Doctor Laura's Free-Floating Ghazal (February 20, 2011. Issue 25.)

That flesh-colored Nash Rambler, shadows me:
1 street over. Constant daylight. Stays parked.

"You gotta get up pretty early, to get a rise
outa me!" cried Schlenkoff. Master of Projection.

Yet, can't stop thinking bout that poor slut Wilkerson.
Blue - beard, blade - thin. He died owing library fines.

Oh, Netflix. You've cornered the market on borrowed
Time. Prostrate me! A BDSM, tickling the flap of SASE.

Spaced-out the Vuarnet shades? Negro, get behind me!
A mess thy palm heel made. Got forehead? Shards? V-8.

Please re-check those lines outa Plath. Then re - check
them again, so you never leave home. Cape Fear. OCD.

Daddy, I am so fucking, daddy I am like to be
out of here.

Table of Contents

After Bishop: 13 Steps,
W/ Projection & Blarney (August 20, 2010. Issue 20.)

This is the bulwark of sane.

And a scrivener with an Irish name, who bangs
on the bulwark of sane.

Here is a drawer, full of doilies and lapsed
'scriptions, made out to the man with
an Irish name, who bangs on the
bulwark of sane.

Slippery runners, built into frames
of the drawer holding medications,
diaries and more, -- belonging to a
man with an Irish name, banging,
banging on the bulwark
of sane.

Fifty odd
summers, spent like slippery
runners, built into the frame
of drawers, ancient claims:
for Xanax
and pharmaceutical
cocaine, shot into the
veins of a writer with Irish
names, banging, banging
on the bulwark
of sane.

Here's the end
of a 50-ish summer
for the slippery man,
sober now yet
still a runner --
adjusting to the frames
of change, (Plavix, Celebrex,
abstain, maintain)
inherent to the dude with an Irish
name, who bangs on the bulwark,
the bulwark of sane.

And summer is the hum
of fifty bi planes, strung
across slippery horizon
wide frames, a sky writer spelling
out Big Pharma names, well known
to the punter with an Irish
brain, banging,
banging on the
bulwark of sane.

An accretion like adultery,
or addicts flying summer;
add to this a drummer:
50 rhythms in exchange
for a bridle of sky, cumulus
lips in a frame;
ingrained like a new brand
of pharmaceutical name,
known variously
to the scrivener with Irish
veins, banging
like John Bonham
on bulwarks
of sane.

Came as a reckoning
from TV's Law and Order --strange bang,
two times 50
frames, a metallic cough
from ground-pounding bi planes
with no jet stream left
to sky-write
a name,
nor a memory of white lines,
recovery from cocaine ... shudder
went the heart
of a lad with
Gaelic shame,
playing para-
diddles on the
bulwark of sane.

Some tense Maguffin
of Law and Order
--disparate, desperate
frame after frame,
a drummer boy gunning
the ground-war planes,
strafing
slippery, ever-changing
plains
of the poet who abstains
from shooting
cocaine, yet spins
a black circle
of Irish shame, banging,
banging on bulwarks
of sane.

11th Hour, of a Season
of Order, some desperate drummer
pounding astral planes, shapeshifting
slippery corporeal domains;
as a smoke noose
from a loosely
strung frame.
What remedy?
What juice?
What's left in a name? Irish-ly
adamant, banging
bulwarks of sane.

Temporal shifts, of tense
and aspect, faraway sputtering
departures
from Order ...
skin-popping pilots, drum-
drummed the ashes,
as if to etch
charcoal frames -- black
border, black border.
Six foot four, unpronounceable
name, and look! -- he's gone
into that crouch again:
about to christen
culvert,
no champagne...
Unbreakable
empty, banging

bulwarks of sane.

Table of Contents

Three Poems (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)

Live Life To The Maxim

It starts with half an erection, and a paper cut
bled through the lines of a soft core porn glossy
magazine read for misdirection, for articles, but
also semaphores to soothe sciatica. Scarves, not pussy.
It picks up a full head of steam at the ten o’ clock break
when you suck your finger, the cock gets plum full
of blood you never think about, like lives that take
decades to get started. Suck some more, a swig of Red Bull,
hell, lucky you’ve got the key, to Executive Washroom Door;
it’ll take all of five minutes, tops while the stall shakes,
go ahead, bite that middle finger, gone on semaphores,
hot coals oblongata-bound, wood smoke from a clam bake.
These paper cuts, do sting a bit, in youngish middle age,
desk-bound again, you carefully turn the offending page.

