Gallery of Angels

guitar chord
slices air
like a razorblade
along a tongue
and even bleach
won't remove
the bloodstains
on the bedroom floor
where Cindy carved
a heroin angel
from her frail
bird-like wrist
and woke
in a cloud filled
bus depot
destination
Heaven's Gate
but Jenny scrubs
just to scrub
just to keep a
rhythmn in the air
as Steve shoves
his Fender Mustang
like a rapists cock
thru the drywall
into the kitchen
where Marie ties off
on the black
and white tile floor
with a wilted rose
bleeding from her teeth
in memory of Cindy
and the lost nights
we danced with angels
on the tip
of a thin syringe
only to wake
years later in this
condemed cold water flat
slaves to angels
who fell from grace

 

Dumbass Artist

your typical cliched
wanna-be hip artist
draped in black
always hung outside
the right circles
sipped wine
from styrofoam cups
at all the gallery
openings downtown
he chain smoked
my cigarettes
gave up discussing art
when I told him
I just come to get laid
and none of these fucks
will ever paint their way
out of a bad marriage
told me when he
checked out
he had a 2' x 4' white
gesso primed canvas
to lean like an emergency
room stretcher
against the shower stall
had the right distance
marked off
so when he pulled
the trigger
only his blood and brains
would hit the canvas
and not the shotgun blast
told me I could sell
his suicide
to any gallery
that now rejected him
if I promised
to drink a toast
to his memory
the night they found
the dumbass
OD'd on Mexican Tar
in the alley behind
the Buffet
I honestly tried
to feign
dissapointment

 

After Heroin

2:16 a.m.
Two street whores ignore the rain
as though it were the familiar piss of some john
washing away the dime store make-up
off their sullen, swollen faces.
They huddle together, stay warm,
in glowing need for heroin.

2:28 a.m.
Still no cab.
Traffic splashes by
in random uncontrolled spurts,
like a 16 year old boy
discovering sex for the first time.

2:35 a.m.
This is day 7
of my alleged detoxification,
and this soiled mattress
lying limp on this worn wooden floor
reeks a bit more of flesh
than it once did.
Sometimes I sleep to dream of mirrors
but awake to only windows,
as though this city were some extension
of my soul,
and like the cheap petty artist
I search for a metaphor of self
in the broken street lights
and trash scarred alleys...
in the disembodied and disembowel-ed voices
that grip me in sleep
and pull me into these sweat drenched nights
to watch two whores wait for a cab
beneath this hotel window.

2:43 a.m.
Seven days
and I feel clean again,
but I still don't trust myself...
it somehow turned on me
like a dropped stiletto in a gang fight.
Turned and twisted like a secret
whispered into the ear of a lover
who doesn't need me anymore.
But I have no lovers now.
No friends.
No enemies.
Just demons with fangs like syringes
and voices like drunk fathers,
reminding me I'll never amount to shit.

3:01 a.m.
Two whores drift like memories
into the back seat of a yellow cab.
I light a stale cigarette
and fall into bed
beneath the blinking cliche
of a neon sign.
There is a "vacancy" here.

---

* My chapbook that was due out this summer by Sisyphus Press has been abducted by the editor and will now appear in very cool new anthology produced by "The Bukowski Hangover Project".
* "Flesh Wounds", a collection of my early crap is due out in September. It will be a perfect bound thing with cover art by yours truly, and advanced orders can be placed at my site.
* A four part in-depth interview with my bloated ego is finished and can be found at babelmagazine.com. Topics range from the current state of the small press to UFO's and other weird shit from a booze addled mind.

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