in the federal bucket, the largesse isn’t because of infrastructure, the largesse isn’t because of government spending on healthcare, the largesse is because of what this country spends of defense and the military.

            After one hundred days the scandals are endless. The motherfucker is a fake fucking populist, he is huey long, and his people are eating up the drain the swamp bullshit. Maybe they shouldn’t care that the koch brothers used money to aid in the confirmation of scott pruitt, or that American apparel seeded the confirmation of pudzer. Maybe none of us should care that the government is for sale. Or maybe it’s time for that to change.

            After one hundred days it really is one big ridiculous farcical reality show. Over the course of this week, the daughter motherfucker was booed in Germany for claiming her father cared about women’s issues. Meanwhile arkansas keeps enforcing the death penalty with aplomb. Meanwhile, le pen is one step closer to the French presidency and she’s wants to outlaw jews. Meanwhile, in a fit of sanity new orleans takes down confederate monuments and because an opposite reaction is necessary, white supremacist shouted from the rooftops. Meanwhile, something similar is brewing is south carolina.  Meanwhile, were only a hundred days into this administration and for all of us life gets harder, makes less sense. Meanwhile, we hope for an actual populist and any bit of sanity in a world that maybe would be better off without humanity.

Happy Birthday Ally!

Jason Baldinger

day NINETY NINE

little girl lost junkie america

we saw her

stumbling along union square

pulling her hair in and out of a ponytail

drunk, my wife said

probably on meth, i added

then she was in our train on 14^th street

shouting at a group of latinos on the platform

fucking arabs! she said

go back to your country!

trump’s going to send you all back!

when she realized they weren’t arab

she started shouting

fucking spics!

trump’s coming for you!

the people on the platform were trying

to hold one of the girls back from coming on the train at her

she was crying and shouting

don’t you disrespect my people!

this is america in 2017

this has always been america

and will probably always be america

when the train doors closed the meth-head

turned to all of us

don’t you judge me, she said

pulling her hair in and out of that ponytail

you don’t know what i’ve been through

but still you didn’t have to say that

one black lady said

you didn’t have to say his name

and by canal street meth-head was fighting with her too

calling her a nigger and telling her to go back to africa

that greasy hair in and out of that ponytail

threatening to strangle the woman

the next time they saw each other

when we pulled away from the station

she prowled around the train car like a caged animal

that’s right, she said,

you don’t know who you’re fucking with

face red and cracked

that hair in and out in and out in and out

like my wife and i had seen her back in union square

another drunk

another meth-head

another vile racist

little lost girl junkie america

living on the streets

while the president plays golf in his winter mansion

on the taxpayer’s dime

cutting social welfare programs

and blowing up iraqi cities

over a tepid diet pepsi and an overcooked streak

little lost girl junkie america

in her land full of plenty of scapegoats

y’all don’t know what i’ve been though, she spat

then she turned and smacked her head

against the train doors

over and over and over again

SMACK….SMACK….SMACK….

until she stopped like a dazed prize-fighter

a trickle of blood on her forehead

and slid all the way down to the train car floor

knocked out loaded on her ripped duffle bag

one hand inside a pocket, searching for something

as the q train left the subway tunnel

and manhattan burned bright behind us on  the bridge

a gilded palace

a rich man’s playground

just another american prison

for all the good people to call their home

or rip each other the shreds

--John Grochalski

                                                           

day NINETY EIGHT

Americans Have a Special Kind of Empowered Look

Making our way through Paris,
my husband has left behind the baseball caps
that normally grace his head.

We’ve packed only plain t-shirts.

We keep the map folded, out of sight in my back pocket.

We speak in low, hushed tones
anxious about speaking English
and our American accents

and yet,
here he comes, in tight jeans, a small scarf,
his face shaved,
lithe, attractive,

crossing the wide open
space of the garden

points and says “Obama, ça va?”

He gives us a thumbs-up and a too loud laugh before passing.