The ABC's of XXX

Always big cocks driving

Escalades,

fucking Gomorrah.

Happiness is juice knocked
loose,

maidenheads, nuptials

Orgasms. Period.

Quests refresh! ... Satyricons

testing

unequivocal
vulva. Whips.

XL. Young.

Z a r a t h r u s t a.

Kalifornia Stop

Gargoyle Brand
sunglasses in a rear view
mirror come back at you

like fly eyes swathed in spider’s
web, as you check it
for the vanity, not

traffic,
midday in late
March, and sleet takes
over your windshield in weepy
fits and starts, as if to shatter,

yet it only
spatters, sheet
after sheet after
sheet of it, with rolling cloud cover
dark enough for blinkers to cast
red swaths
if you ever

used them
one time with wiper blades
set to Intermittent mode, you cut
across four lanes from Western
to make
a U turn at Wilshire,
all that sepia-toned
scenery sliding past
like rose petals in
amniocentesis, your six
precious Big Lebowski
bobble-head dolls screwed
on the dash ...

And you’re thinking of a line
from precisely that movie, something
like the DUDE might say, "Dude, dude
d u d e, the right

of way is mine ..."

or about that time
you shoved it
into Cruise Control,
on Pacific Coast Highway, coming down
from inhalants and speed, with GF

passed out
in the passenger seat, you reached
for her unclasped purse, tangled
in safety belt,
your fingers felt
for her pocketbook and
Percocets, you didn’t see
the county corrections crew
stacking litter bags on the shoulder
of the road, until the right front
tire exploded the fattest one,
sending a geyser of grease, tin cans
condoms and adult diapers halfway
to the center line, and one angry dude
in his orange jump suit, hopping
around, giving you the finger
as you shook your fist
into the rear view,

because it’s true, road rage is
sorely wasted on you, plastic Jeff
Bridges on the Blaupunkt, nodding,
nodding, you’re what the ticket scalpers
down at the Forum call ‘Waiting
To Happen,’ or ‘Had It All
Coming,’ slouched down that way
in your sorry-ass drivers’ seat
when the glass shards rain
upon the pot hole no one ever
sees, like a lawn sprinkler spray
you once stood under
for a half hour at age 43, just to
shake off the torpor, for

Christ’s sake, sit up
straight, check the spider

cracks, ask the jet black

rosary on Lebowski

if you’ve ever once been
awake.

Table of Contents

To Be A Tentative Contrarian (May 20, 2009. Issue 5.)

in Citgo's parking lot,
a painted straight-arrow pointed
askance, haltingly nonchalant
human weather vane veering, re-
appearing, wearing

Florsheims,
white socks with high water
Hagar slacks in prevailing
tail winds.

His mostly-itinerant-but-fervent
wish? To walk away, but he winds
up going
in there, to the Citgo
anyway.

If conviction has twin
meanings does it mean
courage is a sin?

And some
Google-eyed Samaritan,
holding the door for him.

This Contrarian,
he hesitates,
the hydraulic door sucks
shut in his face.


I’m sorry.

Thank you.

It's okay.

Excuse me.


Inside,
taking his place at the rear
of the queue, he makes a thinker’s
goatee of his fingers that stink
of brine, and salmon slime, inciting
some more getaway words
in his mind:

I wasn’t gonna go
for no Citgo, not this time. Or better yet not ever

Standing so very still
in his long line, he reiterates

that the guts it takes to buck a
trend, could be mistakes by hind-
sight, by unkind lights. He feels

those Florsheims, shuffling along, one,
two, three spots at a time, amid a reek
of cream soda, and ground beef.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

I'm sorry?

Hey! Are you OKAY, there pardner?

If only they
had been a bit more forth-
coming from the outset, instead
of doling out Kafka and Karamazov
like shish kabob samples from a steamer
in the sour cream section. If they’d
been up front about how
it would come down
to him, always and his sorry schizo-
phrenic whims reflected like Coke
bottles in the unbreakable glass

of a ticket window,
with 14 seconds to decide
on Quinella or Keno, the fourth
column of the Eye Chart where
it calls for a bluff
of some sort,

or else you lay off
your life savings
for a one way sleeper berth to
Monongahala on the Amtrak.

The strangest thing. It’s that I don’t
even know my own blood type! Can
you even IMAGINE?

I’m sorry.

Staggering

Is there a problem?

I'm ok, I'll be fine

Excuse me

What's up, there buddy?

