like a phoenix.

---

---

i got a pint of beer
& a brain full of flies
& i sit on a chair
that has seen drunkards & fights
it's a bed for a bum
but it's a goddamn life
& somehow that's right.

& i still got that beer.
so here's to the night.

i got a lit cigarette
& a heart full of holes
& i know every patron
in this bar, every whore
that has stripped &
fucked through this small,
lazy city
—it ain't pretty—
but really, if you're so broke
that it's shitty,
it's a goddamn life
full of meds & ex

& sometimes that's enough
if your soul rides rough.

my drugs are strong
& and i am callous to the touch.

i got a pen and page
& my mouth tastes like dirt
but i can write what i want
& emphasize the hurt
when she took that phone
& fed it to my face
—i can rise above it
& i set a new pace—

it's a goddamn life
& in the mud,
there's a crown.

i'l'l get fucked up again
& shake myself from the ground.

i'll rise like a phoenix
& then likely black out.

open letter to franz kappus

---

---

*****************

Everything human
is leaving
her face."
~ Jim Morrison, Wilderness

*****************

take a minute,
if you can,
from the meds &
the mourning.

they are a dirty
dish towel wet with
rape, your face
feeling heavy &
displaced with
asphyxiation.
it is hard to breathe,
harder still to see.

inhale fiercely against them
like this is the last cigarette
on earth, drag deep
& long at the end of
the filter, riding
that brief buzz from
the dreams of your
youth & the hope
you held for some
tomorrow you have
yet to see.

life is watching you
from a distance,
quiet & drugged,
watching helplessly as
you wander, wondering
what dark night of the soul
it slipped away from you
leaving you alone on
this couch with a bottle
& pills.

remember how it felt once
to be alive & feeling,
to have words to say
& books of dreams,
to be present,
singing, hearing &
touching the now,
knowing love & loss
& that sharing
came easy.

at least you have
one.
last.
spark.

far away though it seems.
keep it close as it burns
while you flicker & wane.

store what's left neatly
in your closet:
thoughts folded,
well creased,
emotions hung
without wrinkles,
expectations scattered
& shoved into the few
remaining places,
waiting, hoping,
that one day
they might once again
see the light of day.

but what's left
belongs to night walkers
& they know the shadows well.
they are intimate with sorrow
as you are intimate with your wounds.

nursed daily,
they grow
large
monstrous
gangrene of soul
feeding on your already
aging flesh.

this is no
aspiration
no pathway to
sunshine
glory
choirs of angels
this is no
lithium
no technique or
letter of advice
to our children.

there is no going into yourself
with you coming out alive.
there is nothing but
cackles and torn wings,
howls in the corners of
your mind that only
more pain can dampen.

only more pain can consume
what is left—
a shell of some former self
blabbing hysterically to
the medics that it is his
only way out.
"I must write, I must!
It is all I have left!"

and when he is gone,
thrown in some padded room
at the end of a dark, sterile hallway
guarded by more meds &
more lunatics overdosed on life,

you wring your hands
like a madman,
knowing you are next.

ourselves are dangerous &
deep, cavernous mouths
feasting on our once active minds
do not go within,
do not find your muse.

run away while you can

run as long as your legs have strength to go

all we have are minutes
& they grow bleaker by the day.

escape fantasies

---

---

***********************

"I take it apart
in the garage
like a puzzle:
the petals are greasy
as old bacon
and fall
like the maidens of the world
backs to the floor
and I look up"

~ Charles Bukowski, "Destroying Beauty"

***********************

selah this, bitches—

that God so loved us
He gave us His only begotten son
& some postulate that
he is either madman or messiah

—but what of the fact
that only children are spoiled
& a bit self-aggrandizing?
or that, as Catholics say,
Joseph never slept with his wife?
& Jesus was born in a stable?

it sounds like his home life
would be difficult,
smelly,
full of sexual tension,
Mary saying no,
Joe getting drunk, making
lopsided furniture,
Jesus in the corner,
crying behind a fat cow,
his swaddling clotch
reeking of piss & lamb shit,
worried the three kings
were pedophiles bearing
frankincense, yes, but
maybe chloroform & lollipops,

maybe Jesus was a poet,
not insane or a god—
maybe he, too, wanted to escape
& with words become
a god.

***

sometimes, when i am drunk,
i think the spies are after me.
don't ask what spies
or why they chase me—
i am drunk—
usually i don't even know.
i wake up & read my texts
with red eyes & shame.
sitting there impishly between the usual &
embarrassing i want to fuck you's
& let's go to hawaii's
are those texts
about the spies—
no, i can't join you at the bar,
the spies are after me—
no, i can't come home,
the spies are watching—

it's not real (at least i think)
my mind is
stuffed full, overflowing
with science fiction shows—
sea monsters & dragons
all roll into each other
& i dream i can fly.

& it wouldn't be an insult,
at least not to me,
to ask whether Jesus had
one too many,
Tweeted one drunk night to his fans,
"#Water into wine!"
& then the whole shit
hit the ceiling—

& maybe he had good intentions.
i don't really want to fuck those girls,
i don't have money to go to Hawaii,
let alone take a few days off—

i had a fucked up childhood
& i have a drinking problem
& i protect myself with booze & poems

***

so why can't Jesus be
a sane man, too,
who at twenty
sat in the temple, terrified of
stables, hating kings, donkeys his friends,
& spun a yarn fueled by Mary Magdalenes
& wine he imagined he made from water?

he, like me, would be
scratching at a wound
that will not heal,
gnawing at the bones
of our youth &
howling at the moon—

& honestly,
hanging on a cross for our words
would be the best poem
we ever wrote.

ode to Collins.

---

I do not remember the day,
Much less do I remember the hour,
It was like a surprise, or picnic,
A lightning storm,
When I perused the poetry section
Still a bit tipsy from the prior evening—
The afterglow—
Embarrassing pieces of Dickinson, lingerie,
And honestly the best cigarette
Still staining my lack of suit and tie,

And it was there with the nine horse heads,
Quiet and alluring,
Standing in anticipation of my touch between
Bukowski and cummings,

Small and slim,
Adorned in a smooth shell,
The way an Indian princess
Or courtesan
Well-versed in the ways of love
Might lie in expectation of an illicit lover.

And I must admit, my hands trembled
As if you were she,
The first girl I kissed,
As if this was the first time I was to unclasp your bra,

And my fingers, unstable,
Lifted you from the shelf,
Ran my fingertips down your spine,
Kissed your barcode and your price.

And I opened you, I smelled your fragrance,
Your newness between your lines,

I wanted you as my own.
I craved you.
Deliriously.

And smiling,
I took you to the register and—
“Yes, thank you,
I found everything I was looking for.”

give the pastors Ex.

do not give me
age & its wisdom,
its armchair or cognac
& the aroma of the
intellectual cigars
& philosophical conversation —

i want explosions.

heat waves.

i want water balloons
& strobe lights.

give the pastors Ecstasy
& see what new gods they devise.

prophecy and dreams.

where are the prophets
who grab us by our throats
& spit the apocalypse
into our dreamy eyes?

& where are the dreamers
unhurried by debts
& book signings, with
songs of love & tangled limbs
to cause our ears
to tingle & shake?

& where are we?
on hammocks,
stoned & waiting
for prophecies & dreams.

daylight.

i want the wilderness to
wash over me
& leave me wet and gritty,
dyed with excess
& hope sweating through my pores.

i want the sun in my mouth,
burning holes through my lips
so that when we kiss,
you feel daylight on your tongue.