--Ally Malinenko

(poem taken from Ally Malinenko's How to be an American available
on Six Gallery Press)

day NINETY SEVEN

pissing it all away

the president has sarin breath

and he’s pissing it all away

on golf outings in swampland

he’s shaking his little cock in korea

and waving those tiny hands in russia’s face

he couldn’t find syria on a map

he’s a tough guy for sure

all one-hundred-forty-two characters of him

the great sherbet savior of macho-macho-jesus-land

with the approval rating of a gangrenous slug

the internet troll groper-in-chief

mr grab ‘em by the pussy!

salivating at ten year old girls

going gingerly up his escalator

waiting on the collective amnesia of the white race to kick in

so we can get back to the business

of the business of the business of america

fucking the poor and people of color

while pillaging the shit out of the land

he’s the CEO of hell

he’s the crooked american dream

slick honkey douche bag kids and a collection of trophy wives to boot

a gold plated colostomy bag

with a nefarious blond nest on his head

wiping his sagging ass with the bullshit constitution

as a collection of goldman sach’s tit sucklings

whisper sweet apocalyptic nothings

into his waxy tone-deaf, philistine ears

mr. steak and potatoes

the emperor wearing no clothes

a court jester who can’t tie a tie

reality tv god with his finger on the trigger

and the pulse of the nation

….i mean

is he the chicken or the egg, motherfuckers?

when did it become okay to expect less?

the president has sarin breath

and he’s pissing it all away

because he’s doesn’t give a fuck about any of us

because he knows deep down

that we’re okay

with pissing it all away too.

--John Grochalski

                                                

day NINETY SIX

Competition is Ever-present in American Schools

They line us up against the padded back wall of the gym
the coaches’ sneakers squeaking on the floor
as they roll the red rubber balls out in front of us
ping ping ping
they bounce and we scramble to get them
so that when the whistle blows
we’ll throw them as hard as possible
at the heads of the children on the other side of the line.

We’ll pick off the weak that hover in the back,
pegging them hard in the spine
when they turn to avoid our dominance.
We’ll slap five.
We’ll hoot and shout.
We’ll keep throwing that ball until we have decimated their team,
cut down their numbers, ostracized them through pain.
Whistles will blow again
and we’ll line up for the water fountain
where it doesn’t stop,
this dominance
where the same ones who hovered in the back
now try to drink water
and the same ones who threw the balls
splash it in their face.

It helps us grow. That’s what we say. Life is hard.
This game is truth.
It’s played all over the world.
Here we call it dodge ball
In England they call it Bombardment.
In Australia, Poison Ball.
In Turkey, Yakan Top which means the ball that hurts,
an apt description.
In Romania, they call it Ducks and Hunters
All across the world, burn ball, hit ball, two camps,
this game keeps appearing.
But I think the German’s got it right.
Because when they line their children up against the wall
and teach them how to win
and how to run
they call it
America.

--Ally Malinenko

(Taken from the Six Gallery Press book How To Be an American)

day NINETY FIVE

walking to work poem

            --after frank o’hara

it’s the worst

when the sky is cloudless

and the trees are still leafless

and the seasons haven’t decided

between the winter and the spring

i can freeze or sweat

with the best of them

and i have every house on this walk memorized

like children do with bad poetry

especially the ones that had signs in their lawns

supporting the new dipshit president

which says more about me than them

that is to say

what we talk about when we talk about vengeance

and the same lady is smoking at 10^th avenue

and the same old man is telling everyone

what a beautiful day his god has given us

and the same dog wants me dead on 17^th avenue

biting and gnawing at a heavy metal fence

for my simple audacity of trying to get to work

somewhere along this stretch my ipod will die

and high school girls will act

like they can walk right through me

and the high school boys will smoke pot

while they talk their man-child tough talk

and i still won’t be able figure out what music it is

that i want to listen to

and it has been twenty five years since high school

so i stick with jazz

because i always play jazz

when i’m undecided

except for when i play coltrane

when i play him i feel immortal

only on the next block a tiny electric car tells me

that the future is female

which makes me feel good for a little while

that is to say

this city is full of over eight million people

and i’m so happy in this moment

to truly know

next to none

of

them.        

