PopPop

He left the city at 70

for an abandoned coal mine

in Western Pennsylvania

after Grandmom died in the living room

from cold legs

she caught after decades of watching him

wash down pieces of styrofoam 

with miniature bottles of coke or yoohoo.

The most quiet man to ever reproduce, Bob.

Their row home was dark and warm, 

lit only by kerosene lamps and a television. 

He'd make me to turn the volume 

all the way up while watching
Lindros-era hockey

so we didn't have to listen the dozens 

of Puerto Rican teenagers
fucking each other

at the same time
in separate closets and bathrooms

next door, 

on both sides.

"Ignore the fuck, 

just watch the puck."

he and then his beloved
homosexual brother parakeets he kept
in cages on either sides of his
cigarette filter brown colored Lazy-Boy recliner
would urge my father and I. 

Barney and Oliver. 

Their twin birds of paradise
also remembered my name.

They sang horror movie theme songs to me

as I trembled upstairs on the floor

of my dads childhood bedroom

surround by cardboard boxes 

full of my mothers fake id's

and shoplifted leather jackets

in my grandmothers silk underwear,

begging to get through a night without

pissing myself in her old panties,

praying to god

under a shower curtain for a blanket 

that my mom would stop

breaking things over my quiet father's head

while he

absolutely 

dominated the Nintendo 

in our family's honor.

I was a five-year-old peace negotiator,
already hooked on blue Doritos
with a chronic bedwetting disorder.

But I was born to Piss.

Poppop Robert never confronted me 

about dry rotting the floor boards 

or filling the bathtub with his shoes and 

my dad's pornos and shaving cream.

I don't know, maybe he didn't notice 

the car-sized hole that I pissed 

through the ceiling above the chair
that he slept in with his shoes on.
I could poke my arm though the hole
and throw my dads spare change or
wedding ring at the birds
while they fucked right next to my
grandfathers head.
He never noticed.
Or maybe he was pretending, I'll never know. 

He had more important things to worry about, perhaps. 

Barney and Oliver were rapidly learning
the Spanish language 

and started calling Lindros a, "Pussy"
after each one of his concussions.

By now

The Puerto Ricans had invaded Church street 

and had flipped his car
so many times
that he'd stopped going to work.
there where brown children living in
the back yard
feeding on trash bags and patio furniture.

John LeClair
scored fifty-six greasy goals that year,
losing four teeth and the Stanley Cup
to those perverts, the Russians.

I had lost my grandmother
but only two molars from an ashtray
fight with my brother.

Those nights were hard. 

A few years later, my father rounded up all of the kids

in his Plymouth Voyager for a trip to visit the old man, 

with my mother still in a Texas
shopping center
Drug Jail at this point
after calling in bomb threat
to my kindergarten.  

He looked tiny and wet

sweating like one of his cold coke bottles. 

He took careful steps around carcasses and bones 

of the rotisserie chickens that lined the floor of his cave,

mumbling the same way that I now do

about

his lungs being filled with black paint 

and bird feathers

but insisting he'd caught the disease from the 

stacks of yellowed newspaper he'd been using 

as a box spring for his twin mattress.  

Barney and Oliver he said, 

had flown back east to Philly 

to protect Grandmom's tomb that we'd 

made out of the windows and doors 

of the old Krauss House.

"Those two faggots"

I knew it was the end.

Eric Lindos had lost his vision
after one to many naps on the ice.  

He's said, "Give me a hug, but not a kiss..

kisses are for girls, 

Richie... just a hug."

And with that embrace he passed on the curse. 

it was my turn. 

I said goodbye and crept backwards toward 

where I thought there might still be sunlight, 

looking over my shoulder one last time with 

child tears in my eyes.  

He knew I had a million questions

but no choice.

My prepubescent voice echoed 

throughout the uninhabited chambers

of the collapsing mine:

"GO FLYERS"

Sweet Tease

Chapter 1
PART 1

I quit drinking on Halloween.
the morning after I let the predator

hand-me-down lady
with a barbed wire pussy
and dollar store costume fangs
sleep in my bed

and chew on my hair.

I hadn't touched
anything but the light switches
or the locks on the front door
ever since the moon was shot down
and the swamps thawed.

It had been several month period of quiet rituals;
bloodletting, peeling skin,
and obsessing
over the whereabouts of all the victims of my past
who now had targets on my bedroom window.

The hangman's orphans
and
Lovers Club exiles
took to suicide bombing
the suburbs and I simply
couldn't afford to lose anymore blood.



PART 2

It was
middle class
White girl black magic
mixed with an entire case
of her step dad's
skunked light beer that swooned me.
Her father had passed out, naked except for a ski mask,
in the living room
to the flicker of flat screen box television
looping the title menu of an
Out Door Gang Bangs DVD.
On the screen was a white middle aged lady
bruised and crying, while being tied with phone chords
to a picnic table in the rain
by a dozen or so fully erect younger men
of various races and muscular builds.
On the futon, her dad laid legs crossed, purple and numb
convulsing and wet through a night terror
with every lightbulb in the house on 
but failing to lessen the darkness.  
Vibrating metallica warfare.


Under the four satin Metallica flags
pinned by tooth paste
to the cracked ceiling of my halfway house bedroom
small talk led to violence.

The feral cat turf war
under the floorboards of the house
that'd had been terrorizing my nights for weeks
was exctionally violent that night.
well into the dawn, .

"I'm sick. Make me better...
Kiss me here."
she said, knotting her period panties behind my head,
blindfolding me gently enough for me to wonder
if my deathwish would at last be granted.

I bobbed for low grade vicodin
between her shapeless tits.
They reeked of saliva and the dirty
fingers of the survivors
of all my childhood blood brothers.

Garage made opiates quelled the
insomnia sweats and
reoccurring day dreams of suicide by cop.
The grape soda flavored body spray hardly masked
the stench of other men but somehow
aroused my appetite
for
the blood borne parasites
and daddy long leggers dreaming behind soft bones,
just beneath the flesh.

Her lisp
and the scar
she said was from
her daddy's letter opener
on her double chin
triggered
the pressure cooker bombs in my testicles
and the Piss Missile was launched,
clumsy and reckless.

I fell for it.
I was stuck and fixed on the lonesome death wish.
An anemic, half-hearted jerk job
and bite marks on my jugular
might pry open the cellar door.

Thinking the blacks on my block 

dont realize how much I care about them

And its fine with me if they believe in god

the cats- feed on my fingernails

because drugs are just 

A trap

And none of them

Will ever love us back. 

Adopted

The best
never meet their blood father.

The good ones hate
the way I do
but use
perhaps more violence.

budget
and bulid
with innate
precision.
To destroy what you hate.

No stock in love
There's nothing above.

No glory days
No one to say, 'you've done good'

Mom's black boyfriend
can't seem to stay out of trouble

And again it's my fault.

First and Last and Always

I only saw my father laugh a couple times.

Once,

when I accidentally learned
how sharp a broken ash tray
is on pre-teen skin
while taking the trash out
at 2AM on a 10th grade school night.

"I had to take your mom to the hospital
one night for doin' that same thing",

sitting,
indian style
on a rented hardwood floor
in his living room/
bedroom
where it smelled like porn.

And then
one other time;

When his two daughters
grew up
champions:
washed
of

the scum in the way,

with boots made for
first wave punk
and vital female
hearts
capped
in junkyard copper,
brighter than
anti matter

and ready for the bombs
that humans
build for each other.



The poor know true love

The desperate live for and by

Almost nothing for family. 

Other than that 

We're no longer human.

Good Enough

Gnawed Stones,

Teeth marks on bone

Bloody butter knives

In the front lawn

That's never seen a mower. 

Real men chew finger nails
and wear coats
and require eye contact

And some even pay rent

Or pay at least a little mind

To what the kids might eat

Bloody tips

And all the apologies. 
dieseased organs, 

Sunken gums, 

The post traumatic stress;
the things I hide
The things I hide.

I was left alone
in a church for a whole year
in my early twenties.
No one came to see me
Not even the lord.

When my legs grew back
I shaved my head
and ran for the fields
and was promised eternal youth

But youth was a trap 

Too. 

I took so many quiet years
but I've settled all my debts

I thought that would be good enough.

