Phentermine

The mall looks like church these days
And the church looks like a mall.

Is there something I can take for this?
Not a drug . . . all natural -
nothing that will liquidize my liver
or leave my scalp tingling like ten days
and no shower.

Ah!! Eureka. All herbal, it says.
Nicorette hooks you worse than
cigarettes - you gotta be careful
with your cure-alls.

I've got one . . . an easy way to clean
everything out.

It involves pants ankled & grunting,
but you can't do it at either place -
which one is the mall?

What One Could Buy With the . . .

. . . $950 charged by a Chicago jeweler for one cocktail:

A new engine for the Beetle,
a '78 ragtop, unsexy on cinderblocks.

A Goodwill spree:
three pair of jeans, a couple of faded shirts,
and everything else in the store, plus tip,
just to be a barrel-chested bigshot.

Two baby-oiled beauties,
shimmering in the half-light, grinding, for an hour

Or a flight to the Philippines
and three whores all night

Food and drink, my style:
fried rice, fruit, java, lick-aa, then 'rrhea, for four months

My rent, pro-rated,
for a month and twenty-six days

A rental car, fully insured,
driven into the Gulf of Mexico

Biopsies on the three multi-hued malignancies,
that the clinic doc said, "won't kill 'ya"

A promising start to a drug habit
which could take years to kick

Something better: a fifty spot for nineteen people
who gone out of their way to help me.
Maybe I'd need more money . . .

G-note after G-note, at a roulette wheel,
looking for lucky twenty-three.
One out of nine's gotta hit.

One month on a beach, sand so warm
that my crotch ignores the stray grains,
as I alternate: eat fish / swim like one

Oh so many ways to swallow nearly a thousand
dollars, much more than one drink.

Dream

A white room -
be damned if there were more to this -
this image swims in my dreams
extricates itself from impossible schemes
to banish the thought from my mind.

A white room,
floating high,
above a dome of plexiglass.
Since age seven,
this dream dreams itself,
appearing when expected least:
appearing after a day of laughter
appearing when only the foot on the floor slows the spin

A mystic said "it's here for a reason"
Ten dollars dealt me a hand of low numbers
from the dealer of fate
sequestered in some alley.
"It's a message, son"
and smiled with cracked lips.
I wanted to crack his . . .
but leave your fate in another's hands
and this is what you get.

Could Someone Answer This?

Commas are . . . pauses,

and three little spaced dots are a more

dramatic

pause,

so how can punctuation

express

looking at your shoes

while shaking your head?

For You

The cycle comes a third at a time:
dealing, denying, then just
g-i-v-e i-n

Right now, the deal's on
Soon, I'll deny there was ever a deal.

Watching young'uns holding hands,
holding on.

A smoky bar or a foggy campus
makes no difference:

first one, then another,
then the other.

Far

The man on the ledge
views the man by the hedge

the way the man by the hedge
views the man on the ledge:

with a squint.

What?

Did you think this would be
about judgement?

Lemonade

It's early
a wisp of the idea still runs inside my brain
Can I get it on paper before I
give in to
the urge that
has my hips shiftin'
and my mind griftin'
(as I try to negotiate
for just three . . .
more . . .
seconds . . .
before my bladder bursts)?
Nope.
I can't.

Near Breakdown #52

It's not my Achilles' heel, but my whole body:
- a spine meandering like a levee road
- a melon sits atop a kinked neck,
typing this.

Is everything good for you?
Aren't there downsides anymore?
Can turning pages be so hollow?

I'd believe what anyone professed,
confessed, or obsessed about
provided my spine stood tall
because of it.

There's nothing else to do but type:
nipple throbbing with the latest melanoma,
cars skidding into snowbanks outside
while fingers, frantic and nub-chewed,
set visions to paper

A Dinner Party

P.T. Barnum
arranged his life
the way it should be:
true splendor,
gross extremes,
with nary a soiree
in sight.

Betcha he'd never
accept an invite
to a dinner party.

Once here: converse.
As in "talk" and not
"disagree."

In fact, conversation runs like
a mail route: too familiar
houses rimming too familiar
roads.

Normality heats the room
like Bergin-Belsen
in this simple tract house
the first floor choked with
live choking people above;
the basement laying odds
on who'd lip the biz end
of a shotgun below.

The below is me; I'll take the under
blunder
and plunder my way through
regrets look for regreats.

Genuine moments: a laugh,
a wince, the boil on your bottom
acting up, fueled lunacy,
going crosseyed like a lizard in the
noonday sun,
yes, indeed,
that is a life.

One Day Since Rich Died

A dog gnawing on the bone has more dignity

something inside is used to this
something inside must want this

says I, a snake, slithering back to the same hole.

Infinitely interesting are the ways

that people can do anew
that people settle for the old

I lie to my self.

So much time, so much concoction

goes into reinvention
goes into building cages

when only the next moment matters.

it is the stuff,

of angst poetry
of hack lyrics

through and through, of life.

How well you deal with it
is entirely your own.

Back To It and Onward!

Hello.

Last month was a good month of
writing. Though not necessarily
here.

A long time ago, the whole thing
seemed to be a race: between
friends, against Time, versus
Death - whichever notion
would give you a leg up on
your lazy self.

Last month helped do away with
this notion.

The odd belief that words will
flow like water at a magical time
has been replaced
by a new consistency - write
every day.

Has it become a belief? Well,
I've been fortunate to fall in
league with some folks who'd
answer that with a "yes."

Sometimes I'll post here, but
when I don't, you can be sure
that I am somewhere, sitting
with pen and paper, mapping
out pictures from my mind's
eye.

Onward!!