Warning Sign

She was as beautiful as words in a poem. She was a seductress out of song and verse. But when she came around, I moved on; my eyes averted. "Calm down, Swollen Devil," those tremulous lips of mine commanded. "She's got pearly teeth and the smell of trouble in high class perfume."

Funeral for A Friend

Open casket cubicles. Common worker. Government servant. Cremated and buried under wraps of white linen and headless chatter of fluorescent gas. Multi-tasked souls ablaze on funeral pyres burning ghostly shards of rising smoke as ode to the poet's last lament. Odious dead to the world. Odious dead to the mother, the father, the brother, the sister, the lovers never loved. Staple! Sort! Stand on one kneed swivel chair! Balance into yourself, into your life! Resurrect your soul--biblical utterances!! Atheistic absolutes!! Government man. Government women. Govern thyself!! Yellow stickies, chapter and verse!! Glue sticks and inkless pens!! Pencils leaden with stories half told!! Open the casket to your heart, douse the funeral pyre with yellow streams of your deepening rage. Yes, release your self! Brown lunch on spotted bananas!! Bling-Bling, Bling-Bling, the hip hopper cries!! Sing-Sing, Sing-Sing, Benny Goodman stares to swinging stands. No, it can't be. Pension checks in checkered suits.

Stiff lives,
formaldehyde and jekyll tides.

The casket closes. The hip hopper dies. Benny Goodman sing-sings to airless men. The chance was yours, government man. The chance was yours, government man. Passed by in purple folder wrapped airless in green string.

Tales of Silence

Back Alley Bob sat on a tin garbage can in an old piss alley between a church and a corn husk distellery. He drank booze out of a paper bag. He drank until he slid into a stupor and fell on his side, his lips muttering sounds but saying nothing. Back Alley Bob hadn't spoken in fifteen years, even though he was no mute. Nobody, not even his mother, could talk him out of his silence. So he was what he was and ended up the way he did: dead in a piss alley, his secret skull cracked sideways on old concrete.

Bullied Bloodied

When people break your heart,
Find new people
Find a new heart

When friends turn on you,
When friends deceive you,
When friends lie to you,
Search for new people
Read a Bukowski poem about a flying radio
Drink beer or stop drinking beer.
Do Something, avoid nothing.

Nothing is no remedy.
Nothing is worse than being laughed at,
ridiculed, sneered at, bullied and bloodied.

Lay in bed all day if you want.
Dream about stabbing an old friend in the heart, if you want.
Nothing.
Better to find new people, even if your bullied and bloodied
Better to live, a teacher once said.

Saturday Night

I've burned my a$$ on a boiling sea. I've been frostbitten on a frozen shore. I've needed warmth when its cold and a cool breeze when its hot. In the present I'm OK on this Saturday night. But just to set the record straight, I don't drink, but maybe I'll get drunk. Maybe I'll go to a strip bar and employ a woman to jiggle her exotic a$$ and wild @#its for a few dollars and a salacious dream. Or perhaps I'll listen to Nina Simone. Her voice singing Sinner Man till my old self comes crashing back to me in the heavy weight of disappointment.

My Home

I live in a messy apartment with a stationary bicycle. The bed sheets are rumpled and disheveled. Clothes are strewn about as if I worship a God of Random Laundry. At night I hear the plaintive sounds of tile floors crying: Clean Me. Clean me. Every two weeks or so I clean my messy apartment. Really, I do. I'll even dust my stationary bicycle and bring order to my socks and shirts. I do it because the Goddess of Neatness tells me to.

Work problem

What do I do with a purple folder? File it. Fold it smaller and smaller into a cardboard origami. Sign it off to a faraway planet_ _Wait, I need to think. What do I do with a purple folder? Fondle it. F*ck it sideways like a truck stop $lut_ _Wait, I need to clear my mind. I know!! I'll bind it up with a green garden string, the contents held secure. I'll tie it to my wrist and take it wherever I go for as long as I have to, even to my last days, to an airless grave. My boss would be proud? My co-workers in awe? I'll be dead, of course, a purple folder attached to my person. But a job well done.