Fugitive Literature

Too Many Women Named D___

2007-01-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

Cheap motels always feel like bleach and sweat and
Broken condoms and lost prom night virginity
And cheap prostitutes and child molesters
And bikers and migrant laborers and
Affairs -

And now they remind me of the fact that I've been in love
With two different women on two different coasts
Who answer to the same damned name,
Almost the same exact damned full name,
Prefer to be called the same nickname,
Mouths taste and feel almost exactly the same...

Why am I thinking about that?

Blessed Mother Mathematical Anomaly,
Look down upon me as I taste the flesh of someone I'm not supposed to taste,
Forgive my sins beforehand, because I shall certainly never
Regret them.

I can feel no remorse for doing what I do best,
Being the revenge fuck, the long lost forgotten friend in the night,
Stupid goddamned panties should be made of something
More durable than fabric, something harder to break
Than a wedding vow.

Middle of the day,
And the Pacific outside whispers no secrets it has witnessed
In this cheap motel.

No stories of the dead hookers it has drowned,
No tales of Immigration raids or of accidental pregnancies.

# # #

Twenty-Something Sexual Geriatric

2007-01-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

I never miss women - just the memories of women.

The smell of fresh shampooed hair, the scent of pillows,
The glistening droplets of afternoon sweat on shoulders,
The silouettes of breasts, burned into the mind
Like purple desert sunsets.

I never miss women - just the fun I've had with women.

With handcuffs and in roadside bathrooms,
The stolen cigarettes and ashtrays full of beer bottle caps,
The shots of warm bourbon run off a lover's back,
Sounds of heartbeats echoing off living room floors.

I miss Chicanas with scorpion tongues.
I miss days spent ebony-covered and lustful in Denver,
Whispers in Virginia barns, bitten lips in Santa Barbara,
Screaming and panting and fucking away Baton Rouge summers.

But I never miss women, relationships, lovers, friends with benefits -
I'm nothing more than a head full of one-night stands, weekend escapes, broken affairs,
Violated sorority houses, backroom trysts in art galleries,
The motel rooms, tequila shacks, the vineyard sheds.

But I never, ever miss women.

Reading in Bed One Afternoon in September

2006-09-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

I tried focusing...
Focusing on the words written on the page,
On pronouncing each and every word, on adding audible interpretation
to every syllable.

But how difficult it is,
Trying to read excerpts of Bukowski's Hot Water Music,
Stretched out in bed with a Beautiful Woman with Beautiful eyes,
While your eyes keep drifting down to hips and thighs.

I tried focusing...
Focusing on something other than the desire to pull
her closer to me, the desire to taste her neck and breasts
and to tear every shred of clothing from her body.

But how difficult it is,
Trying to read excerpts of Bukowski aloud and in full voice,
Trying to ignore animalistic attraction, lustful, primordial silent screams,
Demanding the taste and smell of sweaty flesh.

How I could give up trying to read Bukowski
To live that temptation forever and a day.

- For Randi

Navigating the River Styx with a Frat Boy Charon

2006-08-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

A busted nose and I'm bleeding onstage,
A barn in Virginia tobacco country becomes a whirling madness,
From the support beam, my head bounces from shoulder
To mosh-pit shoulder, down to the floor.

As I'm coughing up blood, two meaty hands
Pull me up from the red dirt floor, carry me out into
Autumn darkness, down to a raging bonfire
Burning holes into a perfectly good cow pasture.

Drunk and stoned, I'm convinced I'm destined for
Punk Rock Hades, the hands the fists of Charon,
The dancing flames a mere doorway to my eternal prison.
At least, I thought, I will die on my own farm, as Fate intended.

But no, Charon's drunken redneck fists sat me down on a hay bale,
In between a pretty stoner girl and an alcoholic 14-year-old,
One laughing, the other vomiting, my own personal Charon igniting my
busted face in a sea of cheap gin and gauze.

