Freaks

1.

I have four nipples.
She has one working eye.

I met her in a downtown bar.
I had come from my uncle’s wedding.
She had come from Chicago,
by way of Lafayette, Indiana

She said that she wanted to
kiss me.
We left the metal barstools;
went out the back door,
to the dumpsters
in the alley,
behind the bar.

Our lips collapsed
on each other’s like
tulips folding in the
Midwestern night.

I brought her beautiful face
closer to my own,
my hands steady,
nervous.

She has the perfume of Tequila.

Her sight floats me
to tranquility.

She tastes like heaven.

She gives me a comfort
like reaching the water’s surface
before dying,
laying on a patch of grass
smoking cigarettes.


She told me to pick her up.
I did. She wrapped

her legs around my waist.

My left hand braced the middle of
her shoulder blades.
Held her amorously, secure.
Reaching under her right arm,
My right hand touched
the left side of her face. The kisses
left us wondering more.

The bar’s owner walked out,
my neck noosed by her arms,
put a bag of bottles in the dumpster and
told us to have

a great night.


2.

At a gas station
we bought cigarettes.
A man with disheveled hair asked
for change,
a map to the cherry-eyed devils
who are waiting,
alone,
for new deaths.

We could provide neither.

I grabbed her hand and we ran
across the parking lot,
jumped the parking blocks.
It felt like we had robbed everyone’s
desires, their innocent adolescent hopscotch.

In my jeep she dictated the music.
I took a right on Plaid Avenue, down the small incline.
A sharp right at 45mph, up the hill that borders Loony Lane,
lead us to a through street. The one the lead to
my front door. Shoes and pasts were kicked to the floor.

3.

We sponged off each other for almost
three lazy days. Our arms,
legs arrested each other.

We were attached,
human leeches,
fed off each other’s craze.

We did have that
great night that
the bar owner told us to have, but the

real greatness was the additional two days she stayed.

War Plan

Welcome to genocide, brothers and sisters!
Just think of the fun we’re going to have.

Mike’s got the helium balloons on order,
Tricia has three microbrew kegs reserved.
I’m not sure, but I think Clem’s bringing
West Virginia moonshine.

Hell, maybe I’ll pick up a veggie tray,
cocktail weenies.

Oh man, can you feel it?
Doesn’t it make you want to jump up?

Punch
the
sky.

What’s that you say? How’s this maneuver going to get pulled off?
I’m glad you asked. Well, you see, it hopefully will go something like this,
mix two parts luck, a pinch of subliminal patriotic-pop-music-horse-shit,
a warm dash of organic propaganda smiles, and

unrestrained force (optional).

Good news,
Clem is
bringing
the moonshine!

Have you ever had some? Oh, man does it have
a pleasant scorching personality,

a lasting first impression.

Pardon me, but it seems
I’ve deviated from the goal.

Where were we?

Long Way Down

I.

She ran scantily
enveloped in aluminum foil
as the rain
ran down grey. A mindless taxiing between

bagpipe solos, lightning flashes to
greet her.

A vision, the smallest bit of
dead. The smell of bent necked
swans taking flight form
from the green lagoon escapes
the day.

A cross-eyed donkey perched
upon the highest stone, resting,

to decipher the western wind’s
code for go. The low lands have been
stretched like medieval torture fun.


II.

She spread the land like a gypsy.
Songs, theft, joy is what was
sprinkled over the pay phones,
the waste water refineries.

The cricket warriors spread out,
troops of musical shields try to muffle

her gun shot laughter.

But her cold, cold life has left a
sightless fall down the years, weightless
death, prisoner of her own keepsakes.

May 13th – 19th

Its five days before one of my best friend’s wedding.
I’ve got to pick up the tux this black
Thursday. While I’m there I also have to
switch out a defective button-up shirt,
an iron’s scar drapes three quarters around the
left wrist.

On these random happened between the above occurred:


1955

A wild crowd riots in
Jacksonville, Florida when
Elvis Presley said,
“Girls, I’ll see you backstage.”
Insane spectators cause the first such
rampage a
King’s performance
has ever triggered.


1974

Over fifty people,
in Washington,
were cut and sliced
as fans fought the ground and
the walls with bottles.
Shards of glass
leapt from beneath,

backflipped off cement barricades.
Points sharp.

The Jackson Five played
inside.


1976

North of London
Keith Richards,
of the Rolling Stones,
wrecked his car.
Drugs were found.
A fine levied later.
He still continues to
party.


1984

Dead at thirty-five,
Andy Kaufman.


1998

Los Angeles was the home
of Frank Sinatra’s death.
Heart attack.
Age eighty-two.

Seinfeld signed off,
too.

2007

Neil Kelly got
sunburned on the
whiffleball field.
Wrote this poem.

Man’s Best Friend

I sit addled by the confusion.
That dizziness that creeps from

the mind, ignores the sleeping soul, rests
upon shoulders. It crawls the skin, takes
my thoughts and movement hostage.