But no.

Malt liquor is freedom 

And I knew more about truth and reality 

Before I lost my first adult tooth 

In a slap fight 

With a drug dealer 

Not Alone

They've been moving a little to fast lately. 

It's not you 

And I think it's not me. 

But I still can't figure out what it might be 

Letters Home

Overqualified

There's a coffin in the basement of the bar I tend. 

One of these nights I'll have a sleepover. 

I'm sure the rats would love that. 

And then I would be king. 

And all would be right. 

Bolton

I used to date a wrecking ball.
Golden blonde with an eye for the future.
Dressed like an Indian
Craving fast food and cheap liquor.
Perfect.

Her mouth was embarrassing

But the pussy was as good as gold

And she was rich. 

That's never been my thing.

I'm full of hate at damage

And health care will eventually do me in. 

But I'm not a man to take advantage. 

I wish I was. 

We lived downtown 

Where the Spanish moss

Swayed and the uprooted bricks 

Made for romantic walks to the market when we weren't too hungover 

To crave vegetables. 

She'd work on finals 

And i was flipping burgers 

In the pit. 

And we where happy for each other. 

We'd cook and listen to some depressed black man from the 50's sing the blues 

And remind each other how lucky we where. 

Although the sun never reached that part of downtown, 

I was happy.

She wasnt. 

and I understand;
so it goes. 

Sunless Tropics

The Man's already been here.
He didn't take us.

I think he sees it like the average
working class gentleman.

That most things aren't worth collecting

Just not worth the time.

Not Flesh
or
Bone.

Dragging knuckles
down dry alleys
where no one sleeps

Hungry for nothing more
than a real deal.

Like truth you can grab by the shoulders.
Or a mouthfull of someone else's spit.

Lovely

I owe you one, Pal.

I needed you 

And you put on an outfit and sunglasses.

You cleaned the blood from my ears 

And cracked me a  warm beer. 

You never share. 

You must love me. 

I can't imagine what that might cost. 

Glad I'm On Your Mind, Too.

The Pepsi won't last forever.
Quarters run out.
Bills keep coming
and you've taken the advice
of everyone you love
to stop stealing.

They're right.

The rain comes
in torrents
but the bedroom plants
still die
in your swollen hands
because
you feed them tap water
and cigarette smoke
in even smaller
rations than you give yourself.

Nothing could thrive.
It takes more than blood
and guts to survive.

Another night in a town
that I put the daggers to

I never used to care
or believe
but the endless pattern
of falling out
and climbing back
has me thinking
that it's time
to try
the truth.

I feel something charging at me
behind the fire and the swamp's
fortress.

Or at least I think I feel something.
You know,
its been a long time.

City Whores Pt. II

I still miss you, 

love.

How you're always tired

And it's always someone else's fault. 

How no one will ever give you the time

Or bathroom furniture you deserve. 

And how the Rat's pace has always been 

A litltle too overwhelming for your soft leg bones. 

I want to laugh too 

But I can't afford it either. 

Green Lights Are 'Go' For Giving in.

Life makes amends 

Way too fucking slow.

Christmas, 2013

I bitch about nothing way too much. 

I promise I'll work on that. 

Selling Whiskey

I've grown weary of men
asking me how my day is going.
The answer is standard
Just like most days;
Painful but too short.

The women
like the haircut
but the truth is
my mother used to give me
this haircut as a toddler
so it's all I've ever known
about hygiene
or how to trick my
stubborn cowlicks.

so knowing that:
all the men are dead
and every woman
is a pervert.

And I have no reason to feel guilt
about hating them both,
mom and dad
included,

because I was right
this whole time.

Lifetaker

It's you who drains all liquids
from your eyes and ass.

It's you who hates the sting of sunlight
on your swollen face
when you thought you were safe
behind curtains and blinds.

You give what you want
and take
what you will.

Even good men
can learn how to kill.

LockJaw (Illustration by Gordon Rabut)

Lockjaw

Halloween on a Saturday
means all the inmates
roam freely
the freshly polished
linoleum-tiled
halls
of hell.

and
it's  your job
to pry bubble gum
and and caked cocaine
from the hot floor
when the lights come on
and the party
begins to go
into withdraw.

You might
think you know
hate
until your
summoned for
clean up duty
after willingly participating
in a human slaughter.

For now I'm an overweight bouncer
at a metal bar.

And it's O.K.

I have a lot of trouble falling asleep
But the biggest problem I have
in staying awake.

T O D D

My neighbor's name is Todd.
He's a about 6 feet tall, 190 lbs,
short blond hair, blue eyes,
thin rimmed gold glasses,
and could be considered to be
in perfect physical shape.

He's a military man
who uses the, "F" word
like a comma
or to describe just about anything.

"I fuckin' just moved in,
Nice to fuckin' meet you guys"

He  said to me through the
rusted chain link fence
between our backyards
on an early summer afternoon
when I chose to play hockey against my shed
while he worked vigorously
under the hood of his
late model Hundai.

"Fuck, maybe we can have a beer
together sometime?
I hear all that fuckin' music you guys
are playin up there,

fuckin'.....

jus' wanna let you guys to know;

I love that shit."


Thanks Todd.



Sorry about about all the beer cans
and rodents on my side.

They're not mine,
I swear.

Stardust and Space Trash

In the morning I'll call home
to see who's survived

Endless mourning
and alcohol
has let them all pass me by.

Now I'm certain there's an end
The only question is when

Left to rot
amongst the dead
and
the dying.

Adrift in the infinite
forever black

Burning a million years away
for all the things
I can't take back.

Hate has followed me to Hell,
at least the flames
don't pretend to treat me well.

I just want to go
home now.

 

The Blue Angels

The famed Blue Angels,
pride of the United States Navy
soared and dipped and barrel rolled
with absolute grace
and perfection
barely a quarter mile
above the godless suburbs
of the mutant city
where crack had a
stranglehold
on the lower class
kids with unwanted kids.

I watched
mouth agape
breathing in softly
the fresh air 
that we never got in the city.

I wanted to be lost in their vapor trails,
anywhere but where I was.

My uncle Mike,

(the clean one) 

a retired Police officer

and most trustworthy man I knew

jabbed his bony elbow 

between two of my
soft young ribs.

"Pilots are usually faggots."

Sweat beads poured from
his prehistoric brow
and collected
in the beer foam
in his pencil-thin mustache.

And there went that dream.

I still can't

tell the difference between
my imagination
and reality.

All I can really remember
is being lured
against my will
from Northeast Philadelphia
in
wrist
and
ankle
shackles
to my own birthday party
where I lost a staged fist fight
to my tallest uncle
who'd just escaped rehab.

Everyone laughs
or pretends to
and the backyard wreaks
of gutless broken
humans and hair spray.
The pool is overflown with bits of
styrofoam and and sunburned toddlers.

dull blades wade gently at the bottom.

All males above the age of fourteen
are double-fisting bottles
of malt liquor
and chants of, "Nigger"
come from behind the crumpled frame
of a burned down
tool shed
where 
the grown ups
sorely compete
in a game of horseshoes
and trashcan lid ultimate frisbee.  

The women all look exactly the same
to me at this age;
gold,
black leather,
black eyes,
and a couple extra chins.
They show off
and enjoy the potato salad
that's been baking in the sun
since before noon.

It's nearing four O'clock
and the cooler
once filled with liquor and lube
now contains just few
12oz floaters
and brown chunks
of melting ice

that I use to
stop the swelling.

Nobody talks about
mom-mom's cancer.

Or how
they're
killing the kids.

Rust & Roses

I tasted the blood on my lips.

She fed me more of her hot beer breath,

panting like a bloodhound after a sucessful hunt.

I barely knew this human but could tell from 

the second her glazed eyeballs
pointed at mine

that she'd do anything.

It couldn't have been more than thirty degrees that night but
where we laid
in the hatchback of the car it felt like the a furnace.
We went over a bump and she bit me again, this time harder, 

letting out another fiendish giggle,

digging her nails into my biceps. I tasted iron. 

Unbearable.

"Whoa, chill out with that, babe, it fuckin' sucks." I warned in the most mainly tone I could. 

I don't think it phased her at all.

