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FOR NEAL CASSADY
You left your blood behind
on a cocaine stained railway track
down along Mexico way
Your bones cold as an unlined overcoat
drifting the sea in an unmanned life boat
You rode life to the end of the line and back
leaving behind a legend of words
to masturbate the mind
The death certificate read ‘General Congestion’
but the body burned in flames
and the Beat marched on
you a finely turned sports car racing the
back streets of America from near and far
leaving your mark behind like skid marks
on the back roads of America
MRS. AMERICA
Looks like Madonna
Fucks like a robot
IQ of 100
Took home economics
Has parenting skills
Says, Yes Dear
And means it
Doesn’t mind you going out
With the boys
Complains only to herself
Never has a headache
STRETCHING THE IMAGINATION
Ex-barfly
ex-drunk
diminished Don Juan
kissing the pages with my words
No stash graying moustache
watching Larry Curly and Moe
down at the Last Picture Show
Head gears in reverse
going back in time
pork loin roast and sweet potatoes
roasted on a fire of jazz
here alone tonight
dancing with my nerve ends
feeling like a tightrope walker
walking a high tension wire
TOUGH GUY POETS
You know who they are
They appear in the same magazines
Like hired bounty hunters
From the old frontier
No one is spared from their anger
Their words serving as bullets
For the mind.
They fill the small press magazines
Like sardines crammed into
A fat man’s mouth.
They talk about eating pussy
As if it were a vitamin supplement
Though their women might snicker
Behind their backs.
They do a lot of fucking
With the typewriter keys
Which translates into a lot of shucking.
Oh they look tough enough when
You meet them face to face
Strutting their stuff at city bars
Half-way into a drunk
But when they sober up
They’re little more than failed cowboys
Who were never invited to the shootout
At the OK Corral.
UN TITLED
the thought control police
pay me an unexpected visit
chasing me through one way streets
placing nets down below
when they see me on the roof
of an abandoned hotel
they want me alive
I’m no good to them dead
they chase me up and down the
fire escape like keystone cops
there is no eluding them
much to the amusement of the alley women
munching on potato chips and sipping beer
at night they get serious
and bring in the big guns:
Bob Dylan and Arrested Development
Meat Loaf and The Grateful Dead
and should I somehow find shelter
there’s Joan Baez standing on a ladder
with no middle rung singing Amazing Grace
When I make it to the top of the mountain
I find a giant condo on top of a dinosaur’s nest
and while I don’t like the look on its face
I can’t bring myself to look down below
at the sight of the men with their torches
and flashlights looking like village idiots
in search of the son of Frankenstein
3300 CLUB
she sits alone at the
3300 Club
an Irish bar in the outer Mission
wearing wrinkled clothes
and pulled down hose
gives new meaning to weather beaten
sitting alone drinking staring
no one caring
her eyes fixed on the bar room
mirror looking like a pallbearer
back from a funeral
+ Michael Jose Morales Arriola + Shimanta Bhattacharyya + Christopher T. George + David Thornbrugh + William Taylor JR + Frances Le Moin + Marrissa Ranello + Sam Smith + Dee McMahon + Paul Davidson + Jesse Freeman + Lynn Strogin + J. J. Steinfeld + Josef Lesser + Mark Farrell + Matt Fallaize + Jervis Martin + David Trame