It brings me further

down

day
by
day.

Like a black dog tied to a dying crab apple tree,
the sun’s anger burning, flies disappear its ears and
eyes, ants cut off its paws, fleas

taking it all in.

Too weak to for suicidal daydreams,

wondering if
there’s still bite.

I watch the dog. It lies,
belly down, affection leaves
some food and water.
I don’t think it has a name, an

observed existence. I lay with the dog,
tied to the fading past,

we’re forgotten together.

Waitresses Surround, Bartender Waits

I.

Young waitress, no more than 19,
full of life and immature hope
flirts lust. Soggy warm thighs of
a tease fills imagination. They slap and
rub each other,
friction strides. A short, faded

denim skirt surrounds her thighs like a
lampshade that hides
the on/off switch. The lamp’s base
constructed of animal pelt boots,
maybe puma.

But white fur flushes out, towards the top,
tickles the knee.

Some of the older drunks at the bar
force hugs of friendship on her. They
love young breasts
resting on empty beer bellies. The smell of

exotic fruit seduces from her hair. Brown fingers grope,
slink into the drunk’s rot mouth.

II.

The bartender laughs, mixes drinks,
passes a book of matches to an old man. The
old man thanks the bartender for the matches and tells him,
“When you do something you like for too long you’ll become
what you hate and hate what you once loved.” A man in a
Notre Dame hat asked the bartender to put on golf.

A middle-aged woman glides from the kitchen’s entrance. She
grabs a brown plastic tray full of beers and mixed drinks from the
bar. She’s in the second hour of a double, four cigarettes inhaled. Her shirt
already has something wet on it. Just under her left saggy breast.

The waitress struts over to a booth occupied by some
guys in their early twenties, places the tray on an adjacent table, and
grabs the drinks for the guys on her left first. She gives the ones to her right
theirs and walks over to a table with a man and two women. The man
says something to the waitress and she goes over to an empty table,
retrieves a black ashtray, takes it back to the threesome in the booth.

The waitress takes their drink order and heads back to the bartender. She pushes
in a chair in on her way. The repetition will continue every hour
of her shifts. It always does. There’s no golden sun waiting when
the people are done. Just small amounts of green and silver.

III.

The old waitress peers out,
over reading glasses;
drugstore bifocals
coated black.

She’s got a bill
for a party
of eight.
Automatic
twenty percent
gratuity.

The shift just got better.
An extra five dollars added to
the gratuity tip.
An action worthy of
a loud toast
to the passage
of another night
complete.

IV.

A brown haired lady appears from the staircase. She and her
husband own the place. She walks over to the bar and gives
the bartender change. A regular says hello to her and she smiles,

gives him a shot of whiskey on the house.
She strolls over to the salad bar, checks the
lettuce, tomatoes, dressing, and the
other items that one can use to make
their perfect salad. She turns around and
inspects the three metal soup containers, swirls each
a couple of times and goes
back down the stairs.

V.

Finally, my waitress comes back to me. She asks, “Have another?” and I say, “Please.” Her brown, curly, hair dangled like men in the noose. The locks of hair were bouncing spirals, corkscrews, kitten’s paws. She was an attractive waitress. I’m glad I sat in her section. The wooden boards here seem more lumbar accommodating when she smiles.

Crumbling the Ancient City

Fog engulfs my everywhere. Passing by my reflection,
not asking for change or a smoke, but just going beyond me. It seems to be somewhat
of a taunter. It hovers in my personal space, cracks the soap bubble of control.
The dirt that coats me turns to grime. A drippy green rolls over freckles.

The dark skin speckles float about like
the islands of Micronesia. Hang out as if stains from
orange marmalade and ripe tomatoes that were thrown,
exploded onto a neighbor’s cheap privacy fence. The green

covers the skin like lava flooding a savannah,
crumbs painted to the table by spilled milk.

I Have No Idea What I’m Even Doing Tonight

Why spend all night
refilling water bottles from the tap?
My weird cousins came over and made me
a firm believer in the war of water balloons.
They smash like poems. The shrapnel
continuously rolling

over place,
real and fake, like Buffalo, New York,
Monkey Wards,
Merrimac, Kentucky,
Moldy Dead Guy Island,
Cat Crunch Meow National Park,
Monterrey, Mexico,
Beirut, Lebanon,
The Kevorkian School of Veterinarian Medicine and Ethics,
Bogotá, Columbia,
The Caves of San Francisco’s Non Art Community,
Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Hell, maybe even South Bend, Indiana.

Panic covers the access to sensory retrieval, smashes a beach,
welts from a liquid whip bruises the body made of granules. The

sand mutates darker as the water and the sun have
their way with it. The tide reaches for a lady,
in a plastic folding chair, reading something.

Possibly, her thoughts are of the one who was here and
then departed. Broke onto the shore, only to
retreat back to nature.

Who could’ve seen any of this coming?