The highway roared a few feet beneath our drunken bodies. Reflectors on the highway median zipped by in my peripheral like space lasers. One my my favorite songs blared from a blown out speaker that held up my head. I wanted to hum along but didn't. 

All I could think about was her smell and the awful taste of an other human's blood.

Rust and Roses.

It cloaked the night, 

suffocated me into submission. 

The rubber roar from below the car's floor pan lured us to down, 

down, 

down, 

and to the narrow space between the spare tire and and ski poles where empty bottles and god knows what else dug into my spine.

I laid paralyzed with a beautiful young woman on top of me eclipsing my view of the new year's moon.

At that point I thought back to just a couple of hours before this when I watched her piss between two parked cars, stand up, then slip down a hill of Olde City bricks and with superhuman abilities, manage to barrel roll but not spill one drop the opened 40oz of Olde English that I had stolen in her honor from an Asain Mart. I knew I might be in love when she huddled close to me against a spray pained window outside that crowded bar and asked me if I was, "A Faggot"

I had just met her

and still didn't quite know exactly what women wanted from men. 

The fangs seep so criminally slow sometimes.

Plant Road, Somewhere South

Like many men
my age
and burning through
the surely forgettable years
of
East side dead ends
and
freight trains full of chemicals
that I can't pronounce
and graffiti
I can't read
charging down
welded tracks
through the overgrowth
of the front yard,

Most nights I just can't sleep.

I've created over a hundred
terrible ways to say goodbye
to a home and my neighbors.

At 25 I'd lived in almost 30 homes.

There were mile-long driveways
paved in gold.
And then there were apartments
where we slept three to a room

five stories towards the moon
and twelve and a half miles
from the city.

Some I remember fondly,
most I forget all together.

This Time It's Real (Hopefully)

I was born to find you
but will die still searching.

I've spent the better part
of four months in this room,
drawing the shades, ignoring phone calls,
and waiting for you
to come and fix me.
So stubborn,
you are.

I'll never figure you out.


I know,
I know.
It's time to move on.

Anywhere But Earth

Now that I think about it,
she never offered any words to calm my nerves
after I confronted her about what I knew
she was going to do to me.

I hugged her outside of her house.
The house that her parents paid for.
I had four million words I needed to say
but all of them so useless.

She kissed my ear
and asked me if I'd call her in a couple hours.

I said I would.
I knew I wouldn't.

I never lied to her,
but what I didn't tell her
will send me to hell,
all alone.

For as long as I live
I'll never forget the feeling in my
gut when I knew that this
would be the last time I'd touch her skin.

I'd do anything to be anywhere
not feeling that feeling.

American Legion Post # Unknown.

It seems more like a dream to me now, really.
Some one pulled the plug before I was done.

When I hugged you tonight, out of the corner of my eye
I saw such disappointment and frustration on the faces of
all of our 'friends'.

Imagine how I feel.
You can't.
I promise.

Dance With Me, Richie

"Dance with me Richie
Dance with me Richie!
Dance with me Richie!!!"

She might have asked me a thousand times.
I was too busy thinking about you.

So I finally caved.
"I don't dance, but alright."

After a few minutes she began panting into my ear,
grabbing my arms and kissing my neck,
making it perfectly clear what she wanted from me.

And I thought of you.

My best friend played some of my favorite songs from across the empty bar.
The volume was staggering.
She panted more desperately now,
playfully digging her fingernails into my biceps,
Pulling me closer
and closer.
I could only smile and pretend to remember the words to the songs
that I once loved and the flesh of the ghost I can't just can't give up.

I was thinking of you.

December Fourth, 11:59pm

The last cigarette I smoked tonight
tasted like the cold air of this past winter.
It tasted like both of our tears.
Or kind of like blood.

December fourth at 11:59pm,
that's all I could think about.

December fourth, right before midnight.
One minute before my twenty-fifth birthday.

Just sixty agonizingly slow seconds before it all
fell apart.

Or maybe that's when it all came together. . .

Either way,
I meant it when I told you,
"Everything will be O.K. baby"

95 North

I used to hate the town I grew up in.
I ran away.
I buried my family, friends and a nightmare of a past
so
deep
in my head
when I convinced myself that
moving 700 miles away would make me
comfortable with my own flesh.

I see it all much clearer now.
While I did need to get away,
I don't hate anymore,
not like I used to.

I wish I could stop running into you
but this town is so god damned small.

My Hate Has Followed Me.
My Hate Has a New Name.

I wanna go home now.

Oral

She used to beg me to go down on her in my car.
I would wait all week to see her and I'm sure she had no idea
just how much it meant to me.

We'd wait,
and wait,
and wait.

Then she'd look over to me with her half frozen eyes
and her half frozen smile and say,

"Do you wanna?"

And I'd play dumb.
Every single time.

"Wanna what?"
I would say back, knowing exactly what she wanted.

I swear to god that question stopped my heart
every single time.

Cheater

It's been a long time since I've had the courage to pick up the pen,
or even think about picking it up.

I don't know.

Maybe it's having your insides ripped out,
maybe it's all the people you share nothing in common with,
maybe it's your small town closing in on you,
or maybe,
just
maybe
it's you.

I don't know.

No Division

And I remember the sweetest of things.
Those sounds and those words that age has watered down.
Such a god damned shame.

Hot Water Music.

The winter of my sixteenth birthday
I got my first taste of blood.
That was the first time that I ever considered suicide.
I used stolen money from the laundromat to buy records
then convinced myself that punk rock could save me.

that's why I'm still here.

A Thousand Volts

The homeless.
I wish I could say that they are a dying breed.

They're not.

They,
just like you and I,
are too scared to kill themselves.


I take mine in small doses.
Other, more fortunate souls,
take it all at once.
Either thru traumatic early years,
or failed adulthood.

They know just when to quit.
Perfection.
It's an art one could never hang
on any wall.
ever.

...And here we are. .
You know, after so many years of pretending to be a writer
and a reader, I really have not gained much.

I'm still just as hopelessly lost
at 24
as I was
at 16.

8 years in a tomb.
. . . and counting.

Pony Pen

I see no reason to sleep,
to rest.
After negotiating the wet streets
of a decaying southern ghost town
I've found my self back in my room.
I live with strangers.
They have no idea
that they live
with a murderer.

Day 1

Once in a while,
between the fits of coughing
and choking,
you get a second to take a
deep deep breath of the world.

"Oh My God."
Is usually all I have time to say. . .

Then you wake up.
Then you go to work.
Then you sleep.

Then you forget what it's like
to want or care for anything.
And then you're no longer human.
It's so much easier
than I'd ever imagine it would be.

The Love of My Life

So good to see you, Old Friend,
Old Boy.
Did you get anything done?
Did anything fall in to place for you?

No.
Not really.
I learned how to delay the hands
of a time bomb;
to give it a few more
undeserved clicks,
but that's about it.

Well,
then why'd you tell us
you were going to fix it?

The same reason I told my self I would;
I want it fixed.
But you gotta understand,
it's hard.
I'm trying,....

I am doing it
all by myself.

Health Insurance

Johnny told me yesterday that,
"Steel is strong because it knew
the hammer
and white heat."

But so do I,
And I never once felt strong.
I was weened off the magic,
cold turkey on the day
I crawled out and have been
battling the withdraw symptoms
all alone in the dark.

You can convince yourself
of whatever reality you want,
if you know how to smile
and speak fast.

There's no such thing as a
necessary evil.

Run.

A Little More Proof

6/23 1:29PM: I don't care, about anything, any of this. I should have know better than to have expected honesty.

6/23 1:36PM: Your doing this all to yourself. Jesus Fucking Christ Rich.

6/23 1:37PM: You're right. I honestly wish you well. Never see you again.

6/23 1:41PM: All of this proves you never loved me.

6/23 1:42PM: Love Is Not Possible.

6/23 1:44PM: You really have alot of balls to be such a flaming fucking asshole.

6/23 1:45PM: I learned from the best.

