at the right temperature even concrete melts

(meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet – kurt cobain)

 

falling apart

 

got served

divorce papers

it’s my fault

 

i am not only the author of

the dark streets of decay

i am the god of its creation

if you google the aforementioned title

of my collection of poems

only i come up

 

it’s that original

i’ve outdone all my literary heroes

in the art of self-destruction

 

i texted jenny

i wouldn’t fight any stipulation

just show me where to sign

 

she didn’t respond

 

i’m a wreck

slept in sweats

shoed my feet

hit midnight streets

in what i slept in

no brushed teeth

hair everywhere

breakfast bottle

almost gone

cigarettes

but nothing can spawn

a me that is free from me

 

found an alley

can’t tally

the totality of my inability

bury my face in my hands

 

think of all the strands

in my contacts

i don’t even have the where withal

to call

 

what they have to offer

is not enough

at this moment

 

i can’t even find the right song

to comfort

contemplate, “loser” by beck

or “creep” by radiohead

but i just gulp from this bottle

and light another cigarette

 

decide this slow suicide

is the only provide

so i slide to the sidewalk

 

remember the title of this volume is

“the dark streets of decay: still walking”

select, “sky blue and black”

by jackson browne

 

look around

down the bottle

in the fatness of my fray

i waddle

 

survive by recollecting

an ancient acid trip:

i was holding the hand of the devil

in a cold slimy pit

both of us reciting again and again

“nothing matters”

 

held together by non-existent threads

i wed and then bed the goddess

the greeks never worshipped

who oversees the only tree

that is left after the apocalypse

 

i think the only problem here is me

i’m the disease for which

no one can find a cure

yet i infect with a desire

to be accepted

not rejected

amid your inoculated protection

against my undulated injection

that is a reflection

of what you suspect to be true

but cannot construe

because the causality is me

 

***

 

 

 

 

lethal cocktail

first cigarette

two coffees in

which i spilt on

pages of bukowski

wanted to feel

something other than me

took a xanax

 

started walking

bought two bottles

halfway through one

with about five minutes

in-between cigarettes

 

haven’t eaten in two days

still not hungry

wearing the t-shirt

i had custom made

with the words,

“i’m nobody

don’t worry about it”

 

listening to my playlist

of the mellow songs

of jackson browne

 

i hate those shows

where the medical examiner

is performing an autopsy

plopping organs on a scale

the brain reduced to

a metric measurement

why did my heart fail?

read my fucking poems

 

getting numb

i succumb

to the thoughtless void

 

as a boy

i remember my mom

threatening to spank me

if i didn’t put on my shirt

while i was playing outside

on a cold day

i obeyed

but i was reeling from

a flood of feelings

that at that moment

i had never loved her more

i can only imagine what freud

would say

i’ve always refused to purchase

skinner’s stimulus and response

we are not pavlov’s dog

 

i may not dance with definitions

or adorn absolutes

but when it comes to

the congruence of our consciousness

i am not a minimalist

 

i wish i could have

the same paternal feelings

about god

but to me he’s the father

who went out for a pack of smokes

and never came back

 

so much for the thoughtless void

i avoid the ploy of complacency

 

street tacos!

guess i will eat after all

a homeless man and woman

filthy

reeking of weed

almost empty bottle of tequila

in his hand

ask if i can help them out

 

i order twelve tacos

take two

give them the rest

he starts talking

telling me how he use to be

in a christian band

and all the things he did for god

i can tell as he’s talking

he was or still is a tweaker

my smile is weaker

then my interest in his words

 

then i just turn

and walk away

 

leonard cohen’s bird on the wire

i select

light a cigarette

forget their frenzy within five minutes

 

this is l.a.

weird wraps around the flaky skin

surrounding its interior

 

a girl in a darken doorway

asks if she could show me the way

to her room

i give her twenty dollars and ask

if i could just have a hug

she smells like the last man

she had lead by the hand

her nails rack the back of my neck

she knows her trade

i give her a peck on the cheek

walk away

open the second bottle

and slowly swirl down the drain of

the dark streets of decay

 

***

 

 

 

 

thoughts are idols we worship in vain

woke up in jeans and socks

took awhile to comprehend

i was in my own bed

thought about things

like eggs and a toothbrush

 

pulled on a shirt

shoes

filled pockets:

keys, wallet, smokes, flask

accomplished the task

of standing on the sidewalk

took a drink

didn’t think to look around first

but as i lit a smoke

the apartment handyman

descended

73 years old

he began to scold

told me the story of his life

navy, years of construction

being born again

 

i wasn’t going to disrespect

a 73 year old

veteran of our wars

so i was all, “yes sir” and “no sir”

 

finally free from his eyes on me

i lit another smoke

took another drink

selected coil’s,

“tainted love”

and started walking

 

beginning my excursion

my murderous stalking of

the dark streets of decay

 

there was a voice mail on my phone

from the doctor i was to follow up with

after my stay in the psychiatric hospital

i hit delete

selected suicidal tendencies’,

“institutionalized”

drained my flask

lit a smoke

twisted the top off the pocket sized bottle

of schnapps i brought

and sipped

 

“fuck it” i say

drain the bottle

light a smoke

select the doors’

“break on through”

and go in search of another bottle

 

know my literary heroes

were not zeros

but pioneers of

what everyone else fears

 

***

 

 

 

an eighties kind of groove

an old friend of mine

asked me to come over

help him pull weeds

 

he lives in the heart of suburbia

his name is jose

and his wife with whom he’s

been with forever

is maria

 

he calls me juan

i call him joe

 

even though

back then in the eighties

i was already published

they’ve never read my writings

or followed my literary career

which is why they probably

still call me a friend

 

he had pacifico

but i passed

drank peppermint schnapps

from a bottle made of glass

and with the aid of a spade

rooted out the weeds

 

jose played with stereophonic aid

synth-pop

the same music he and i would listen to

back then

o.m.d., when in rome,

thompson twins

which we washed down with patron

in the home he still lives in

 

maria makes these homemade

tortilla chips and salsa

i’ve always called

the nectar of the gods

and her tacos

are the meaning to life

 

i did a lot of sweating

under that l.a. sun

which i usually never see

since, mostly, i sleep all day

walk all night

 

jose kept stacking the extended plays;

howard jones, talk talk, bronski beat

 

for an afternoon i didn’t know the defeat

of being a self-destructive poet

listening to what i call happy music

reminding me of a simpler time

long ago

 

it wasn’t lost on them

my friends

how i kept lighting

one cigarette after another

and hitting my bottle

maria kept bringing me

bottles of water

and stood there till i drank it all

 

nor was it lost on them

how i really had nothing to say

i wasn’t going to offend

my catholic friends

who have never been anything

but kind to me

with stories about

the dark streets of decay

which that day

made me realize

how much i’ve lost my way

 

a writer in l.a.

who’s mostly read by people

in europe

 

the birth place of nietzche,

sartre, camus

 

but anyways

this is about a day

with happy music

friends

that came to an end

when around 9 p.m.

i walked to a bus stop

rode the bus until its last drop

bought a bottle

took off the top

and woke up

next to railroad tracks

with erasure’s

“a little respect”

in my head

and memories of maria’s tacos

 

***