Love Song

It’s a school day in winter and a bundled up child on the train announces in perfect sync with the conductor to Stan clear the closin doors, next stop one hundred twenny- fif street. Mama is thick lipsticked wildeyed and earplugged, bopping her weaved head to and fro, singing a scratchy rendition of a love song. There is no room for harmony and mama throws mean eyebrows and laser eyes like a dart gun telling the conductor in training to Shut the fuck up which he does and Move the fuck over making way for an old black granny who hesitates but cooperates as a good seat in the city is hard to come by. With granny’s butt as a buffer, mama fluffs up her faux fur jacket, still growling and howling her song and throwing her homicidal eyes at the other end of granny where the conductor in training draws faces on the window with a single index finger applied in his mouth over and over again. Crack cocaine does no good for a well rooted potty mouth. The artist in training stops what he’s fuckin doin and gets the fuck up, follows mama out of the opening doors, skipping to the beat of mama’s scratchy voice.

Discharged

An honorable discharge means as much as a piece of government paper that fails to incriminate the perpetrators of dishonorable deeds, like
the touching of a seventeen year old breast during physical training, or the
discussion of a myth: the NCO blowing the lieutenant's engorged penis, or better,
a loaded M-9 pistol held against the head of a private who thinks but fails to act.

Unhinged

The question of coffee vs tea is the difference between
wanting a seared belly or the presumption of your own innocence.
I wait for the shoulder to dislocate.
Observing the unhingeing of a body part
takes all the focus of hiding
behind a molehill before dawn and
watching the enemy sleep.
Lifting the tea kettle off a gas stove means knowing
Your exact location and the precise distance to a fire extinguisher.
The breath of dozing babes fuels the
burn of water on flesh.

Garbage Day

A two foot pine tree
horizontal on the sidewalk
drowning in dog piss
wrapped in black plastic like
a calf with rubber boots
in a slaughterhouse.

Exit Wounds

A younger Al Pacino places his hand on my heart
Through the shoulder blade on the other side,
Out comes a blind bird, hollering.

Darjeeling Limited

The Tetley Tea Tasters
Fuck Hitler and his swastika. Just like whitey to take something from the motherland and turn it into shit. The British took our tea but Tata took it back, motherfucker.

Ministry of Defense

Best to send the kids off to battle after Hanukkah, but before Yom Kippur. The spilling of intestines makes for good atonement.

Self-love

Bukowski is dead.
There’s no one left to slap me around but me.

Bruises tend to heal with ice and salt.
Pustules on the ass are the worst.

For Gaza

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy fireworks. It takes time to re-adjust to the smell of smoke and the sound of things exploding.

I watched the fireworks tonight dutifully, because people say I am morose and prone to insufferable moods—the kind of moods that do not enable them to enjoy national rituals. These holidays give them temporary purpose, or at least make them very drunk and fat and satisfied. I haven’t given a Christmas gift in ages. I haven’t sent a card in longer than that.

It was very, very cold outside, which made my face burn and my eyeballs leak water like tears. A Starbucks van was giving out free coffee in tiny paper cups.

The explosions looked like ice cream to me. If I had the sound on mute, I would have narrated the following: Vanilla White Phosphorus. Neapolitan New Year Napalm. Cherry Cluster Bomb.

When I find myself in these precarious situations I look to children for cues. A little one bundled up in synthetic stuffing from head to toe jumped up and down and screamed for joy. She thought ice cream was falling from the sky, too.

I wonder at what point the sounds of things exploding becomes less delightful and more horrifying. Survivors never forget the smell of carbon and sulfur and the sound of solid things disintegrating. The guts inside feel like metal and cold water.

My little friend seems to have adjusted better than me.

I remember when a fresh Marine first hears the sound of a detonating hand grenade. He jumps in his seat and loses his breath like someone has just punched him in the gut. Then he looks around for affirmation, which he never receives. But he adjusts.

When I see the children hopping up and down I think that it must be okay for things to go boom in the sky. Pretty colors fragment in a dozen directions, and a tail of smoke drifts down to the earth.

Today’s early snow has frozen beneath thousands of drunken feet. I smell booze.

And smoke.