“I put it between my teeth like a dead mouse and let the blood drip down my chin.” - Gerald Stern

I Get Wet

Ferocious and feral? I’m peripheral. On the exterior of my own dreams, a starving vagrant outside of a baker’s window.

His patrons like to pretend I’m not there. Disheveled and tattered, an unsightly distraction. Salivation, as opposed to salvation, dribbles like a slow-mo Spaulding off cracked lips as that spit abets hunger’s codependency to hope, a delusion born of desperation.

For the price of a cup of coffee a day, I could be filled with an unspecified elation called bliss. No money for such a beverage makes for a hackneyed voyeur on the outside looking in, while the idealized occupants of fantasy still gaze away.

Disgust and revulsion disguised as mock pity hangs like spectacles on their alabaster countenances. They don’t want me to know that they loathe me.

Such a revelation is kept quite hush-hush and far away from the beggar or vagabond safely beyond the glass. Those who have attained what I want fear revolution constantly.

So as an actor on their screen, I have to bring the drama to them. To make them care, aware of the misfortunes of those still laboring in the mines of mediocrity.

First, I present the blade, one I forged out of my own self-righteousness. Bestowing it as an offering, as tribute.

Second, a ceremonial sword dance commences. All the trappings of tradition must be observed, because what would we be without it?

A spin here, a plié there and heads begin to turn. No need to make a sound, they can’t hear me. The long and hard straight edges of the saber strike out into the cobblestone night, eviscerating oxygen molecules like the kiss of a cool death blow.

End then bow, some begin to cheer. At that moment, I pull the shark sharpness of this killing bow across my fretless neck and bathe in my own arterial spray. My finale, my ta-da! My life for the corneal spotlights of those here in the present.

How to Leave Bill and Vanessa’s

Explosion!

Shark blood,
a crimson carnation
blooming
on the screen
in the Deep Blue Sea.

Movie’s over,
use the bathroom
one more time.

Walk in, marine foam
tiles glint
beneath the light.
Unzip and take
a sobering piss.
Woodland creatures
with demon eyes
hide behind
a bamboo shower curtain.

Finish up, shake it out.
Wash your hands,
white liquid soap,
an aloe plant
on the bottle.

Look around.

There is love spell
on the window seal,
Singer’s Saving Grace
and empty syringes
under medicine cabinet.

Dry your hands
on the white towel.
Walk back out,
dawdling equals awkwardness.
Say your goodbyes, trip out
looking for your ride,
realize again
that it isn’t your car
when you have
to manually unlock
the doors.

Ignition!

"For the Jew, the world is a cage filled with wild beasts." - Henry Miller

I Liked Tropic of Cancer, But...

Henry, that dirty old man dreaming of Jewess cunt,
describes us as defenseless lion tamers
gifted with neuroses,
tell that to those at Warsaw or Masada
or Judah Maccabee

or the IDF,
when you aren't too busy verbally spitting on them
like hippies on American GIs
at airports long since less picketed.

Without revolver or whip, gesticulations as effective as karate katas, bedazzling and inefficacious.
Fear makes them fearless.
Perhaps he was playing us up some,

but picture
Woody Allen done up like John J. Rambo.
Jerry Seinfeld as Indiana Jones.

Hear
Ben Stein as the voice of Darth Vader.
Benny Goodman playing Death Metal.

You laughed, I heard you.

Question though.

Does it demean the gentile as much as the Jew
to be depicted as creatures in need of breaking,
being made to parade
through hoops, potentially flaming?

Maybe. Yet when they look around a room, they probably assume that everyone is in the same ark.
Lambs huddled
two by two
by their savior shepherd, weeping
and gnashing their teeth.
Benny Hinn believers, telephone and credit card
in hand, ready to buy those indulgences
from stained glass Home Shopping Networks.

As a child, I went through a period of hating Jesus
for being our Judas, our Brutus. But like Morrissey,
I Have Forgiven Jesus.

Minus that cross to bear,
everyday’s a struggle
to step beyond the preconceived
and into notions less derisive,
devising ways to be

more,

more than just a penny pincher and a punch-line.

I've made gopher holes into Grand Canyons
searching for a quarter.

Truly, the only difference between pizza
and my relatives
was that they screamed going into the oven.

Guffaw for me, bitches.

Time would be better spent

devising ways to be

more,

more than weak pride backwards masked as deprecation.

Scaring and scarring
those who misconstrue our reversed vinyl record
of life in the Diaspora as Satanic verses
just like they did Stairway.

Oh, here is to my sweet Satan…

there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,
don’t be alarmed now.

Let me tell you though.

I've drank the Christian baby's blood at midnight

and yes, I do want my pound of flesh.

So bend the fuck over and don't squeal like trafe, would you?

Waiting like Lacerating

Scratch
and shake
and break
these arms
that hold all
there ever was.

Watch
and take
and sate
the scantily-clad
urges of bygones,
not so forgotten.

I’ve been looking
for
a means
of escape
from this
hand held nightmare.

I’ve been looking
for the slightest
mention
of a life
less caustic.

Searching back pages
of periodicals worldwide.

Searching the soul
I might not have.

Searching
and destroying
my mind,
a scimitar
of perversion.
Incising
with scalpel-like
precision
into the very taproot
of a solemnity
I have yet
to find.

The bulky blade
trembles,
much too large
for such
a delicate
operation
and I start
to wonder
if that
has always
been the problem.

Naked Integral

Eyes stretch and trace lines,

etchings

of some

ethereal

handiwork,

beauty

ephemeral.

Sacred

calligraphy

in the hard brushstrokes

that outline

the skin mountains

capped with coffee-colored

flat-brimmed fedoras,

adorning your chest

as signs of maturity,

eventually maternity.

The unseen hand

that formed them

must have quivered

as it joined the dots

between upper

and lower torsos.

Tortoise slow,

the painstaking

pace

to craft

fleeting perfection.

When the Bough Breaks

Saw my mother standing

by the car’s hatch,

she was done loading items

out of the cart, where I sat.

A strong squall came

and I felt

the wheeled metal move

with that gust then with gravity.

I was a toddler sitting

in the seat made for my kind

and I was falling hard

against asphalt

not a rabbit hole

as Alan, not Alice

in front of a K-Mart

on pavement without any hint

of a slant.

In Her Bed, One Night

She started to doze

while I

stared out

into the sky, then

we rolled

towards one another,

teeth fluttered over

by tongues.

Maw produced lubrication

commingled:

her nicotine saliva,

my cannabinoid

cotton mouth.

Hairy palmed

hands,

lecherous

tarantulas,

whose digits

blasted and banged

as their comrade,

the tongue, trickled

over

tobacco fume pussy.

Our new spit progeny

birthed

the caked tar

of an alluring

sludge sundae, a flesh flood

warning, lungs filled

with smoke

and slathered cunt honey that

screamed

lusty,

gutturally

symphonic motifs

triumphantly

trumpeted.

And yet thru the window, you could

hear R&B, faintly

in the distance,

low and distorted.

Some nondescript

FM diva

vocalized the melodious

crackle of a gentrified

genre bred for homogeny,

but it was barely heard

over

our din.