--John Grochalski                    

day NINETY FOUR

sunday afternoon in rudy’s bar & grill

christ has risen

but my mind isn’t blown by the idea

and tourists from trumpland

are crowding my streets in easter bonnets and bunny ears

blonde mothers with southern drawls

sending instagram photos of times square

posing for picture with cops

decked out in bullet proof vests

holding machine guns outside the subway station

in the kind of day that could really make you hate america

but here in rudy’s bar & grill the action is sparse

nobody cares that it’s easter or that the mets are on

that it’s ninety degrees in april

and we’re hiding from the heat too soon

there are maybe five of us

holiday throwaways

drinking three dollar pints and two dollar shots

the guy a stool down from my wife

is bragging to the ancient bartender

about his twenty-seven year old girlfriend

like the difference between thirty-four and twenty-seven

is something to be looked at in awe

i tell my wife

if he were fifty years old maybe i’d be impressed

which might be wrong to say

to the only woman in the bar

and i think about how i haven’t been in rudy’s in years

maybe once or twice since the days

when their free hot dogs

counted as a luxurious friday night dinner in the city

and we sat in the bar all night drinking cheap beer

safe from the temp jobs that couldn’t even pay the rent

watching hell’s kitchen get drunker and drunker

men dancing alone to old blues songs

because we didn’t want to go home

to that shithole apartment with the bass upstairs

and the gang members on the next door stoop

i think about how time moves too fast

yet too slow at times

about all of the easters that i wasted on christ as a youth

how i’ve lost my taste for bars and hot dogs

and even twenty seven year old women

how i’ve never had taste for cops and america

how i wish all of the tourists with twangs in times square

would go the hell home

back to the states that hate my city

taking their easter bonnets and bunny ears and the heat

and poor jesus christ on his poor little cross

back down there below the mason/dixon line with them

to rot most pleasantly

in that hot southern heat.                                                           

--John Grochalski                                    

day NINETY THREE

INAUGURATION DAY

He stands like a weathervane

/thrusting a finger 

at the crowd./Business men wet their pants/with 

joy./Flashes of light./then 

shadow./The hoopla,/the 

sheer, unapologetic 

nerve;/that ostentatious 

Fuck you/smile. While the 

residents on Orchard 

Street/go about their day,/ 

shopping at Food 

Town,/paving roads, taking 

their children/to school, 

living, dying.

--Jason Irwin

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in TrumpLand week THIRTEEN wrap up

Because I post on Saturdays I tend to miss whatever actually happens on Saturdays in these weekly wrap-ups…that probably didn’t matter during the Obama administration because during his era weekends tended to go quietly…unless some asshole decided to shoot up a church or club…but the DOUCHE administration is different…you never know when these inept assholes are going to strike. That is to say…I’ve been feeling a lot like this lately.

Happy Tax Day to everyone…our annual bargain with the devil. How much war did you pay for this year? A lot…I know. Congrats and a thank you to all of those people who participated in the Tax Day protests…it was a futile yet necessary act….DOUCHE ain’t releasing his tax forms folks….that ship has sailed. Still, I had personally been worried that protest/resistance was beginning to die down and folks were becoming complacent…so a special thanks to you Anti-fascist out in Berkeley who took a beating for all of us from the pro-trump brown coats who invaded the city on Saturday…and let’s be straight here…this was a purposeful invasion by DOUCHE supporters and the neo-nazi right. And of course they were helped by the cops who seemed to be a no-show unless it was to arrest people on the left. Twenty Three people were arrested as a matter of fact by the boys in blue as the nazis chanted their battle cry of USA! USA! USA! but what’s that saying? Cops and Klan go hand in hand…right?