Anchored In

He had to have weighed at least five hundred pounds.
I despised him but he sold me my first hits of acid and didn't try to make small talk.
The dusty television atop a stack of orange milk crates provided the only light source in his father's dank cellar. He was watching sports highlights and refused to look at me when I said hello so I tossed a bill on the makeshift coffee table between the fifteen empty, half gallon iced tea cartons. He slid a small piece of paper toward me, keeping his attention on the television. I told him to double up on the blotter tab for free and extended my hand with an blank face.
Two for the price of one.
He complied nervously placing the drugs in my sweaty palm and let out a hideous grunt while struggling to lift his mammoth frame up from the couch. He wanted to say something, I felt it, but wisely kept his mouth shut. A wash machine somewhere in a dark corner of the basement rattled. I wondered how long he'd be able put up with himself down there in his drug dungeon.
With a fist closed firmly around the drugs, I bolted out of the house and left the the slumped over dope pig to his misery and sports bloopers.
It was night before a holiday, I don't remember which one, maybe Thanksgiving. I still lived in that shithole town that I still bare scars from.
Stoic.
The Hopeless
Land of Consumer Opportunity.
The rush hour, traffic jam, heartburn, capital of the great Northeast.
On my way back to my empty apartment I dropped the acid at a red light, the same light where I was once sprayed the face with gasoline and then hit by a car many years before.
Destroy.
Move on.
Forget.
While chewing on the LSD soaked blotter paper like a finger nail, I walked into my apartment and took a seat on the my broken chair, the only one I owned, to stare out the window until the poison took effect. The hundreds of overfed and ungrateful mothers, fathers and children in all adjacent apartments where by this time fast asleep and completley oblivious to the vile plotting of their neighbor, the young anarchist.
Resting before yet another day of playing those god damned Rat Games.
The perilous pursuit of 'happiness'.
Piss on it all.
If you've ever been tortured
or left for dead
you'd know to never make the tragic mistake
of believing in safety and order.
Sleep well.
Debt awaits.
But not me. I woefully wandered through my disgusting one bedroom second floor home like some widower's ghost; picking up dirty clothes and rearranging garbage and junkmail and books and whatever I had the strength to pick up until a knock at at my front door nearly stopped my heart. I'd drunkenly invited a couple of friends of friends whom I barely knew back to my place to drop acid earlier that night and somehow completely forgot.
"How you feelin' man?" One of them, a known psychopathic drug addict, asked me while entering the apartment. I paused for a second to find out if the shit had kicked in yet.
"Normal. I don't like it. Let's get some air."
We stood in silence on the balcony staring at the moon with the orchestra of insects and foxes bellowing from the forest. One of the guys jokingly pretended to jump from the banister and interrupted my deep concentration. I was thinking about high school and mass burials, praying for forgiveness, praying for the drugs to fix me.
Then all at once, with no warning or remorse, it stuck me like lightening. Boom.
I let go.
My mouth and eyes opened as wide as possible and I lost my sense of sound. The crickets stopped, the moon sprinted across the sky and disappeared, and I was resurrected.
The evil hands of LSD clutched my throat with a murderess grip and catapulted my body into the deep space.
Cannonball into oblivion.
"Are you alright, dude?" is what I think someone said.
"Have you ever wanted to write a song in the sand on the surface of the moon?"
I mumbled to the audience. I knew at that point to keep my mouth shut.
Lucy grabbed me and cradled me like a newborn. She sung softly into my bleeding ear:
"Burn away.
Burn away.
Bombs away.
Come with me.
Ride the wings of the Blacks Swans
of poison pond.
Purple and
White dust
"We're here for your heart"
Zero Gravity Love
Free Fall Romance
It's OK if you can't dance.
No Reality
No Words
No God;
Just Drugs."

The sirens had stopped. Someone out on Pluto or Saturn had called of the manhunt. I was free and terrified at what freedom implied. For twelve straight hours I stared at a yellow wall in penance, giving thanks. I don't remember when or why my guests left. I didn't care, couldn't have even if I wanted to.
I left my chains and shackles in the bath tub with the rest of my clothes and danced nude to the sound snoring neighbors and house pets throughout the rest of the night.
"Do you self a favor, become your own savior" it read on a poster above the broken television.
It pays to have friends in high places.

Rust & Roses

I tasted the blood on my lips.
She fed me more of her hot beer breath,
panting like a bloodhound after the hunt.
Force fed lust.
It couldn't have been more than thirty degrees that night but that back of the car felt like the a furnace. We went over a bump and she bit me again, this time harder, letting out another fiendish giggle.
I tasted iron. Unbearable.
"Whoa, chill out with that, it fuckin' sucks." I warned. I don't think it phased her at all.
The highway roared by beneath our drunken bodies.One my my favorite songs blared from a speaker that held up my head but all I could think about was her smell and the horrible taste of an other human's blood.
Rust and Roses.
It cloaked the night, suffocated me into submission. The rubber roar from below the car's floor-pan lured us to down, down, down, to the narrow space between the front and back seats were empty bottles and god knows what else dug into my spine.
I laid paralyzed, with a beautiful young woman on top of me, eclipsing my view of the new year's moon. Just a couple of hours before this I watched her piss between two parked cars, stand up, then huddle close to me against a brick wall outside a crowded bar and helped me drink my 40 of Olde English to rid another year's worth of leaches and let downs.
I had just met her.
The fangs seep so criminally slow sometimes.

Apprehensive Hugs

She patted me on the back.
That's when I knew I had lost.
Nothing I could say, I'd already said it all.
Patted me on the back.
No longer in love,
no more ambition.

Her mother stood listening in the living room.
I don't think she heard
my flesh burning
or the thud of her
daughters boot against my chest.

Thank god for that.

Halftime

Still not quite there.
I know it's out there though;
probably looming in a cemetery field on sore feet,
or maybe,
hiding under some parked car in a city I've never been to.
We'll someday cross paths-
but not yet.
I'll ride it to the edge of the universe.
To the black land
where the non-gods sit in flimsy plastic chairs,
screaming and howling in laughter
at such an upside down world
eating itself alive.
I will never stop till it's found.

The highs leave me burnt.
The
lows
leave
me
for dead.
I've gained no ground on the ghost.

The Queen Of Warsaw

The Queen Of Warsaw
By Richard Krauss

The door crept open like a grin on the old woman.
She stood at the threshold of her apartment watching me with her sad, glassy vulture eyes through an uneasy fluorescent glow of the overhead pendant light affixed to the hallway ceiling. She didn't move though, just glared at me intently from her doorway, her clothing and head-dress blending in perfectly with the cobwebs and dark patterned wallpaper behind her.
The hallway smelled as it usually did: a diabolic mixture of fast food, coleslaw, stagnant water and shitty diapers. That shameful odor carried with me for so many months.
God Damn.
I placed my laundry basket on the floor in front of my apartment door so as to make room for the woman to go about her business, offering a nod of, ‘hello’ with a tenuous smile.
Still, she didn't move.
“Hi, how are you?" I asked, eagerly unlocking my door.
"I mees my husband." She responded in an unfamiliar Polish accent. I had lived next to her for almost a year but this was the first time I'd actually heard her voice. I turned my head towards the wrinkled old woman. A cold, vacant face pleading to be consoled greeted my gaze with eyes the color of volcanic ash.
"Oh...well what time does he get home? Is he at work?"
"Oh, no!" She yelled, sending an echo throughout the entire apartment building and out into the parking lot. My nerves rattled and I felt my jaw begin to lock in panic.
"He not come for me...O’no…
He no comes!
He is died...twulve yees ago."
She curled her tiny hands into fists, raised them to chest level and began to slowly convulse.
"I hate it...
I hate it!"
The woman screamed at me, sinking her head towards the floor, sobbing and babbling in an incoherent stream of misery. The hallway strip lighting cast its hideous yellow ray like a monsoon of piss up and down the narrow corridor.
When you've locked horns with such a debilitating force,
it can suck the marrow from your bones
if you don't
Run
Like
Hell.
I knew that there was nothing I could do or say to comfort her.
"Aw..."
I interrupted, suppressing my tears,
“I’m really sorry to hear.”

And I truly was.

I opened the door to my stifling apartment, walked in, and took a seat on the edge of my stained futon where I found a pen and piece of paper. Trough the wall that separated our living rooms I observed the woman's retreat back into her empty home; maneuvering with cautious footsteps around dusty furniture and countless stacks of yellowed newspaper and grocery receipts. The springs of her couch let out a rusty screech as she flopped down, exhaled loudly, turned the on the television, and waited.
My Polish Princess.
Slumped over in post-war agony.
Still honing the dull daggers of reality.
It won’t be long, lady. I said to myself in a nervous whisper.

