06. Featuring: A D Winans

+ 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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