Mike Pence was in South Korea talking like a plastic tough guy and helping to stir this dangerous soup of a stand-off we got going on with the North Koreans. Pence declared to the North Korean government that the “era of strategic patience is over,” and pretty much setting the stage for a coffee percolating drip of a Cuban missile style crisis in the Korean peninsula. Mike Pence, ladies and gentleman, a “man” who can’t have dinner alone with a single woman, a man who calls his wife mommy…the only thing that Mike Pence should be talking tough about his his steak and glass of whole milk…bitch please!

But it turns out that the carrier, the Carl Vinson, wasn’t heading toward North Korea anyway…it was going 3, 500 miles in the OTHER FUCKING direction to take part in joint exercises with the Australian navy…or it was going to a DOUCHE owned casino…or it was finding an internet signal somewhere so that everyone on board could buy a pair of Ivanka’s shoes…who really knows these days….the important thing is that the Car Vinson is back on track and heading toward North Korea NOW so that the USA looks like a bunch of brinkmanship world-ending douche bags after all….USA! USA! USA! 

For those of you with Thirty Five dollars burning a hole in your pocket and not a homeless veteran in sight, Dubya’s book of paintings Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’sWarriors is out, thus proving beyond a reasonable doubt that war does truly foster art. Sadly the books says nothing about how Dubya and Dick Cheney, with their bullshit war in Iraq, are primarily responsible today for everything from ISIS to DOUCHE to Brexit to overt nationalism worldwide, to Marie Le Pen, and quite possibly the very end of the European Union. This book seems like quite the keepsake for the end of global liberalism….on the flip side I hear President Obama is composing a book of Odes to all of the Drone bombings….stay tuned.

So on Tuesday Jon Ossoff was NOT able to turn his wild ride in Georgia into one big unicorn frappuccinco gallop into the House seat vacated by Tom Price, who is currently working to fuck up the U.S. health care system even more than it already is. Yes, that’s right liberal friends…Mr. Ossoff has to face Karen Handel in a runoff election later this year. In all honesty I didn’t expect the guy to win and I don’t expect him to win the run-off either…but I’m a noted secessionist…I wrote Georgia off YEARS ago.

Returning to his pseudo-populist brand of bullshit DOUCHE signed an order that would reform the visa program for foreign technical workers in favor of companies hiring American ones. Yes, DOUCHE wants to make reforms to the H-1B program that basically hires foreign tech workers to do the jobs in the tech, medical, and scientific fields that Americans are generally too stupid to do. But that’s okay, folks….Betsy DeVos will be in town next week handing out school vouchers so that those jobs will all be filled…in twenty five years or so.

USA! USA! USA!....sorry...it's just so CATCHY I can't WAIT for the 4th of July!

How do you stop a sexual predator? Advertising dollars, folks…advertising dollars. Bill O’Reilly the popular wingnut and mainstay of Fox Reich News is out as allegations of sexual harassment continue to pile up. A total of 5 women came out with charges against O’Reilly but Fox and the Murdoch’s continued to back that dirty old man…until over 50 advertisers pulled out of his still highly rated 8 o’clock slotted fake news of a show, The O'Reilly Factor. It wasn’t that Bill O’Reilly was a sexual predator. It wasn’t that 5 women had to endure treatment such as good ol’ Bill calling them up and harassing them while he jacked off….it’s because Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai took their money elsewhere….if only the American people were paid off by advertising dollars then maybe we wouldn’t have ended up with DOUCHE as our 45^th president. USA! USA! USA! of course the
sexual predator fucktward wins no matter WHAT

...I'm sure there's an advisory job waiting for him at the White House

On Thursday evening in Paris on the Champs-Elysees, officer XavierJugele was shot and killed, and two other officers were wounded just days before an election that could quite possible foresee France becoming a publically nationalistic shit-hole like the United States, and foretell the end of the European Union. ISIS has already claimed responsibility. On the United States front the head of our very OWN domestic terrorist organization, DOUCHE, declared that the shooting would have a big effect when French voters go to the polls…..honestly who in the hell knows at this point…that said, it used to be when horrible things like this shooting happened on either the domestic or international front, that you’d want the president of the United States to say something…soothing….not gloat, like this orange-hued, salivating jack-ass does

Are we any closer to a fucking indictment yet?