He was coming, we both knew it.
On her heels like a stampede of brainsick rats from a sewer fire.
Finally, a solution.
Rest for a tired widow.
The crushing anger of 4,380 empty-handed twilights and lonely meals spent peering out of a second floor apartment window at the shadows of absolutely nothing at all.
The holidays in funeral parlor silence, the birthdays in bed.
All these god damned hells to be whisked away by his gangly arms.

The Queen Of Warsaw Vs. Death in Boots

I wrote on the paper with a shaky hand, still listening to this dying woman’s breath behind the wall. My heart pounded in my chest. He was just down the hall by now and would in a few hours kick down her door, shut out the lights, and go to work on an old soul one more time. Into oblivion.

Piss on all the wasted years.
Two decades of dried blood
and mystery scars.
A million heartbeats
for nothing.
A hundred thousand drinks
of cold sweat and bleach
to stiffen the insides.
That rat bandit motherfucker,
Death.
Humanity’s outlaw.
You’ll never take me.
I walked backwards,
covered in battery acid
through the mine fields.
I won’t do it anymore.
Do your worst.

Sugar Moms

She called me just to tell me she'd snorted some pills.
Fuck.
"Just be safe with whatever it is you do." I said.
My brain had been set on fire.
After a week of not eating
and receiving absolutely nothing but bad news
from what seemed like everyone I knew,
I was feeling the starved jaws of a Nervous Breakdown
seep deep into my spine.
She was drunk out of her mind
in some guys apartment and I was stone sober,
walking all alone through the city trying
with such a depleted strength to keep it together.
I wont write them down,
but I had some truly evil thoughts
pounding on the inside of my skull.
Who can I call?
Where can I go? I thought
All of my friends had packed up and moved south for the winter.
Fuck it all.
I stepped into a bar,
that same bar that so many of these sad stories come from.
I took a piss and tried to decipher
the raunchy codes and sad farewells
in the countless inscriptions in the wall above the toilet.
"I can't wait to get new tits."
Storm of leeches.
The bullshit flows.
Some young, well dressed kid saw it necessary
to give me shit as I zipped up and opened the narrow bathroom door.
"hey you ain't gonna wash your hands?"
He barked as I left the bathroom.
I kicked in the door and saw him step back
and cower his eyes away from mine.
Spastic visions of ripping him apart
and eating his flesh
flashed like lightening in my war-torn mind.
"Is there a problem?... The fuck?... You got a problem with germs or something?"
Foaming at the mouth like a rabid hound.
"Yea." the terrified white kid replied.
"O yea? Well fuck you." I yelled before spitting in his face
and slamming the door behind myself.
Not today motherfucker.
Not now.

Nails

Sore.
Cold.
A heap of dirty socks and underwear
serve as a perfect bed
after 80 ounces of high octane
malt liquor
and
40 hours
of singing that
same old skull splitting tune.


This is it young man.
Whipe that bewildered look from your face.

The emergency exit.

The split-tongued
good riddance speech
To another town
another year
another home.

No time to rehearse.

This world is yours.

For better or worse.

DopeSick

I waltz with wrecking balls.
I'm Tigers in Heat.
I'm the floor
of the firestorm jungle.
Annihilation in my bloodline.
I'm the tar in your lungs.
I'm the son of a butcher.

The pre-dawn
junkie march
down the avenues
of Cold Slum Babylon.


This is our New Year
and there's no cure
for these

deep

deep

blues.



They'll bare no flowers.



Just 365 more
ways to lose.

Those Ten Miles

Through the wild weekend
and then back to it all.

These poisonous
soul-leeching monday mornings.
The deadbolt panic.
The mutiny of the mind.
Still dodging those
hellbound freight trains
of delusion.

You can't laugh it off
when your covered in bruises.

My heart stopped
at the red light
on my way back to work.
That's the last thing
I want to remember.

It Always Comes Back

She's been tattooed to my brain.

pumped through a rusty syringe
into my bloodstream
while while we slept together
in my subzero
furniture-less bedroom.

I didn't ask for any of this.
It finds me.
I cursed these feelings
and banished these trapdoors
a long time ago.
They came back.
They re-conquered

Falling in love with a ghost.
Deep throating hacksaws for peanuts.
Gnawing on a barbed wire reality.
Blaming everyone but my self.

Here we go again.

61 Seconds

Quick!
Close the door.
I want to love you on this hardwood floor.

Paraplegic.
Lovesick.

Que the fog machine.
Lets us dance,
belly-up
like sunburned earthworms.

We'll spend our honeymoon
behind iron bars
with oxygen tanks strapped
to our mouths.

We'll fuck on the bathroom sink;
like that night
I found you
wrapped around the toilet
after a few too many
glasses of glycerin
and port wine.

Turn off all the lights.
Break out the rusty chains.

No sunlight.

I've got a time bomb
for a heart.
I need you to lay close
and count backwards
to zero with me.

Fredericksburg

I was trying to fall asleep in the van
in a sultry truck stop of a town in Virgina.
The power at the club inexplicably went out
and we were told that we
might not be able to play.
I wandered aimlessly
between shopping centers
and parked cars
like any other bum.

America.
Birth place of Anxious Boredom,
and the Atomic Bomb.

I met a girl,
I don't remember how or why.
She said she liked my band
and that she was 17.
I didn't care and didn't pretend to.
I small-talked then snaked my way back to the van,
half-hoping that she was following me
in my nervous pace through
the gathering of hopeless shit-talking teenagers
huddled in sporadic clans throughout the lot.

She did.
I sat on the rear bumper
picking at the rust
and stared her directly in the eyes.
She had nothing to say.
No good to offer.

Between the morose symphonic roar
of highway traffic,
the churning of my empty stomach and
the awful monotone wail of generators,
I quickly lost the urge
to swoon the girl into a
sweaty cargo van conjugal visit.
I climbed to the back of the stifling
88' GMC Conversion Van
after exchanging contact info with
the young woman and politely
sending her on her way.

I don't remember much more after that.
I woke up, we played,
I signed my autograph for a couple of kids
(a different sad story in and of itself)
and then I crossed that town
off of my
"Places I'd Want to Live"
list.

A couple of days later,
I received an alarming email from
the girl.

She wrote about how much she'd been
thinking about me and how
felt hopeless and alone.
She claimed she was 'in love' and implored me
to move in with her and her grandmother.

She also included nude pictures of herself.
It looked as if they were taken in a dungeon
or cave and many were slightly out of focus.
I perused slowly through the photos
in an attempt
to digest every incriminating detail.

The bathtub and mirror and unmade bed.
The mascara and swamp brown eyes looking
into the lens, into my skull.
My name written backwards across her naked chest
in blood-red lipstick.
The unholy desperation.

I stared at them for a few moments
contemplating a possible response
before I decided there wouldn't be one.

I scrolled down to the bottom of the
message and below the pictures she concluded:

"P.S.

I'm actually 15, not 17.
Sorry for lying

XOXOXOX "

Defrost

December, Philadelphia.
Warm jugs of turpentine
in the back of the
basement.
The nooses.
They sway
from steel beams
and storm clouds.

Lets take a ride.
We're losing daylight, honey.

Chipped Fangs

numb fingers.
chipped fangs.
sewer mold skull
of a wilting
old soul.

I share my
maggots with the
heatwave
dropouts.
The up and comers
of the down and out scene.
The impulse buyers
of the
back-against-the wall
blackmarket supermall.
The fiends,
scarecrows,
dingy barbedwire parking lot prophets.
Break Bread.
Drag your toes
Daddy's gonna buy you diamonds.

One day we get our place on the map
but we'll have to win this crippled man's war.


I was baptized
in crude oil
just a couple of
days after
the house burnt down.

We were there.
We were kids
in the streets
with
the red glow
of ambulance
and police car strobes
prying our eyes open.

'Goodbye bed.
Goodbye mom's secret pill stash.
Sleep tight my pets,
my malnourished friends.'

It wasn't hard to swallow.
I knew at a young age
how little you really need
to get by.
One of the few things
I still carry with me.

