Poem of the day 01.31.23

passage

the girl
on the evening bus

is wearing a brown mini
and a white fur coat
that doesn’t cover her stomach

she has on beige fuck-me boots
that almost reach her knees

i notice her because of all of this

and because she’s the only one on this bus
not dower and gray
from another waste of our only hours

and girl?

she’s probably thirty
but what do i know at my age?

thirty deserves a cradle and a bib

there’s a woman standing next to me
she’s eyeing up the girl

not seductively

just the usual menace and hate
that we reserve for the beautiful people

the woman catches me looking at the girl

when our eyes meet
there’s nothing in them but disgust

and i realize the passage of time
has pissed in her cornflakes this morning too

its sad to come across random beauty
like its sad to be crammed on an evening bus
with the stark realization that you’re growing old

i’ve always said
i would rather pass through this life
attractive and dumb
than living the examined life

but i realize at my age now
i’d just be left with dumb

and i never looked good in boots

so that woman can keep her hateful stare

and the girl in the mini skirt
fuck-me boots
and a white fur coat that doesn’t cover her stomach

she could be a goddamned roads scholar
for all the i know

some people are blessed the whole way around

the rest of us do what we can
to pass the hours

we lie and tell ourselves
it’s a beautiful day to be alive

and that the cracks in our mirrors
aren’t doing their damndest

to try and deceive us
too.

Poem of the Day 01.30.23

american cupcakes

we eat
canned corn

and cupcakes colored
with the american flag

and i have been in this line
longer than it took me
to pick out my groceries

the cashier is a trainee
with unruly hair
and the touch of a moustache

he’s seventeen and thinks he’s funny

he’s so funny
he can’t ring up a head of lettuce
or a bag of chips
without telling a joke

america must always suffer
the indignity of funny men

i look at him

he is like the slowly rotting meat
in my cart

warm
and purple
and dull

one day he’ll probably be the manager here

he tells another bad joke

i think of walking away
and leaving all of the groceries

but there is nothing in my home
except cold vodka and stale popcorn

it is too hot today
to willingly starve

and i’m not in the mood for protest

so i stand there and sweat
as no one but the cashier laughs

looking at another week’s worth of food
splayed out on the counter

bought to feed another week
of this ceaseless horseshit

looking at the american cupcakes
wrapped in non-biodegradable plastic

that the cashier
casually crushes
with a case of warm soda

with the same jokey manner
and nonchalant ease

that he has used to crush
this afternoon

and all of our souls.



06.21.22

Poem of the Day 01.27.23

the difference

good god
these days of madness

and little suicides
come in droves

where i can no longer
stand the sound
of another voice in complaint
but mine

and as another faceless
fresh turd of privilege
prattles on about their miseries

expecting empathy in return

i think of the car
that almost ran me down
this morning
at ft. hamilton and 61st street

and i think
of tender mercies too

only i’ll be goddamned
if i could tell you

the difference

between them.

Poem of the Day 01.26.23

the politicians at the street festival

sit
in booths

between fried oreo stands
bounce houses
and people selling plastic figurines

they sit and smile
and are impervious to sun and rain

to the ten bands on the street
all playing shitty beatles covers at once

they look like

they’re made of wax

dumb smiles all around

that one is pro-choice
that one is pro-life

this one has a banner
that says love is love is love

but doesn’t really say anything at all

they sit there
at their cluttered tables
with flags and stacks of papers before them

the politicians at the street festival

papers full of all of the items
they stand for or are against

more trees have died for their agendas
than one could hazard to count

and they would be
the biggest idiots here

if it weren’t for all of the people walking around

eating hot dogs
and fried dough

all of the clueless citizens who voted
these grinning hucksters into office

in the first
goddamned place.

