Eugene's Black Magic

Sometimes I witness simple normal things when I'm in a smokey dark booth at the bar and I am nothing if not compelled to turn those moments into dramatic poetry...

He walks black in from the door,
His lavender shirt called into question,
They beg him for tricks,
Magic tricks,
They want his bold black cock,
Drunk and thirsty for his love,
Screaming in imagined ecstasy,

Eugene, show us a card trick,
Show us a card trick,

And one among them speaks the bold truth,
Everyone needs a little magic in their lives.

7.2010

Listening to her Words

City boys and girls released to play cowboys and cowgirls in the mountains for a summer...

Jenni hid her eyes when we talked,

placing a strand of thin hair behind her ear,

the profile of her boy's blue eyes

not enough for my consolation

so I talked to her high cheek bones instead.

Her teeth were too white for genetics

or her skin was too dark for her teeth,

I wondered what it would be like to kiss such thin lips,

perhaps like kissing a gun shot wound

and would she use her tongue?

Jenni frustrated me when she talked

because I wouldn't look into her eyes when she spoke,

I watched her bright belt buckle,

wanting to bite it to test the validity of its gold,

looking for a panty line on her hip

under her Wranglers wrapped tight

around the sticks of her long legs.

We carried on

afraid of the length of our conversation

but neither sure how to successfully end it.

I looked at her face and begged her to look back.

When she looked at me I followed the pearl buttons

down her checkered shirt

trying not to stare at her flat chest.

Our words floated between us in misery,

on a soft blanket of awkwardness that

we would forget in a matter of minutes.

Jenni was never beautiful

except when I talked to her.

5.2007

Loleena

I witnessed the scene of this poem once, felt the tide turning, saw the dust and the mayhem and how she stepped out in front of them, those whose shifty eyes and swollen veins betrayed the lunacy inside of them. She stepped out and with her arms raised, did not hesitate inside her heart to believe they would stop...

She waved them off,
sweet baby chubby,
legs spread, arms waving wildly,
like a dancing monkey in the dusty alley,
patron saint of the thunder hooves,
beating against the hard earth,
drumming for rain,
they bore down upon her,
reaching with their long legs,
and no longer stepping lightly,
to the priestess, Loleena,
giving confession to Catholic school girls with perky breasts,
blessing them with the ammonia smell of horse piss,
blue-eyed Loleena,
tubular sections of torso,
a moustache of light sweat,
her sunburned arms did not belong to that pasty belly,
they charged,
in panic and purposeless,
dark sweat of summer sun along their necks,
sweet baby chubby Loleena,
she was not afraid that day,
she waved them off,
bastard beasts of regalia,
sliding across the stark and cracked ground,
corralled by the stallion,
stallioness,
blue-eyed Loleena.

5.24.2010

Louisiana Born

Trying out some new homegrown spice...

I remember being born in the soft yellow guts of a bloated catfish,
Pushed into the dark recess of a rotten
     cypress stump with the rest of her pale brood,
Grasping at the new uncertainty of life,
Wrapped in those slimy gray whiskers and held against blubbery lips,
She whispered my name,
Lifted my head above the black skin of the swamp
     to be baptized in the shared blood of a thousand mosquitoes,
The fresh smell of rotten wood and stagnant water,
The guttural croon of antiquated alligators drunk on love,
Pregnant mother thunderclouds sickly purple and swollen,

The mill whistle sounds and mother calls us in for lunch,
Rice and gravy and pork and carrots and always mashed potatoes,
Homemade shoestring bows and twig-arrows left at the door,
Dirt under our toenails and in the creases of our necks,
Sunday morning sharp in clean clothes never worn elsewhere,
Displayed for local grandmothers who grin with someone else’s bright teeth,
Carving my name with a paper clip into the wood of the pew,
Stealing hidden glances at her sitting pretty with her parents
     but considering donuts after Mass just as earnestly,

I remember watching tug-boats churn through the deeply
     thick gumbo brown waters of the river,
Where my father would drown kittens we couldn’t afford to keep,
Worming my toes down into that malleable silt
     until I grew from the Earth itself,
Discarded trash from passing ships caught in the trees like
     silly Christmas ornaments,
Otters and lonely mallards circling one another in the eddies,
Abandoned rope swings where older kids had braved the cold mad currents,
The older kids that I would one day become,
The distant shore and the tree line of another world,
The levee at my back like an impenetrable wall against reality,

On the back porch a fiddle band plays ,
Fat fingers drumming on the upright bass to the
     swaying summer skirts of dark-eyed girls,
The electric lights and the pale blue moon
     bring sheen to the sweat on their faces,
We left the dance floor and I followed you into the sugarcane,
Those rows of sharp-edged stalks whistling like an ocean,
Kissing you on the soft dirt where armadillos
     sometimes find their evening meal,
Hungry for your lips and the taste of home,
Hart Kingsley and the Creole Cousins singing us to sleep in the distance,
Yapping coyotes hunting field rabbits to wake us in the morning.

1.2011

Hot Dogs and Nachos

Finally, and not soon enough, the last of the fabled Regal Series poems... And for a lowly, poor college kid working behind the concession stand at the movie theater, what awful, fetid, revolting icon better represents the experience than this wholly un-delectable treat? With sticky yellow fingers I wrote this down one day...

Everywhere you go
you can get hot dogs and nachos.
It’s only here that you can
sit down and enjoy them.
Or is it only here you can get them?
Or is it enjoy them?
Is it nachos at all?

Man, I’m having a ball just trying to
figure this whole thing out.
But that’s what life is about.
Or is it hot dogs and nachos?
A brilliant combination,
just hard to find –
together.

Or can you find them easily?
Or is it just the hot dogs
that are easy to find?
Maybe it’s just easier to
sit down to enjoy them.
Or do you sit down with nachos only?

I dream in hot dogs and nachos,
in chili and cheese.
I enjoy them both,
but not when I sit down,
and I never
eat them here.

1.2004