Geisteskrank

I

Down in a dive bar
Gin & Tonic
My lover and I held sticks and cued the rack
He was a little shy at first, must have been the laughing gas
But then again it was my first time
Hit it Allen
Don’t be shy, society’s advancing and soon their logy logic will catch up with our common sense
We’re both drunken pool sharks, you and I
Me the Acid Queen
You Paul Newman
The Hustler
In love with the town
Secure with the syntax
Calling the shots because we see the game as it unfolds
The BET memorializes Michael Jackson on the set
I place my bet on the table, it’ll only last a week
Across the street the Church of Oprah has just let out
An angry protester in sandwich board slacks corrugated corduroys
Stands on the corner shouting at the congregation
“ Don’t switch to digital!"
A woman fucks him right there on the street,
Goes home and cries she’ll never find true-love
Turns on the TV and masturbates to the hypnotic rays of pixels
Red Green Blue Yellow Red Green Blue Yellow
click
You have lost Allen, I’ll pay for the next game

II

How do you pick up from nowhere?
Lie I guess
You’re friends came by and I was jealous
Can I not have you to myself?
Must reality remind me that I live in a generation
Dead to poetry, jazz and everything we love?
No, stop this nonsense, I am not afraid
Just need a break from the game
Left the room, went to the bathroom
Heightened sense of smell – what is it?
I know that smell – the smell of sex and refuse
Don’t get me wrong I like the smell
I love nightmares
Skunk spray smells like french fries
And I laugh to imagine you bathing in tomato paste
Oh God, what am I saying?
How much should I share with you?
Should I take off my clothes?
Show you the splotches on my soul?
Shake it
flush
Don’t forget to wash your hands
Back on the floor you wanted me to meet Curtis
He was a big black man
Sick in the head like us
Ordered a second pitcher and started another game
As the balls fell into their holes we started talking politics
Not really, but either way things got heated
He asked what I did and I told him I worked grocery down on Westhimer
He countered with a limerick about a security guard
Round about way of getting his point across in five lines
And you know Allen, well he just had to show off his talent
And here I am, the grocery boy, too drunk to –
Another gin & tonic please
Who?
Oh you wouldn’t know him
Yeah he wrote poetry back in the 1950’s
Yeah yeah gin gin&tonic ginsberg
Yes I know what year it is!
Who am I?
Well –
I take my drink and play out the rest of the night

III

Wake gradually so that the world comes in as a dream but must inevitably give way to reality
The worst, to wake as a bodily function and not from a desire to be up
My blanket soaked in cat piss
Whippets strewn across the apartment floor
I reach into my back pocket ominously
My wallet is gone
Too much to bear
So I do what I always do when my mind cannot reconcile
The ill spirit of society come crashing in
I take a bath
Return to the womb
Sitting naked in the bath tub I remember a Patton Oswald sketch
He was a poet too you know
‘And where’s your moment of irony’?’, he would ask
You hope it was back in 3rd grade
Mrs. Rasco’s class
When you wrote that poem
‘It Isn’t Easy Being Me’
Because I ran into a tree
Oww that hurt –
The water is much too hot to take a bath

Oh Allen,
The tragedy of our love transcends time and space
But I cannot for the life of me transcend you
There is no place for poetry
I must leave now
You rush out to grab my hand and kiss me deeply
I knew you would never leave me
That image of you as I drove away
Rolls the blunt between his fingers,
Cranes his neck and cups his hands to get a light
Tip to lip,
The fire burned brightly in his eyes
As if fueled by the drag
A spark in oblivion
‘Let’s blow this joint’
And we were lit

11/19/16