Poem of the Day 01.25.23

poolsharks

when i was young
and bored

i used to hang around
with steve and calvin

they liked to go to expensive clubs
drink overpriced beer
and watch dull women in fancy clothes
dance with dull men
in the neon and mist

they talked about all of the pussy they were going to get

and nobody ever went home with anyone

sometimes
i could get them to go to a bar

but only if the place had a pool table

steve and calvin
would play pool
while i sat there and smoked
and drank and watched the people
or the blank walls

trying my best to understand people
who played pool and went to expensive clubs

people who always needed to be entertained

steve and calvin
were loud when they played pool

they fought over shots
they fought over solids and stripes

they hit their balls off the pool table
and knocked over people’s drinks

they threatened to hit each other with their pool sticks

and made general spectacles
of themselves when they played

you could tell that the bar people
didn’t like them very much

when they were done
steve and calvin would sit with me at the table

drink their, warm waiting beers
looking sullen and dumb

they talked about how boring the bar was
how ugly the women were

then the next week
we'd go back to the expensive clubs
drink overpriced beer
and watch dull women in fancy clothes
dance with dull men
in the neon and mist

they talked about all of the pussy they were going to get

and nobody ever went home with anyone
on those nights as well.

Poem of the Day 01.24.23

amuck

we are proud of everything now
and ashamed of nothing

i watched the idiots prance around
on tv and on the internet

their stupidity on display
their ignorance run amuck

and they look happy and secure

while i don’t have the confidence
to get out of bed most days

but that’s just the way it is

the weak will not inherit the earth
before the fools burn it all to the ground

court jester citizens
and keystone cops

clashing in the broiling streets

we are proud of everything
and ashamed of nothing now

as the cockroaches and rats
wait patiently in the wings

for the great reckoning

for their time
to rise and shine.

Poem of the Day 01.20.23

walking home from work in the rain

i think
about the big shots
who still get to work from home
three days a week

i think
about how they
changed our schedules around
for shits and giggles
and how now
i miss each bus i need to take home

i think
about city budget cuts
a forty-five-minute wait
in between buses
and the futility of existence

i think about the mayor
warm and home in his big fat mansion

i think
the streets are too dark
the neon too blurry
and how nights like this
feel like walking home blindfolded

i think
about how i’ve killed my eyesight
reading all of those books
that have given me nothing
but delusions of grandeur

i think of poets
and how the written word is dead

i think
about my broken couch at home
cold vodka in a tumbler
rock and roll music on the player
and my wife waiting for me

i think
there’s still two miles
left to go
on this goddamned walk
and how my feet feel
like they’re splashing around
in an ocean

as i shiver,
i think i’m underdressed

i go back
to thinking about
the futility of existence
which leads me to work
which always leads me to america

i think america is horseshit
and lies wrapped up in a flag

except i still love baseball

i think
my stomach is rumbling
because i’m always too sick of existence
to eat food at my job

i think that i live
in a microwaved nightmare
of car horns and wailing sirens
and madmen digging through garbage cans
of people too worn down
to find away out of this misery
of children in schools
being taught nothing 

but how to sit for eight hours a day
so that they can replace us
when the time comes

i think of world ending asteroids
falling from the sky
or nuclear bombs ripping through cities
and how it wouldn’t be so bad

i think i’m just wet
and worn out and tired tonight

and that an umbrella 

would’ve paid for itself by now.

Poem of the Day 01.19.23

swimming in december

immigrant men
are hanging christmas lights

on the trees
and big houses
all along this pristine street

last month
the people who live here
had signs stuck in their lawn

for politicians who promised
to drive all of the immigrants out of america

by any means necessary

but there’s no time for irony
when one is planning on making jolly

i watch the men from my window

stringing up red lights on trees
twinkling white lights on doorframes

a watered-down tumbler of vodka in my hand

feeling the weariness of this season
as i do every december

thinking about the way years go along

like long stretched out intestines
carrying our shit from one end to the other

the way we fool ourselves
into thinking it’ll be different

come january first

life is hard enough
to warrant a little deception

like these men aren’t working for racists
like the people behind their doors aren’t racists

and i’m not some drunk standing in a window
caught up in my own bullshit malaise

a transactional man
in a transactional world

thinking those
oh-so-deep thoughts again

from the shallow end of the pool.

