11:30 p.m.

I forgot what it was that was said. It’s the time of
the day that leaves the unrealistic summer smiles.

I can’t identify with anything anymore. Well, maybe the burn of
the television’s sporadic light that steals what was meant.

I think I should organize a decampment from the poisons,
the repentant hangman’s gallows committed within the county lines.

I’m drained of will,
a water doused sock hung from an isolated voice.

I don’t know what else there is to say about the
assignation of the sun’s methamphetamines.

I float, an uncradled cat clawing tomorrow like
a piñata del diablo strung above volcanic eruptions.

Semi-Autobiographical Drive

1.

I’d rather be on the road with drunkards than
drive when the dumb are out in droves.

Today happens to be one of those dreaded days.

The dimwits swerve into two lanes of traffic only to
cut me off, make a sharp left on
Jefferson Blvd.

Probably
on his way to buy a new fanny pack or to
pay for a generic haircut.

I keep navigating the streets trying to make it to the bank.
Deposits must be in by 3 p.m.
to get credit for
that business day.

As I turn left on Washington St.
a van full of dry-wallers jumps a curb.

Spackle and nails detonate from the back doors,
Tetanus shots for all.

Future flat tires are the property of your credit card’s interest rate.
Men and women in fashionable suits plan vacations
on our dollars.

2.

At the bank’s drive through
the people are unprepared. Money here,
a check or two there.
Empty bank slips sleep in their laps like
their underdeveloped brains hibernating
in plastic skulls.

All I want is to deposit my check from the warehouse.
My slip was completed before I left for
nauseating day.

The tube finally came down the shoot.
A happy father waiting for a newborn,
lead balls fulminate from antique cannons.
I pull the shifter to drive, put all my weight on
my Jeep’s gas pedal,

head North on Lafayette Blvd.

At Colfax St.
I turn right, stop at a red light. The Asian market is
abuzz with middle-class

white people pushing tiny carts full of
exotic groceries boated in from the far East.

The goods didn’t come down the violent St. Joseph River.
Diesel fueled 18 wheelers hauled the rice, soy sauce, baby corn, etc. to
the petite shop resting amongst businesspeople and bums, students and
wannabe freshwater surfers,
poets and prisoners.

Green light appears from a yellow metal heaven.
Gas pedal floored again until I reach the bridge over the river.
Slow down,

look out the glassless window where the current picks up and
carries the dreams of fishermen upstream to
the moon queen of Michigan.

The Thoughts of Some Old Guy Who Has Lost a War

No boring fetish to keep locked away
in a musty closet or
a war-time footlocker that
once kept foolish love letters.

No maid uniforms, leather whips, handcuffs or
hot-waxed nipples to speak of.

My deviance stands at attention before me.
Wine, liquor, and beer bottles keep cheering for the next
word to be colossal in omnipotence.

An unthinkable task.
One that’s harder and harder to achieve in
this recycled life. So

I suffer the merriment of
self-medication, children’s lies,

panoramic bouquets of gore.

Like a drunk lover falling all over the ground
I carry the burden of someone else’s tribulations and
lightweight continuation.

The Capital of the Midwest

Wreckless Eric wrote about finding
the perfect woman
in the Bahamas or
maybe Tahiti.

I didn’t have to go to either to
find my love.

She lived just northwest of me,
in the city. She roamed with the Bears, Cubs,
Wolves, and Bulls.
Alleys were just spacious enough.

Fire once owned the city’s wind.
Consumed it raw,

meat crying blood dripping down
on
the O'Leary's cow.

I didn’t know my love then.
Like seeds germinating for decades we
awaited angel bees to rocket down and
copulate with ancestors.