Thank you?

Sorry

Well, I should SAY. The fact
that I was never meant to be
here, growing old from the Get Go
at a Citgo, with outcomes all fore-
told and I should certainly
freaking say so!

C’MON BUDDY. GET UP, LET'S GO!!

Tentative Contrarian watches security
guards haul another one away

Sorry.

Excuse me?

No. Thank YOU!

ahead of his time, in the middle
of his line,

and feeling much
relieved, if not exactly ...

Whatever

His Shunning
will come some
other sunny
day.

Bobbing For Curbstones

Smokey Bear, and Indian-With-
One-Tear-Down-Cheek, wearing correctional vests
and high tech Lo-Jack GPS ankle bracelets, stab at
clumps of litter on the I-5 freeway at rush hour,
their Day Glo asses hanging halfway
into the car pool lane.  Smokey bends
to pick up a cracked
crack pipe, squinting in the sun
as he tosses a quip at Indian: 

“It's all your fault, fucker: Your palm-hooting progenitors
spreading the gene of addiction like Johnny Appleseed!!”

"Why, you and your kind,” teary Indian replies, “have
always had those Pic-a-Nic Basket monkeys on your
back, yet you have the colossal gall to scapegoat me?"

When the Dick Cheney dead ringer
of a straw boss on horseback with mirror shades
gambols through the gravel, glaring at them,
Smokey puts a shaky paw on Indian's shoulder: 

"Heheheh...  Together we CAN help keep
America beautiful!"

The Supervisor trots his wicked filly, finally out
of earshot, and Native American fires a last line:

"Commerce is fine, but say one more word about
my ancestors, and I'm going to shove that book
of matches right up your hibernating ass!"

Smokey shrugs,
and digs around in the bowl
of the crack pipe with a gleaming
pinky claw-- thinking he just saw v>
the remains of a last hit in there, 
and the more he looks he is

certain of it.

The Sad Cyber Song of Leonard Prefactor 

Lenny sips
the Slim Fast shake
and logs on to Yahoo,
Lenny's on
the make.

Watch him click
on what the girl said
in the long-since dead
discussion thread,

fucking discussion
threads he's already read, started by
the girl who lives in his head, turns fist
into vulva at night in bed. Lenny’s friends?
Mostly subliminal; Lenny’s kind of lonely
is borderline criminal.

Light a candle for Lenny, toss
a prayer at the moon, he's all set
to cruise the chat rooms soon. Oh,
the Goo on Blue marble, World
Wide Hum! Mo Dum, Mo Dum,
Mo Dum, Mo Dum, and scores
of Google girls dying to

take Fat
Lenny for a sip
of his shake, hook
Lenny up, please,

for Christ’s sake.

Doolittle After The Glue Party

PACHYDERM !

Just what gives, with your
python snout? What 

the Flugging Thump
is that
all about?

Gargantuan Huffer...

You sorely creep
me OUT!

Suckle my armpits.

*

Oh, God bless you,
Senor  T o u c a n.

Froot
Loops, Echolalia
and Strawberry
Quik!

Just be sure to keep
those freaky Day Glo

proboscis pruners

all Clear of my

Pinky.

*

French Poodle,
on a short leash
down in Central
Park West!

With a Tranny
Handler called
Divine.  Major Meso-
Morphia! 58 Inch Chest!

C amisole, high heels
and all the rest…

Oh Dawg, why not
hump a Bowery hydrant!

Piss on Bernie Madoff’s
Gucci Shoe.

Poodle, our hopes
are sorely pinned.

New Yorker cartoonists are
counting on you.

*

All  Purpose  Porpoise!

Cease your insipid smiling. :)

Those Frog Men were never
your friends.

Remember?  How they 
hustled Flipper?

Six
pack
Plastic
Can
straps
solly
cholly
Star Kist
asphyxia water
Mark of the
Beast.

*

Wallaby,your smoking right cross
certainly packs a wallop!

CALL DON KING!
CALL DON KING!

I’ve got no business
being in the

ring w/ --

boP,   kEr  POW!  Ziiiing!
OWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Flat, flat

on my Outback.

The stars are
so lovely down

Undah.

*

Listen you two
Horny Ferrets

writhing about

the shopping cart
blanket bundle 

of a Bag Lady looks
like Alice Munro.

I Noah
thing,

I Noah

thing or two about

Art…

You two
may be young
and cute, but
your

Ark

is burning.

Chrissakes, Pry
yourselves

apart.