He Just Took It
At around 25 yrs old I called Dad
and yelled at him out for an hour
I don’t know what I said
all I remember is
he didn’t protest
he just took it
I think most of the internet
is like that
a younger generation
screaming
Sometimes I might
have a question
about an acronym
or a new noun
but I keep quiet
they’ve got a lot
to get off their chests
and would love to find
a dad
any old dad
to lay into.
I Am With You
We get along fine
me and the man
with the mangled face
“School turns us stupid!” he says
I nod, I agree
and he is my brother
Lately, I’ve come to see it
all the mangled faced men
all the nieces and nephews
who can’t decide if they’re
nieces
or nephews
all the obese shut-ins
aiming guns at themselves
all the girls and the women
and the boys and the men
sobbing in the mirror
I am with you
my outside
doesn’t match
my inside
either.
Cheap Shots
“I’ll start with
a bald-faced simile,
see if anyone
swallows the hook”
I always go for the easy joke
the simple sentiment
the simpler moral
I give no fucks about truth
and I don’t know
what you mean by ‘beauty’
but that’s not to say
I don’t cry over these
all the same.
Sue
I wrote a song
and named names
whether the names I named
were actual names
or made up names
I’m not at liberty to say
I’ve made many dimes
off music
all told
after expenses
and thirty years
5 or 6 hundred
dimes
Now, at night I lay in bed
my jar of dimes
under it
and quail at the thought
someone will sue me
the lawyers will take
my jar of dimes
smash me over the head with it
and remove what little
sanity I have left.
Opiates are the Opiates of the Masses
I liked it at first,
they killed chickens in the bathroom
it was ‘exotic’
but small, so small
just me and my laptop
So I found pill corner
and coke corner
and all the other corners
lined up easy
as Tijuana pharmacias
just another lonely loser
like all those
popping pills in trailer parks,
pick-up trucks, penthouses
living in
an American dream.
Dumpster Fire Press 