Well folks…it’s been another long ass week being a citizen of the decreasing free world. I’m going to be off the radar for the next couple of weeks…and when I go deep I got Luddite deep. Jason Baldinger will be handling the weekly wrap-up for weeks FOURTEEN and FIFTEEN and he will be our featured poet for the dark day of day ONE HUNDRED and also day ONE HUNDRED and ONE (they’re all dark days under DOUCHE though). While I have maintained that this is NOT a poetry journal of any type, I do genuinely like promoting the writing of other artists. So because of this for the next two weeks WineDrunk is going to be primarily the work of myself and my wife, the poet Ally Malinenko. I figured since I’m not around to share the blog posts on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere then it wouldn’t be fair to use the work of writers who have taken the time to craft something and not have it promoted….we’ll get back to that come Sunday May 6^th.

That said…stick around today because we have the poet Jason Irwin at 12pm.

and remember to SUBMIT2RESIST at winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com

 

day NINETY TWO

Better Days Be Comin’

Yesterday morning, the cat’s eye was sealed shut.
This morning, it’s your eye I need to coax open.

Last week, a garbage truck went down the alley
that runs along our house, got stuck in the snow,
and took out a chunk of each of the front steps
once he got free. Somehow, we didn’t drip our
faucets enough and the pipes froze overnight
and now the kitchen ceiling is dripping water.

JB tells me to meet him at the bar because he
has some “not so good news” to share with me.
I think I know what’s up, but we wait until
I get a shot of Beam in me before I ask him.

But, as a one of my mother’s good friends once
told her, in slightly different words perhaps,
“You know that your day is not half bad
when you’ve only had to wipe your own ass.”

--Scott Silsbe

day NINETY ONE

A Message For President Trump #7

I have my own battles to fight right now
So I'll sit here, dumb spectator
Right in the heart of it
South Florida, where I was born
& I am starting to realize
Will always pull me back here

It's as friendly as any state is
If you've got the cash
I'll just sit here & act like I don't see a thing
Fascism rising
I always knew it would come
Wrapped in a blood soaked flag
This was always your land
& we were just renting it

You giving that stupid thumbs up sign
From the comfort of your bullet proof limousine
I see you
I know, I'm just a small common man
You'd probably call me a loser
But that would acknowledge my existence
The existence of such little people
Struggle to struggle more

--Michael Grover

day NINETY

Three Pictures by Robert J.W.

day EIGHTY NINE

Didn’t Do Shit

I don’t mind
they knocked over
100 Jewish headstones
as much as I mind
being born Jewish
This makes it
my problem
I was lucky until now
but luck isn’t fair
and when mine runs out
and they come for me
I’ll have only myself
to blame.

--Jon Bennett

day EIGHTY EIGHT

Poem for the Waitress at Red Robin

 

This evening its painfully clear

we are a nation of middle managers

purposeless and ineffectual

seated in cubicle booths

staring at cubicle buildings

doctors offices architecture retail

doctors office architecture town homes

decorated with blandly evocative americana

spilled loudly across walls

but it’s my nieces birthday

I’m not about to reason

with a five year old why this place is awful

 

Rachel is our waitress

her name in black marker

droops in the same sad tired way

she carries herself

I don’t know how many tables she has

but the wait staff is jumping

feigning boisterous friendliness

except Rachel, who probably

goes home to kids and has to

try not to be too tired to take care of them

 

The food is worse than I remember

the tv over our head blares

the tv on the table tries to sell us games

the noise in the room throbs

dull crescendos, you can’t hear the person

next to you, maybe we don’t want to hear

the person next to us

 

my nephew has taken the toothpick

from my burger, says it’s a sword

now it’s a gun, he’s fighting

imaginary bad guys

 