Poem of the Day 01.18.23

stuck inside of boston, with the london blues again

the table full of young women next to us
can’t talk below shouts

and the place is packed on a saturday night

my wife and i tried getting dinner here two hours ago
when it was six o’clock

but the restaurant was booked
with farts older than us

so we drank vodka back in the hotel room
talking about how hungry we were

the lost art of travel
and how boring boston is in the rain

and now i’m a little drunk
and a little mad at myself

for wanting to be in london instead of here

london seems to thrive in the rain

and though i find it hard to feel good anywhere
i feel good when i’m there

it is after eight now
and the young have taken over the restaurant

most of the tables are like the one next to us
they are full of young people shouting

drinking bottles of expensive wine
waiting on mediocre, equally expensive italian food

not minding dull and rainy boston at all

i don’t envy their youth
just their bank accounts

when i was their age

i couldn’t waste a saturday night
spending my cash in a place like this

life was dive bars and fast food
fast conversation and bleary mornings
that began at noon

now i look back
more than i look forward

i think how i’d rather not be a man who craves dinner at six
and says phrases like, when i was their age

wishing that i was in rain-soaked london
instead of rain-soaked boston

or back in the hotel room
drinking more vodka and eating stale cheez-its

but here i am
stuck with my own cold truth

at a tiny table in
antonio’s restaurant, cambridge street

a tired and drunken
middle-aged man

who often fails to appreciate small things
within their given moment

silent and sullenly working on the house red
the half-warm chicken parmigiana

dreading the thought
of the coming bill

as the fine art of conversation and the evening
both slip on by.

Poem of the Day 01.17.23

charles bukowski…again

the twentysomething poets
are online

fighting about charles bukowski
…again

who’s trying too hard to sound like bukowski
bukowski is a misogynist
bukowski was never good to begin with

as a woman bukowski just doesn’t speak to me

there are other poets out there
instead of bukowski, you know

and i read their poems

they’re about bars and bad relationships
terrible jobs and being broke

the universality of almost all humanity
especially if you’re under thirty

but somehow if you put it in a poem
…you’re trying to be bukowski

this is an age-old argument
and a boring one

we were accusing each other
of trying to be bukowski
when i was in my twenties too

it’s good
(and bad)
to see that nothing has changed

and that no one reads poetry
except for other poets

yet all they can do is shit on each other

you’re trying to be bukowski!
no, you’re trying to be bukowski!
until they’re blue in the face

the only other good thing is the fact
these poets will get older if not a little bit wiser

some of them will drop off
and others will linger like a fart

what you sound like won’t matter as much
as the fact that no one has really read you anyway

or it at least feels like the case

you’ve been spitting useless words
out into the void for decades

whether you sound like bukowski or not

yet somewhere
in some lonely room

there goes another sixteen-year-old kid
picking up a copy of
love is a dog from hell

and getting their mind blown

writing poems
and feeling like they’ve reinvented the wheel

safe
…for now

from the vultures out there

with their own words
and delusions of grandeur

poets, for sure,
who will try to tear another’s
very art from out of their chest

and rip their fragile soul
into two.

Poem of the Day 01.16.23

winter rain

you can
curse god
capitalism
and climate change
but it
won’t
change the fact
that you’re stuck
on a street corner
soaking wet
and six blocks
from home
caught
in the
goddamned
winter rain.

Poem of the Day 01.13.23

the black heart of the cinema

the villains victorious
the bad guys won

and all i can do
is watch the little punks
who threw a bottle of soda
at me and my wife

run out of the theater
unscathed

while my helpless heroine
cleans sticky goo off of her jacket

and the credits roll
on this disaster film
of an afternoon.

Poem of the Day 01.12.23

one man band

he sits on the stoop
outside of my office

at least once a week

done with work for the day
done haggling with america
for food and shelter

he sits on the stone stoop
for at an hour or two

drinking tall boys
and singing along to the latin music

he’s blasting sounds into the cacophony
of car horns and ambulance sirens

along fort hamilton parkway

while, inside, i rage against him
slamming windows and screaming

begging for him to stop

a small petty man
wearing himself out

an enraged idiot stuck in his prison

tone deaf
crooning the same sad song

while outside he sings
like a freed bird

a one-man band
on his own world’s stage

with a captive audience
of me.