Putting the Wolves Back Together

The archives don't lie my friend,
This is not the time
for cautious observation.

It's just too bad that
we never had a back up plan.

Sure, we can peddle our snake oil
to these greased-over
mean streets,
but come Monday
we're still garbage men.
Sifting through
bio hazardous bins of doom,
gloom
and death before bloom.
Dead on Arrival.
Burried at Birth.

No, we never really did
have a chance did we?

Here's the cold serving of Today
for us, the sheep.
Huddled
guilty
livestock.
Backs
and
hearts broken
as the devil
cycles the moon
and the sun
like puppets.

Say it with me now.
SAY IT!
Beat it to death.

All those lines
you promised yourself
you'd never forget...

SAY IT!
beat it like
burning pinata
in Heaven's
"Going out of Business"
farewell party.

Upside Down Crosses

I'm sorry I missed your call, baby.
I was busy-
busy juggling chainsaws
on the
Jet-Black Tightrope.

I'm also sorry for missing your birthday.
And Christmas.
And the entire last year for that matter.
I got a little tied up babe.
I was staking those homemade upside down crosses-
you know; the ones that you love-
to the ground and lost track of time.
I think I got lost,
probably on purpose.
On that desperate, dim corner
in the meat packing district,
where I once watched you nearly choke
to death on the morbid
pale fumes of subway steam,
malt liquor
and stale bum-piss.
That's where I met the neon God of the Nile.
It was his fault babe.
He helped me hammer my crosses into
the rotten soil for a few,
begged me for my last dollar,
then lurched back to the river with his rodents.
That's where I was.

I thought I'd caught a glimpse
of your face through the
rain beads on your driver side window.
It was raining acid gasoline that night
and I was drunk and terrified,
so I don't know...

Just don't ever forget about me
alright?

I'm sorry. I mean it.

Yours from the bottom,

Hilltop Drive

It took her only a two years to unravel the dusty threads.
730 days to uncoil the dry flesh
of the great King Snake.
I watched and antagonized
like a stone cold coward.
She knew,
I knew,
we both said nothing.
Like a couple of disgruntled retirees.

I over ate,
over drank
and overslept,
and then one day
she was gone.
Just
like
that.

It's a horrible pain.
Still.

The Ghost of Center City

Hoarding seconds, minutes and hours.
Stacking them like poker chips,
higher and higher
to the leaking roof.
I'm a pack rat for these
junkyard memories,
I'm an avid collector
of half-empty glasses.
I always have been.

Poor in every sense of the word.

Gliding into the ice age.
On bare feet.
On fire.
Veins of concrete.
Wallet full of faded receipts.
This pocket stuffed with punched out teeth.
This long lost gutter treasure.
These aching arms,
dog-tired soul
and empty
pleading hands.

I can't give
what I don't
have.

But I'm here now.
For better or worse.
I'm all yours
on all fours.

Carcass Hustler; The Story of the Dead Fish

Pounding Grime
through Slime holes.

"Toss it in,
eyes and ears shut,
Don't talk.

I've got mouths to feed.

fuck to sleep.
pay me.
leave.

lay with me,
convulse
cup my diseased reproductive organs.
I'll let you take them home with you
if you finish quickly
and tip well.

I was supposed to be mayor of paradise.
I could have been a sun Queen.
I got lost though.
Somewhere in the middle
of all those dirty stories
that I'm sure we've all read about;
the truck stop brothels,
the highway underpass crimes of passion,
jagged love triangles,
homemade abortion,
coke mirror romance,
dead hooker landfills,
mail order brides,
and choke-sex that 'went a little too far.'

I can't complain
if I'm no longer hungry.
As long as they will want it,
it's mine to give."

Nightmares of the Slug Swallower

The opposite of 'up'
The opposite of 'in'
Dead
sleep
doldrums


1 million months
...........of climbing.
................these stairs.
..........These god damned
.................................stairs

Your in great shape.
You train with crocodiles.


"Stop it! come down from the steps-
Stop running away.
Come,
ease yourself
into the creek of eels,
into marriage,
into complacency,
into heart failure,
television, alcoholism, bills,
killing your children,
blaming God
and the inevitable
.22 caliber nightcap."

Nightmares of the Slug Swallower.
Cold and bitter confessionals
in the backyard cemetery.
Grasping at the ankles
of your fleeting glory days
and could-have-been's.
You've watch them float
away like clouds over a mountain.

choke.
sputter.
fall to your knees.
Brittle, liver spotted hands
to the pavement.
no more climbing.
no more apologizing.
the reptiles can sleep.

Oil For Heat

We are all the same.
The sled dogs to entropy
on foot through the cold highway marathon.
To the avenues to the edge of the universe
panting,
huffing smog,
then finally retiring
our poor skulls
somewhere
on some road
or
back alley dumpster.

freezing and terrified.

one

last

mile.

Please,
just one more wholesome sunset
over the slums.
Give us a few good years,
a little oil for heat,
we won't lie about who we are.
Nothing to Nobody.
Nobody's Nothing.

Choking on Chains

The eyes on the bedroom ceiling.
The bolts in the wall.
Full steam ahead at zero miles per.
All talk.
No action.
All thoughts.
No follow-through.
Sulk like paleface passengers
trapped in a sweltering rush hour traffic Jam.
It rains
and
it rains
and
it rains.
The roads to the South
and the West
call your name.
What's it gonna be?

27 Steps On the Steel Tightrope

Dirty and bearded.
Surviving.
Defying the legions of antagonists.
Drinking malt liquor
down by the river
and train tracks,
next to the fire.
An old friend from out of town
had come back for a break,
'just to settle the nerves'.
We talked of lost loves
over the chatter
of the ancient freight train.
I thought about its engine
and how it had plowed through more miles
and nondescript towns
than either of us would ever get the chance to.
what a shame.
what a shame.
It was a Tuesday and we
both said that we would give anything
for it to be a Thursday,
or a weekend,
or anything
but what it really was.
I had to work in the morning.
The curtain of graveyard mist in front of the moon
swayed in the early October air.
It was still Tuesday.
I drank the last of my beer
and tossed it into the shallow water
before finding my best friend asleep on a bench.
what a shame.
"I feel like it's 1964." I said to my friends,
eating soup from a tin can.
I couldn't believe how cold the nights were becoming.
And right there,
right before our eyes
The summer gave up on us.

The Oddsmakers and Their Cardboard Homes

Sitting in a field in the Northeast ventricle of a sinking country.
Just drifting like dead weight
through the capillaries of the American suburbs.
Capsizing in the dead of Autumn.
A million sad square miles falling into the sea.
Plates shift and its belly growls.
It grumbles like a beggar's belly.

I'm not afraid to go under.
I don't fear what's below,
that's where I come from.

When your will to live
and your tattered sense of optimism
finally do seize and atrophy,
don't just let them fall off
into the black eternity.
Smash the motherfuckers under your boot.
Snuff them.
Right then and there.
Drag them to the river
and wave goodbye as the current
carries them off to the furnace
behind the mountains.

Time to set the world on fire.

I sit with the vibrations-
they rattle my organs to sludge.

Just a few silent minutes to my thoughts.
The sun explodes,
sending jagged slivers of blood-orange
across the sky.
Like used daggers or envious bolts of lightening.
The clouds have turned to white coals;
dense billows of death-carbon bleeding from
massive gut wounds
like stuck pigs.
Napalm showers obliterate the treeline,
hillsides and small mountains.
Tidal waves black oil
and gasoline bury the coasts.
Wolves and snakes lap it up.
The locals wait with buckets to collect their fortunes.
Payday never comes.
Not this time.

I sit alone in my field
like a disheveled maniac
ripping blades of dead grass with my fingers
and
whistling my favorite song.

I am still so in love with my time
and my experiences
and what I have learned.
They can't touch me.
Never.
Not even at the
dwindling twilight of our worldly existence.