I take the toothpick

break it into three pieces

I ask can we pretend

there are no weapons

there are no bad guys

here is the state of Oklahoma

this is the state of Delaware

this is the Washington Monument

imagine a story where your there

and there are no bad guys

 

Instead it’s a pistol

a sword and something else

this narrative is fed to us so young

maybe that’s why so many americans

fight bad guys

that never existed in the first place

 

Two ice cream sundaes have arrived

Rachel is back with three other waitresses

they sing happy birthday to my niece

because they have to

because it isn’t life

                it isn’t work

unless you get to demean yourself for tips

 

-- Jason Baldinger

day EIGHTY SEVEN

Delving into the Vicarious Mystique

Heartbroken and afraid of the mysterious,
death everywhere, surrounded by germ
warfare, rotting black plague victims flung
by catapults, malaria, yellow fever, small

Pox, napalm, dynamite, plastique, white

phosphorous, bullets, nerve gas, sarin, ricin,
fire, drones, poison, howitzers, mortars,
nuclear missiles, machetes, spears, rifles

Hey Mr. Canary, so you’re the boss, where

ever you go, there you are, you’ve done some
taboo things, the Wovoka is doing a Ghost
Dance in your honor, quietly go home, now.

--Catfish McDaris

Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy"the ghost of Hendrix"Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, 2014, and 2016 he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ. Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He’s listed in Wikipedia. Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. His ancestors are from the Aniwaya Clan of the Cherokee Nation and related to Wilma Mankiller. He’s working in a wig shop in a high crime area of Milwaukee. Bukowski’s Indian pal Dave Reeve, editor of Zen Tattoo gave Catfish McDaris his name when he spoke of wanting to quit the post office and start a catfish farm. He spent a summer shark fishing in the Sea of Cortez, built adobe houses, tamed wild horses around the Grand Canyon, worked in a zinc smelter in the panhandle of Texas, and painted flag poles in the wind. He ended at the post office in Milwaukee.

day EIGHTY SIX

The Circus of Death

His milieu is a skit
like Saturday Night Live
playing leader of the free
world with Old Mr. Bones
as his mentor

inciting fear and trembling
around the world
with ill-conceived plans
all of which could end
the world as we know it

Has succeeded in creating
domestic chaos and unifying
the opposition while fracturing
everything else

while moving the hands of
the Doomsday Clock
further forward than at any time
since the fifties with each
rant 140 characters or less

Who knew this was how
you opened the 7^th Seal

Who knew that the world
would end not with a bang but
a twitter

--Alan Catlin

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in TrumpLand week TWELVE weekly wrap-up

The Bush/Cheney created monster otherwise known as ISIS continues to rear its ugly head in new and exciting locations. In two coordinated bombings in two separate cities forty-five Egyptian Christians died on Palm Sunday, thus in keeping with ISIS’ goal of creating secreatarian strife wherever they go. But, hey, Bush seems senile and wacky now…and he’s got that book of amateurish paintings that look like the work of ten year olds in the slow kids class….plus he’s no longer labored with the distinction of being the worst president ever know that we have DOUCHE to kick around. ..so no worries here. I swear we’ve been fighting a Holy War since 9/11….if you ask the Palestinians living under apartheid in Israel it’s been going on longer…honestly I just wish you’d all: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc…take your violent horseshit religions and just shove them up your ass….Happy Easter.

Big surprise…but I don’t give  a flying FUCK what Steven K. Bannon reads unless it’s a sign posted on the Oval Office saying “Bannon Go Home.” People make this meth-head looking jerk-off out to be some kind of fascist deep thinking; a voracious reader they call him. But the truth is he’s just another white nationalist prick who got full drinking at the tit of Wall Street who happens to have the ear of the philistine-in-chief. Again, no surprises here. If Bannon danced naked in the White House with a copy of Mein Kompf balanced on his head he’d look no different than any other chief strategist of any other GOP president EVER....and I don't buy this shit about Bannon being isolated, and do you know why? Because if DOUCHE loses Bannon he loses the Neo-Nazi vote that Bannon brings to the table...and to be quite frank I don't think DOUCHE's ego could withstand the drubbing
the White Nationalist media will be giving him.

