4 POEM$

(posted on Alternative REEl)

YOUR SOUL IS FILTHY

I’ve never liked perfumes
I like feet to smell like feet
And armpits to smell like armpits
And pussy to smell like pussy
(and I like my cock to smell like pussy as well)

I feel the same way about my soul
I want my soul
To smell like a soul
To feel like a soul

to have all the bruises
all the stretch marks
all the untamed hair
a soul should have.

I want it
to spend too much money at the strip clubs
to watch rocky movies when it should be sleeping
to go the distance
to have the eye of the tiger
to crave
to feel nostalgic
to grieve for
everything
even the things it hasn’t experienced yet


________________________________________

TOILET PAPER


Toilet paper is more helpful than poetry

But I prefer poetry.

When you finish a book of poems

you can put it on your book shelf,


problem is

most the crap I read

is so bad

it should be flushed down the toilet

And I seem to be out of toilet paper

________________________________________

FOR LEWIS

He bought us margaritas
And we all cheered.

I had known this savage for a long time
He was kind of a sissy.
He always had this
Soft
tender
scraped-knee of a soul

he talked like an old woman.
Even as he fed us these margaritas
He made us feel like
we were being given milk and cookies
by somebody’s grandma.

(you know what I mean
Double stuffed, mint
Oreo cookies,
The type of thing that I avoid
Cause they’ll make the man-tits
Grow a cup size)

He loved cookies
He was a big fatty

And gentle and
Looked like
he could get his ass kicked by anything

Except the ocean.
He was a fisherman.
He’d go out
Into that big old ocean
fish
And then
He’d come back, pay rent, hit the bars
And buy us all margaritas

He’d get drunk and sentimental
Start talking about my mom
And his grandmother(who raised him)
And about how they were both dead

And he’d get sad

He was always sad as a kid too
And like all sad kids
He was bullied a lot.
I got into my first fight over him
(And luckily it was my last one
Cause I got my ass kicked)

Lewis died a few years ago.
A drug overdose.
He was living in North Carolina.

I didn’t like that he had left our home
and started fishing somewhere else.
It made me homesick for him
(funny
how people like me
think the ocean belongs
To the land it breaks against.
My friend, Lewis, was a fisherman
And I’m sure he knew better than that)

________________________________________


BUKOWSKI VS KEROUAC

I tried to set up at battle
Between
Bukowski and Kerouac,
But they
Just ended up getting drunk
And passing out.

Neither of them were easy to deal with
Even in their sleep

Kerouac
Made a lot of noise
He talked in his sleep
He rambled on
About Buddha
And the void

Then
He started pretending to play the saxophone,
Which actually looked more like
He was trying to suck his own dick

Bukowski slept next to him
He snored, farted, woke up
Puked, took a bath, started drinking
Took another bath
Drank some more
Then wrote a few poems
kept drinking
so on...

when he was done
He shoved the poetry
In Kerouac’s mouth
To muffle
The crazed gibberish
He kept mumbling

There was no waking Kerouac
He
Was stuck
And drowning
In his own wet dream.
poor bastard…

I guess
Bukowski won
By default