Meursault and the Sea

And then he lifted her by her thin waist above his head, offering her silky flesh to the sun. The ocean swayed their young bodies with the current but was no match. saltwater trickled down her abdomen and onto his face just below her suspended body.
Golden, muscular flesh of youth put to work by nature.
I was much younger, probably about 17 or 18. I sat on a New Jersey beach and watched them express their love with out speaking. Smiles and laughter and a pure white innocence; it was as wholesome as a photograph in some summer fashion catalog. Their devotion was not swayed by immature malicious jokes. Looking back now, I realize that I was making fun of them out of jealousy.
I knew it back then, I just didn't have the capacity to put it into words.
I was born to live alone.
I would never get the chance stand in the ocean and offer my beautiful concubine to the sky.
Those pleasures are reserved for a subtitle conscience; the direct opposite of mine. My head and the words it puts together will put more and more miles between myself and true love with every week.
The day I find someone to truly care for is the day I find a woman with a stronger back than mine.
Stay away from me, or you too will lug my burdens like an iron halo.
To be alone is sparing another soul the death march.
That's the least I can do for humanity.

The Bulls and Bear Necessities

778 points down at the bell.
The damage done,
the smoke has cleared.
The buyers and sellers scramble
for solutions with ruined nerves
and chattering teeth.

The stock market crashed and burned today.
A new record.
An all new Low.
Good.
Fuck em'.
Their is no truth to our humanity anymore.
The poetry of fighting to live has been lost.
It's perverse fantasy that will end in failure.
I wish there was a way to inform them;
The Players,
The Believers:
Your killing your self for nothing.

The photos of weary eyed investors,
head in hands
and the American Flag waiving ominously in the background.
Perfect.

Belly up to reality you fucking swine.
Patriots to the dollar.
It's all make-believe!
Your forgetting that you too are an animal.
Income Junkies
who value credit points
over the simple pleasures
of a short-term existence.
May you forever chip your teeth
and bleed your gums
when you choke on another
god damned budget bailout scheme.

It's your fault for building your banks on sinkholes.
I won't pony up for your mistakes;
For your faith in paper promises.

I don't know what I am worth.
When they asked me to set up a 401k
I kindly declined.
I don't worry about retirement funds
or social security.
I was born poor
I live poor
and I will die from being poor.
There's a visceral honesty in that.

We're not gods
We're no superior deity.
We are not the final result of evolution.
We're born to let our bodies enrich the soil.

We're the humble pigs
trembling in the shadows of the slaughterhouse.

Security

Autumn in Pennsylvania.
What a sneaky motherfucker.
It blindsides me every time.
Give me back my year!
My summer!
nope.
you wont.
It's my fault for caring.

Que the dead winds.
Bring on the sorrow.

95% Fucked

Right between the highs and lows,
that's where I'd like to rest.
Count to ten,
take deep breaths,
cry into a pillow,
or just drink at it...
No one loves you.
Be a fucking man about it.

Mattress On the Floor

I don't step out of bed.
I pull my self up from the floor.
The aches and pains never stop.
Misery doesn't take breaks.
Not even at 8:30am.

Fire Road

Truth is ugly and cumbersome
and tastes like rusting metal
and melted down tires.
I scrupulously avoid truth.
At any cost.

Empty words and dead love can kill a man.

You can eat your insides away
if your starving and dedicated.
A little will power can go a long way
in the game of self-destruction.
I'm too full of shit to be hungry.

I'm not angry.
I promise.
Im just a little sore
from sleeping in the bloody gutters
of the streets to Armageddon.

Weekender Part II: Placid Rain

The hurricane rains threatened to ruin our weekend and our spirits.
Not my spirits actually, but those of the three friends I was with.
I went into it looking for trouble,
I always do.
It takes more than a little rain to slow me down.
The more hopelessly lost you become in the swamps,
the more scars and bruises acquired in the fight against burning out; the better.
You can't live a good life and expect emerge from the sewage unscathed.
At least not by my definition of a good life.

We piled into the car with a case of beer and drove north.
The big apple.
I've done that drive many times but it will forever remind me of that glorious weekend.
We arrived at the city rather quickly
but only to be informed that baseball game had been rained-out and postponed until the next day,
Sunday.
I was not surprised and silently relished in excitement.
Time to Hunt.
We would stay and watch the game tomorrow;
that was the verdict.
24 hours to kill in a killing city.
That's what I live for;
panic and uncertainly
and running from the showers of bullets and slugs.
A hungry warrior of a weak generation.
I am a king in my own way.
I had almost no money, but was rich in imagination and will.

The two-door car protected us from the rain and savage Puerto Ricans as we sat in a gas station parking lot racking our brains for the 'what's next'.
I remembered an ex-girlfriend,
the headhunter,
who had moved to New York.
One night a few months prior, she had told me how much she loved her new life in the big city and to get in touch if I was ever in town;
a kind of half-hearted gesture that I thought I would never have the need to accept.
At face value we were polar opposites, but to me there has always some sort mutual connection between us after we had lost our virginity to each other at sixteen.
An unspoken allegiance of hearts
or a dormant affection . .
I am not sure what to call it, I just know it's there.
We had a lot in common though, at least more so than most of my subsequent girlfriends let lead me astray. I had been with at least fifteen girls since she and I had disbanded in high school but I'd often thought of her as the most loving and nurturing one of them all. She was passionate and outspoken and much like me; was an acquired taste for most. She would enter my mind once in a while-particularly after a break up-and remind me of a distant time and place wherein I was able to care about someone more than my self.
The days when I could love and live despite the pollution.
It makes a little more sense after you've outgrown your dreams;
unconditional love.
I've lost much more than I've gained since then
but at least I have what I have.
She was kind towards me and was owed far more than I ever could have offered.
I appreciated her more than most.
This is something I should have told her, but probably never will.

We had spoken maybe once or twice within the past five years, but my mind was made up:
we would try to find her.
I was able to get her number from a friend.
Naturally a pessimist, I was not expecting her to answer.
She did.
After exchanging coordinates the boys and I found ourselves hopelessly lost.
Since we couldn't afford to rent a hotel room, we offered to help her move her furniture and belongings into her new apartment in exchange for a floor to sleep on.
The drive from Queens to Brooklyn was a drunken mess, made worse by an incessant downpour. The inside of the car smelled like a warehouse full of homeless men; like crushed dreams.
In that vast metropolis of workers
and beautiful people we stood out like the greasy criminals.

302 1st St.
Brooklyn, New York

That's where she stood. Outside of a friend's house waiting for us in the damp street despite fighting a cold.
We picked her up and drove through Bushwick, or Greenpoint or whatever neighborhood it was hiding behind the buckets of rain. The day was unfolding just as I had hoped, and morale was high among my companions.
You have many more options as a poor or broke man with an open mind and strong will than you do as a rich man. I' never be rich.
It's a beautiful feeling to have to pick from a slim list of slight chances.
Luxury and comfort will always be the enemy.

65 Roebling St.
Brooklyn, New York

We reached her new apartment building, greeted by the violent gusts of the storm.
After climbing a few flights of stairs she led us four drunks through the massive doors and into her new home. It was the most surreal five bedroom space I'd ever been in, the kind of place one would see on some mind numbing 'reality' television show. I was instantly in love and knew that leaving was not going to be easy on my soul. The guys and I galloped through the empty apartment like hyenas under a full moon. When she informed us that we would be going to a party in midtown later in the evening we became almost ecstatic. But as per our collective agreement to 'sport-drink' through the weekend, we refused to let "later in the evening" impede our progress. We walked through the monsoon to buy more beer, trudging slowly like escaped creatures of the amazon jungle.
What are men to do with vacant hours away from home?
The answer is beer.
Always.
When we arrived back at the apartment I laid my head on the hardwood platform in the living area and drank and sang songs to the roof under its off-beat-rain-rhythm. I felt like a rugged king. The rain refused to let up,
so did I.
When I stood up to grab a beer from the fridge I saw what I thought was a multicolored sun spot in the corner of my eye. I quickly focused.
It was a human; her roommate.
"My one roommate is a fashion designer." Was the first coherent thought to echo between my ears.
This must be our fashion designer, was the second.