Syria continues to dominate the news with everything from Rex Tillerson talking tough to his buddy Putin to the DOUCHE administration laying the chemical weapon blame on Russia to Ivanka’s crocodile tears. I guess week TWELVE is where DOUCHE and co. prove how tough they are with the Kremlin to show that there was no collusion in the 2016 election….i gets the feeling something big is gonna drop.

In a press conference on Tuesday Sean Spicer actually said that “someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” Spicer….you’re getting a Halpert buddy!

 Didn’t use chemical weapons.  DIDN’T USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS…almost makes you want to slap the taste out of Spicer’s mouth until you realized that he’s an ignorant philistine selected to be the mouth piece for an administration of ignorant, racist philistines….still…didn’t use chemical weapons…punk motherfucker.

Hey…anyone got any United Airlines stock?

When DOUCHE and co. weren’t swinging there baby-dicks over in Syria a U.S. aircraft made its way into the Korean peninsula this week all but assuring that DOUCHE plans on expanding his limp, ineffective foreign policy beyond the Middle East. I'm almost certain that this is going to end with
Kim Jong-un disavowing his nuclear ambitions and him and Xi Jinping and DOUCHE and even good
old Putting gathering around in a big circle and singing kumbaya together.

On Wednesday good ol’ Rexy finally met with Putin after almost a day long delay….according to Rexy the talk didn’t go too well. Rexy came away from the meeting stating that “There is a low level of trust between our countries.” Honestly I can’t tell if this has to do with Syria or whether or not this whole hacking/helping DOUCHE win the presidency just didn’t go over as well as they all planned. Guess we’ll either stay tuned or prepare for a nuclear winter…if anyone has an old VHS copy of The DAY AFTER…now might be a good time to see if the VCR is working….for my money I’m going to spend the weekend re-watching Red Dawn….i truly DO love the 1980s!

The DOUCHE administration continues to ensure that we’ll have ISIS and/or ISIS-like organizations around for a long long long TIME.

And Thursday DOUCHE drops the biggest non-nuclear bomb we have into Afghanistan…..a break from the snark for a second. But what in the fucking fuck is it going to take to get this bastard out of the White House? Do we really have to wait for a possible, but at times unlikely, Democratic takeover of the Senate to get rid of this global scourge? Trump/ISIS…I don’t honestly see the fucking difference. You want sick and bloodthirsty? Go on Twitter and read some of the ugly, deplorable feeds from your fellow country men and women.  The United State is no better….we’re the same slugs in the dirt as everyone else.

And to you Trump voters out there….i’ve read a lot about people saying we should understand you and we should try to get along…FUCK YOU PEOPLE.
 
in case you all missed it Jeff Sessions doubled down on DOUCHE’s boarder bullshit in a speech that he gave in Nogales, AZ on Tuesday…you can read the full transcript of the terrifying bullshit right HERE.

with everything else this horrid week has give us, DOUCHE double downed on being a vile, repugnant piece of orange-colored excrement,by finally signed the Domestic Terrorist approved legislation aimed at cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even though BY FUCKING LAW, federal funding is not used for abortions, which is just ONE of the things Planned Parenthood does for women, who make up over 50.8% of the population in this pigfucker of a country…Between the bombings and this….I’m sure the asshole’s approval ratings will go up. America…you never had it to begin with. FUCK YOUR FLAG.

How even to put this one….Gay men in Chechnya are being held in camps and are being subjected to torture and beatings. Reports have said that at least in 100 men have been rounded up…into camps…in 2017. Of course all around villainous fuckface, Ramzan Kadyrov denies this claim stating that  “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic.” I honestly hope this fucker get everything that’s coming to him in this world.
 