12.09.22

Poem of the Day 01.11.23

gig-economy workers outside the starbucks

they want to be the one
to bring you your
caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino,
colson

deliver your
cookie crumble mochaccino
straight to your door on this hot summer day,
declan

you and kylen
just need to get up out of bed before noon
and get on that app pronto

seamless
paypal
grub hub
venmo
uber eats
apple pay
doordash

the world is your oyster

after a long, hard week
working from home again

gig-economy workers outside the starbucks
on a merciless, humid eighty-five-degree morning
with a heat index of one-hundred

and it looks like a moped show

mexican men with helmets on
trying to make a buck in the plastic hustle of america

frantically checking their phones

for java chip orders
salted caramel concoctions
mango dragonfruit lemonades

or whatever flavor
those wonkas in corporate will think up next

men by the dozen
standing anxiously around the door

waiting to dodge traffic
and run red lights

for pennies on the dollar
for the round-up money

to deliver that
vanilla sweet cream cold brew

to otis or emnet
or ethel or mable

some twenty-five-year-old
with a geriatric name

whose time is too important

if only you’d get up
and get on that app now, amelia

or charlotte
or dylan
or liam, oliver and elijah

and place that order

so that all those phones could ding
like a symphony
all over the block

and man upon man
could claw at each other
to get inside the corporate brewer's front door

where your pineapple passionfruit refresher
is on the counter waiting for you, harper

your name in big, black letters
on the cup

with a big fucking smiley face
drawn on the sucker too.

Poem of the Day 01.10.23

alvin

alvin
is either twenty-five or thirty

but he’s small, a little mental and baby-faced
so he hangs out with the kids

when people find out his age
they always say,

oh, i thought he was much younger than that

alvin is harmless,
people like to say

last week a part-time employee
caught alvin with his hands down his pants

jacking off to japanese animation films

usually he just stares at the screen
laughing at whatever he’s watching

like large bursts of laughter
demented, slapping the keyboard laughter

the other adults here
complain to me about him

shouldn’t he be on the kids computers? they say

but i ignore them
because i can’t stand the sight of these people
after working here for so many years

it’s rumored alvin takes karate
that’s he’s a black belt

a guy like alvin
should know how to defend himself

he’s often in here
with cuts on his hands
and bruises on his face

from who know where

they say alvin takes karate
but that he fights against little kids

i wonder if his sansei and the other kid’s parents
know that alvin is twenty-five or thirty

instead of the eleven or twelve he looks

some nights when i’m stuck here at the job
i think about alvin doing karate against kids

punching them and kicking them
tossing children violently on the mat

while their dumb parents sit there applauding the effort

then i start laughing

i’ve always been of the opinion
that everyone should get to punch
a twelve-year-old boy in the face

at least once in their life

i’m laughing
alvin is at his computer laughing

the sour-faced adults
who get up to complain
can only look helplessly
between the two of us

and in those moments
it’s like everything is right with the world

alvin sitting there laughing
not thinking about his sad, pathetic existence

me sitting here laughing

and, for at least a second,
not at all thinking about mine.

Poem of the Day 01.09.23

old man with a walker blocking my path
out of the grocery store

he’s moving an inch a minute

because i’m stupid
i’m carrying a week’s worth of groceries
and other sundry items

because i told my wife i’d be fine
stay home, i’ll be right back, i said

my arms are burning
i have a mile walk back to the apartment
and i should’ve pissed before i left

this guy’s hardly moving at all
and there’s no way around him

i’m forty-eight
he’s maybe seventy-five

that’s only twenty-seven years between us

i remember twenty-seven years ago
like it was yesterday

1995
i was twenty-one
knew where every quarter-draft night was

and face-planted my weekends
in the parking lots of clubs and bars
all over the pittsburgh area