He strutted into the apartment with the confidence and vigor of a black woman on a shopping spree. His collar-less, zebra-print, button-up blouse clung to frail shoulders and flailed behind him like a silk flag.
A timid ghost-man floating into sight with colors more offensive to the eye than the sun.
He entrance, so dramatic and calculated, almost seemed to be in slow motion. We honed our drunken attention and salivated like starving predators waiting for him to try to escape.
One of my more narrow-minded friends looked him over in shock when he introduced himself to us and our barrage of questions and remarks. I watched them force fed him beers despite his numerous refusals and apprehension. I was surprised to see him warming up to us, and even more so when he began to talk almost condescendingly about his motley outfit and fashion sense. We gawked and laughed and traded insults but began to accept and embrace the absurdity. Then, with almost no transition from the harmless conversation between us, the room suddenly exploded into obnoxiously bright colors and laughter and trash bags, boxes and racks stuffed with clothing. We had somehow sparked an impromptu fashion show. My friends, the unscrupulous consumers of drug and drink, snatched one shirt after another from the piles of clothing and giggled like school girls while stretching them over their beer bloated bodies. The mild mannered roommate was obviously now in his element and fully comfortable with our incoherence. He spoke with an excited lisp when unveiling us his latest projects, thrift store gems and homemade banana-colored pants. We were sucked in and for a brief moment I felt the room spin.
A mutiny of pigs in the slaughter house.
To witness the most criminally insane person I know, one of my best friends, stumble proudly through the room in a woman-sized clothing so lavish in color and design was a frightening experience.

I'd had just about all I could take of the fashion show. It was time to hit the bars and parties. My hopes were to see the gritty watering holes and dives of the New York streets but our host had other plans. The details of the first two checkpoints are no longer familiar to me. Beer will do that. I do recall meeting and talking to a co-star of a television show called "Flight Of the Concords", and him being genuinely polite.
The subway and cab rides to the party passed in a blur of lights and unapologetic faces. The rain had finally stopped. I could hear my heart pounding as we approached the club. Pretty, important people in expensive clothing smoked and laughed by the entrance.
We entered.
Single file; ready for war.
The place was packed wall to wall with exotic young people. The Red lights hung from the roof and cooked the dance floor, bar and mile-long bathroom line. The eyes of a thousand strangers packed into a heat chamber greeted mine with disinterest. An overwhelmingly homosexual putridity about the air had me apprehensive at first, but then dissipated when the mens room door swung open; releasing the toxic-hot-piss-stench.
From the ceiling hung cages.
In the cages were men.
Pretty men, wearing only briefs, dancing to the depraved music with their stone faces.
A sight that on a normal night back home would have sent jolts of anger and discomfort through me was shockingly soothing. You don't have time for your anger when your a scared mammal in a foreign jungle, and when you don't have time for anger your a free man.
My comrades soaked in the scene, wide-eyed, confused and secretly terrified.
I felt like a holiest of virgins that had been thrown to the hungry lions of a bloodbath orgy.
The boys and I stared down at the floor so as to deny the gay and red heat from boring into our flesh.
Someone handed me a Vodka.
I don't drink vodka.
I took nervous sips till it was empty and felt swim through my veins. Everything outside of 10 feet from me was lost in the hazy cloud of homo-erotic white mist but I could only sense what sinister, secular acts were being performed in the invisible pockets of the club.
Boyish girls and girlish boys clutching and writhing to the beat on the sweat-soaked dance floor.
A pulsating unison of young hearts in defiance.
Morbid curiosity was slowly transformed into infatuation. I felt the Floor bellow and try to suck me in.
The heat lamps swayed from their chains, setting the uneasiness of our closed minds afire, pleading for our participation . . . for us to lay down our weekday wars and let the night cauterize our wounds.
I was in love with the world again.
In love with a scene;
a movement;
a savage underbelly of which I had nothing to do with, but could not be denied or dismissed as anything but pure and honest. My internal organs soaked up the twelve hours worth of sport drink.
We baked under the red lights.
Together
and to the beat.

When the music dulled and the floor's epic vibrations calmed, the freaks began piling out toward the night. We picked up, dusted off, and headed out for the damp streets yet again.

It was another impossible maze of lights, cars, and derelict subway tunnels and then back in Williamsburg.

She was obviously worn out and had expressed the importance of getting to bed. Lord knows what time of night it was by now. I had to concentrate on the edge of the wet curb to make sure I was walking in a straight line. Soft, post-storm winds brushed my skin nearing the apartment building.
"Your going to sleep with me tonight, OK?" she asked me.
I didn't object.
Our sore legs climbed the steps yet again.
Against my better judgment I drank two more beers in the shower.
Half beer, half soapy water.
They went down smooth and geared my mind for sleep.
In her bed, the familiar sound of the air-conditioner in the dark room had me drifting to sleep when she pulled my arm around her body and beckoned for me to come closer. This came a surprise to me. My body, four times the size of hers, was switched back on.
Seek-and-destroy-mode.
This was not my intent, honestly. But couldn't control my self and practically choked on the pheromones lingering throughout the room.
It was her smell.
That smell that had driven me out of my mind, causing me to fall in love for the first time when we were in seventh grade. How could it have survived throughout all these years and all these wars?
My muscles tensed. The vodka and soap-beers churned in my guts.
She was wild for it but I was so full of toxins that I couldn't keep it up. I tried for what felt like an hour, but collapsed on the bed like an ape in defeat. Shame and embarrassment forced me to cower towards the wall away from her.
This is something that I am sure most men have fallen victim too, but it's almost impossible to laugh at the irony of such a depressing situation. You, as a man, spend almost every waking second in search of these moments and to be forced by nature to give it up is a kick in the balls unlike any other.
She laid closer to me. Her soft kisses and hands over my skin put me to sleep despite my despondence. I fell into a trance to the hum of electric behind the walls.
I was alive and well in a new territory.
In peace with myself and humanity.
Rest is a rare commodity for the soul, take it where you can get it.
The New York night swooped down and took me to its bowels without warning. Pitch black winds of freedom and solace whirled and cooled the bedroom.
The snipers had fallen asleep.
The Gatling had exhausted its last cartridge of ammunition into the sky and I was finally free to roam. If your able to catch your breath and reflect fo only one second, at least you've won something: you're still alive.
The police, with their god damned warrants, didn't know where I was. I didn't have a job or its headaches from sensory deprivation. There were no soul-crushing debt collectors to call with death threats. I didn't live in Pennsylvania, on the third floor of my one-thousandth home.
Nothing to run from, nothing reason to hide.
A naked ignorance of the fucking poachers and peddlers of what little happiness is left on this earth.
We leaned into one another.
She slept until ten AM while I spent the night's hours sleepless; staring at the ceiling and
giving thanks.

She rushed off quickly in the morning after getting dressed. My brothers and I had survived with all limbs attached. From the roof of the apartment building we drank breakfast beers and laughed while trying to piece it all together under the morning sun. The skyscrapers stood frozen in the distance. The wind gusts were sporadic but comforting. The rain was now one hundred miles north, blanketing some helpless small town, forcing its people indoors to face each other. One hundred miles south awaited our homes, jobs, failures and a bleak reality. We stood on the roof between the two cities like triumphant soldiers of hell, drinking cold beers and counting our scars in silence.

A Cave Dweller's New Year

spine fires
they're at me again.
I sleep like a dying old man.
third floor misery.
dislocated neck bones
from the fall that
could have killed me.
the most dishonest silence
ever cast in a roomful of
me and the guilt.
the mattress on the floor
next to the dirty laundry.
the light bulb hanging
from a chain from the ceiling.
the dormant, dust-covered television.
The pile of books;
some read, some not.
I made it a point to
leave the walls blank
when I moved in last winter
just so I would have more space
to talk to.

Carcinogen and Tonic

dreaming of gold
while working for copper.
The heroes laugh
in their dead sleeps
at what little I have to offer.
"Here's the shovel," they say,
"Now bury your self."

this isn't character building.
this isn't an accident or mistake
that you learn from and move on.
That which doesn't kill you
will only cripple and maim
with sickle and cane.

I collect jars of dust on the windowsill in my room.
every morning I put the jar to my mouth
and inhale.
I've learned how to not choke
on the the dirt and dead flies...
Just enough gas to get to work, I say.

I've lost thirty pounds in four lonely months
spent talking to my self like this.
A steady diet of cigarette butts and dumpster juice,
and sleeping next to exhaust pipes.
I eat well.
the daily doses self mutilation by the river,
the strict regimen of stillborn hopes,
I can't remember the last time I've gone hungry.
It's a good life in vault.