I’m fucking DONE with this week….but don’t you be.  Got some heavy hitters on WineDrunk SideWalk this weekend….today at 12PM. we’ve got poet and editor Alan Catlin and tomorrow
at 12pm we’ve got Catfish McDaris.

SUBMIT2RESIST winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com

day EIGHTY FIVE

ivanka’s tears

ivanka cries for daddy

to like…do something

like all those little syrians, right?

so he blows shit up

ivanka cries for a diet pepsi kendall jenner menage

ivanka shed yo’  tears for iraq

ivanka cries because the limo

parks across the street instead of right in front

she cries because french vanilla ain’t really french

ivanka cries for america

and because she misses trump tower

you can catch her crying in her d.c. townhouse

over all those poor palestinian kids

who live under israeli apartheid

ivanka cries because kellyanne is an idiot

and because steve bannon is like soooooooo mean to jared

she cries because like sean spicer is like so dumb

ivanka cries those crocodile tears

her tears are as powerful to daddy as a MOAB bomb

ivanka cries for afghanistan

ivanka cries into her floral printed t-shirt dress

ivanka cries into a alexey leather bag

and two hundred dollar pumps

ivanka cries because she’s an asshole

she cries for the heartland full of pasty peasants

who vote against their own self-interest

those racist cretins that she’d never touch

ivanka cries for

trayvon

michael

eric

tamir

freddie

sandra

philando

…..yeah right

ivanka cries because the bitch’s steak is undercooked

and the white wine smells corked

she cries because daddy couldn’t change the weather

because, like, all those secret service dudes

are like…soooooooo clingy

ivanka cries because it’s a PR move

and don’t you forget it for a minute

because white women will suckle her tears

because white men nod and say, yeah i’d do her

ivanka cries because her old man

treated her like a sex object her whole life

because he said, don’t you think my daughter is hot?

she’s hot, right?

ivanka cries because no matter what

the businesses

the money

the power

the clout

to her old man she’s nothing but a piece of ass

she shed tears because she knows

deep down

that she’s 100% complicit

ivanka cries….because what in the hell else are you gonna do

in this sick nazi circle?

ivanka cries because there’s nowhere left to hide

nowhere left to run

ivanka cries into her mirror

into her cell phone

because she’s live the nightmare we’re all living

her whole live

ivanka cries

and, yeah, maybe her tears are real

…..but deep down

in the belly of my american skin

i don’t really give a single fuck.

--John Grochalski

                                                

day EIGHTY FOUR

Hail to the Heil

Wow!!!

we elected 

as President

of the U. S. A.

an accused child rapist

a man who mocks the handicapped

a man who denies what he was filmed saying

an admitted sexual predator

a multiple bankrupter

a follower of fascists

a bad businessman

a serial adulterer

a denier of debt

a tax cheater

a xenophobe

a braggart

a racist

a bully

a liar

a loser we lose with

and fool tool of Satan

Need to go out and find me some heroin

so I can turn my life off while he's on

wonder what four years worth costs?

Hail to the Sexual Predator-in-Chief

Hail to the Child Rapist-in-Chief

Hail to the Tax Cheater-in-Chief

Hail to the Racist-in-Chief

Hail to the Hater-in-Chief

Hail to the Liar-in-Chief

Heil President Trump

hell Chump-in-Chief

 

--Steven B. Smith

day EIGHTY THREE

a dictator with no soul

 

i can't imagine anything

worse than a dictator with

no soul

 

then, i happen to turn on

the news

 

everyday it's some new lie

from some small handed bag

of shit determined to fuck

everything up and then blame

it on the black guy that was

there before him

 

for some reason people

obsess over poll numbers

and approval ratings

 

none of that matters, these

people are rich

 

it's the beauty of fuck you

money

 

no one is used to that running

the free world though

 

it'll be easy to understand why

the poor carry such a fucking

grudge

 

and remember asshole

 

as you light up a cuban

with a hundred-dollar bill

 

you can't be pulled up by the

bootstraps when you have no

fucking boots

 

--J.J. Campbell