twenty-seven-years
is a snap of the finger
when you reach a certain age

i look at this guy scrapping along the pavement
and wonder if this is my fate

if the bad food and booze don’t get me first

they say you have a choice
you either grow old or die

somedays i can’t tell the difference
between the two

maybe i should be happy
that i’m forty-eight

can carry a week’s worth of groceries
and can probably hold my piss until i get home

but i think of twenty-one
i think of seventy-five

and how i’m stuck
in between the both of them

like i’m stuck behind this old man

time’s plaything
for as long as existence will have me

and the old man with the walker
blocking my path out of the grocery store

scrapes and waits
and scrapes and waits
and scrapes and waits
for an eternity

time is irrelevant to him now

he has eaten up his time
and spit it back out onto mine

where my arms feel like jelly
the ground meat is turning warm in the sun

and i’m no longer sure
i’m making it home

before my goddamned bladder explodes.

poem of the day 01.06.23

the truant


there’s a kid
who comes in here almost daily
when he should be in school

he sits at the computers
and plays assassin and sharpshooter games
alone for hours on end

this institution thinks it’s doing something good
providing free computer access to kids

but all they do is play these murder games

kill! kill! kill!
the kids shout all afternoon

everybody here wonders
what we should do about this particular kid

the truant

should we get his name and call his parents
call the school
call the cops

but he’s in here every single day
it’s obvious that his parents and the school don’t care

this kid personifies systematic failure
all the way around

and parents and schools
can feel like cops, like jail too

to be honest,
this kid is not really my problem

everybody here says,
maybe we should shut his computer off

kick him out
until the other kids come in after school

but that’s not a solution either
it’s spiteful and petty

and despite the crazies in here
who talk to themselves
or lock themselves in the bathrooms
for hours on end

the kid is probably safer in here
than he would be on the street

the answer is there is no answer

the vanguards of democracy
have let us all down on this one

i’m just glad the kid is quiet
that he tries to be circumspect

he sits at his computer
hunched in real close and tapping the mouse

killing this and killing that
all morning and into the afternoon

until all of the other kids come in here to join him

and it gets noisy
and it gets violently loud

the truant fades into the din
of the mass, adolescent computer killing machine

just another cog in the system
which is what they really want

which is what we’ll get.

poem of the day 01.05.23

talking capitalism with the pizza man


this is not an evening
to count my carbs

or the years that i have left
until retirement

i am on dinner break from work

feeling decadent
with my pallet and time

fuck health
for it is also a state of mind

so i feel sick the whole way around

and the pizza man says to me,
you look like you’re doing nothing
but loafing around today

a bold statement
from one stranger to another

good sir, i want to tell him

i’m gainfully employed
subscribe to at least three streaming services
recycle most items
and pay my taxes on time
to keep the american war machine running

i want to tell him
i’ve been broken and battered by this system
for longer than some people have been alive

and that i always pay in cash

but i just say
nah, i’m on my break

like that explains the entire course of my existence
up until this moment where were crossed paths

the pizza man nods like he knows
throws two steaming plain slices
into a box for me

sighs and says, yeah,
it’s good to make a buck when you can

which is as stupid
and insipid
philosophy
as i’ve ever heard

that i’m stunned into silence

and forget
to leave a tip

as i hightail it
away from this abomination
and out the pizza parlor door.


                                        01.04.23

poem of the day 01.04.23

jury duty

this is where the ideal
of american exceptionalism and freedom

come to die

and the american flag
bends like a limp cock
in every corner of the room

hallelujah, i’ve found a place
worse than work

whose only selling point
is that it isn’t prison or the morgue

they play us videos
about our civic duty

vocational awe
for the average joe

call our names
and pluck us away
by the tortured or frightened dozens

to those of us left to rot
there are no number of books left
to quell the boredom

no number of podcasts
and not enough music in the world

once faces a moral reckoning
the examined life
whether they want to or not
locked up in here

sitting in this room
if you listen closely

one can hear the sound
of people’s souls molting into dust

ugly people
attractive people
the sick and the dull

there is no differentiation
in this space and time

just the illusion of a life once lived
outside

in the sun
in the rain

in love and hate

where we were once people

not whatever
slumbering monsters

this experience
has turned us
into.

                                    01.04.23