barely twenty and lost the party

getting worse at drinking
getting better at fucking

it
all
gets
me
in
to
trouble

I'll have to quit drinking
eventually
I'm always the one who falls
asleep.

selfish and foolish

i'm no suicide
too much of a narcissist
for such an ugly way to go
just let my skin wrinkle
slowly
so that by the time I realize
my body is worthless
my mind will be worth the time
and attention
and care
of children and grandchildren
that will believe I am wise
and experienced
even if I've been foolish
for as long as I can remember.

california

california i'm
lost in the valley
of your associations.
you appeared snapshotted
on a postcard from a girl i used to love
and all the passion
that i couldn't associate with her
across so many states
fell onto you.

you're a mess;
haight-ashbury, chinatown
the gold rush and mountains,
i've never met you
but your hair would be frazzled
and falling out.

you've been
misinterpreted thirty three hundred times
and you don't care anymore.
its a zoo out there you say
and laugh as an earthquake
kills the last two panda bears
and breaks your right leg.
you've got a mighty nihilism
through all that peace love and profiteering.

that girl i knew
she was beautiful
and she never knew what to believe.
she tried to be some
contemporary sort of hippie, and had once
cheered for the 49'ers in the
superbowl or something similar
watching the television with her father
because it gave her an excuse to be near him.

California she'll look like you one day.

i've zoomed through
about thirty-three hundred ideas a second and
i've met you, California
through a beautiful crystal
of indirect connotation
out of love, i ask you one thing;
don't let her become you.

Postcard from Naples

grass rigid and unfamiliar
waves in microcosms of palm flows above
riding the smoke which curls out my mouth
to perfect lawns and streets too empty to enjoy them
a cough breeds parasitic caution
(yet alltogether unnecessary)
remains unflourishing when the sicle touches my brain
and I still don't care
-
I yearn to leave this cage
where I will know no bounds
leaving no distance between us
as my being curls out your mouth
to wispy trees and roads
now, as Ive found out, full as the wind

For Alex and a woman named Squidkid

A friend of mine has a hernia the size of a Rubrics Cube.
Fifteen minutes and he pushes his small intestine in.
He can’t pee without thinking about it.
It makes me nervous just thinking about him.

A girl friend told me that this is all chauvinistic.
“Well…” she says bitterly, but I’m not going to correct it,
“We all lie,” I tell her, as if I have multiple literary friends.
She rolls her eyes. That’s when I know she understands.

A something something comma big thing period
Everyone knows that there is only one way to drone...
I continue with, “Did you know…”
I retell a story I read on CNN