Anguish Longwedge

     Sit my nuts on a tee. Select a nine-iron. Smack the sack over the roof, beyond the blackberries, into the homeless camp. Good squirrel bait. Better to give than receive. Give myself, to stop the bleeding, a blowtorch job.
     Stuff my dick in a bottle rocket. Blast the organ off to orbit Saint Peter.
     Reach up in. Yank out the prostate. Feed the catch to a pitching machine. Swing through two. Sweetspot a slider—slug the slop into the next state.
     But I could still rape—rape’s root: SEIZE. Hire a tree surgeon to lop the limbs. Cauterize shoulders and thigh stumps rolling around on a hot plate.
     At least now I can’t procreate, can’t hurt a soul. Except, of course—since I’m still nuts, still a dick, still in a state of Ted Bundy’s quantum pussy—except with all this shit my tongue spatters.
     I do so love words to drop turdlike—screwing sentences received for the trespass of thinking strictly, of dreaming solely, in this our Anguish longwedge!

Way to be Free

     Lean over a bridge over the freeway. Overhead a hawk wobbles thermals. At a windshield I—leading the skeet—hawk.
     The phlegm tops eighty down the fastlane southbound, me screaming over the roar of more cars, trucks, trailers, buses than’s time to count, “Is there any way in hell to be free?”
     The Law spies the spit hit the vehicle. Zips up the cloverleaf. I into the bushes dive. Dodge camps of the penniless, the luckless, the insane—others fleeing other rivers of eels and snakes.
     To the briars, the alders, the devil’s clubs I howl how the song flung from my lung matters. Emerge, clothing torn, to spot a new cloverleaf. Rush up nude onto the bridge. Count to three. Sail over the fearful my installation-to-be. Jackson Pollock got nothin’ on me!
     My art object, so nobody dare object, splats the shoulder. No animals hurt in this self-slaughter. Commuters zoom past—jamming through their cells the cops with pleas.
     Overhead a pigeon on my remains through the smog shits.

Happiness on Wheels

Happy people on the highway.
Everybody doing it my way.
Cruising with a zoom,
dreaming be there soon,
there where everything gets
happier, happier, happier yet.
For every soul four tires beneath a box.
Doors and windows galore. Inside
shut up. Pine scent, vinyl seat. Heart purring
like a not-yet-gassed calico,
busy mapping easy money, gloriously plastic—
changing with the changes, singing along
with a radio song about you
falling in love with a real dish;
till uncovering the tack of
the gelatin in God’s own petri dish.
Bottom line—it’s
turtles all the way down,
every song about itself never ending,
every clown on the highway way too high.
You decide—the song looping around—
to dish love out. Twist that wheel,
floor the sole of that boot, head
full tilt at that abutment.
Maybe, after all, it is
on the suicide of the fence greener.

Substance

     They said I had substance. Had it on my person. Claimed substance on my breath.
     Yes, I admitted, I had substance—what of it?
     They said, because of the substance, I was a danger to myself, and/or others. They had to take me off the street.
     Before I could object, they snapped on cuffs. Pushed me down into the backseat. Drove me off to the building. Herded me into a cell.
     Because this is a free country, I got a lawyer, no charge. He was fresh out of school, didn’t appear to have any substance at all. Urged me to plead guilty. So the trial would end quick and he could get back to pounding pavement for a real job.
     I told him, sure, I was guilty. We all are. Bible got that right. The whole species is fallen, fucked from the outset. But I was damned if I’d plead. No call to beg—I had substance.
     Substantially, the kid admitted, I was right. But in matters of the law, ritual matters. If I’d just sign the confession he had prepared…
     I begged him go. So I could think.
     The verb threw him; think not legal language. He advised me, as my lawyer, not to for godsake do that. Then, shaking his head, trembling noticeably, even whiter than when he first came, he split.
     I looked around—toilet, bunk, bars, wall. My future home, future office, vacation spot of the future. I was now at last a real asshole, stuck in a space with just about that much room.
     Pulled out my substance. Wasn’t much. Bitty little dingleberry. But it got me off. And that was all I needed—to get off.
     When the kid came back, he was grinning ear to ear. He said, “Hey, old man—you got off! You can walk—you’re free to go!”
     I stood. Walked to the toilet. Went.
     “If it’s all the same to you,” urine arced into the bowl, “I’ll just stay put.”
     His face—like a civilization—collapsed. He saw with horror the years of food I would consume; say nothing of free rent, free medical, free dental—Christ, the city would wind up footing the burial!
     Worst of all, the judge would kick the kid’s butt personally for not getting my butt back out on the street, where—after the song and dance of arrest—said butt arguably belonged.
     Above the riot of urine impacting water, I chuckled, “Please close the door on the way out. And would you inform the authorities I detest apple pie? I eat only mom.”
     Then I died happy. Because, sensitive about the mom crack (or maybe the pie got his goat), the kid stabbed me in the back.
     “You got it!” I gasped, echoing in the bowl, chin-down on the rim. “That’s all I ask—pass it on. Now you got substance…maybe you too can kick shit…” and I rattled into the porcelain—born again glad and anxious in the baby between the kid’s ears.