Sometimes, the older brothers of bandmates can make for brutal guides
On the River Styx, serving as both nanny and executioner,
Tormenter and nurturing bastard.
But Tre bandaged me up and went back into the mosh pit.

The 14-year-old alkie got up to find a tree to hold the booze down,
The pretty stoner girl, still laughing, told me her nipples were being
Tickled by the butterflies in her shirt and that she once fucked her boyfriend
On the balcony of a Baptist church.

Some days, I miss nights like that.
But, mostly,
No.

Thinking Mesa Arizona

2006-08-25T03:28:00.000-07:00

Watching the sun break rocks in the desert,
A hundred million years of yellow star burning
Holes into Arizona,

And the scorpions march towards Tucson,
Maricopa County awaits its rattlesnakes,
And somewhere, off in the desert, an old man drowns
in a wash, a cowboy taken into the abyss
By the Great Stagecoach

Once this land was primative, beautiful, passionate
The Natives lusted after maize and warfare,
Bronze women tossed their breasts to the sky,
Before tribes gave way to trailer parks on the Reservations.

And now the land is no longer primative or passionate,
Water pours in from Colorado rivers, bottled and boutiqued through designer ductwork,
Golf courses sprout like chickweed in a garden,
Even the cowboys have been shamed into playing
host to the flocks of college kids and old ladies
from Newark, New Jersey
and Cleveland, Ohio

Bronze women once tossed their breasts to the sky here,
And now the middle-aged ravage the land with
recreational vehicles and golf clubs,
Clothed and drunk off White Man's privilege,
Gluttonous and lustful,
Ravenous and fat.

"Making Babies Now"

2006-08-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

I was the worst kind of bastard
A bastard at nineteen
In bed with a migrant laborer's daughter,
Staring at the ceiling,
Wondering if
Somewhere in Mexico's future
I will be recorded in some official document
as a deadbeat dad.

I don't think I don't love I don't
feel I don't listen I ignore gigantic waving
red flags saying don't do this oh shit don't do this
Fuck fuck fuck fuck
She's a goddamned virgin and I didn't think
I knew she had a crush on me a stupid crush

I just woke up
She woke me up
Climbed into my bed
Used her body as an alarm clock.

I didn't even open my eyes, still stoned and hung over,
Unable to realize my hands were not caressing the hips
Of a dream.

By the time I saw her on top of me,
Still trying to figure out the hows and whats and wheres,
Grinning and playing with my goatee and asking me silly girl
Questions,

It was way too late.

I was the worst kind of bastard
Bastard at nineteen
Nineteen and already damned for my sins
and Lizette sleeps naked on top
of a dirty-ass comforter
in a dirty-ass room
in a dirty-ass house

Staring at the goddamn pipes in the ceiling
Snow on the ground outside
Her parents slaving away at a stockyard
Covered in USDA Grade A cowshit.

I don't think I just am
And I deserve to be thinking about making
bastard children now.

Showers with Strangers

2006-07-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

It had been so long since I showered with someone else,
And Pia, eight years my junior and full of foreigner bluntness,
Laughed at my sorry ass when I apologized for bumping into her,
For saying "yes, ma'am" when she asked me to pass the shampoo...

I kept thinking about her boyfriend back in Florence.
I kept wondering why she'd kissed me the way she did, why
she felt no remorse, why she'd put me through a coffee table...

It was five-thirty in the morning, a Monday.

I should've been thinking about critical path schedules, coordination meetings,
workflow planning, that long-term development plan that had been sitting
On my nightstand for weeks.

Instead, I'm bathing with an Italian woman, debating whether or not
My actions constitute a quarter-life crisis, debating whether I should simply
call in sick to work, risk putting a multi-million-dollar job further behind schedule,

Simply to spend the entire day with her in the shower.

I was pulled out of my contemplative self-bullshitting by a sudden, intense pain.
I felt my tearducts begin to swell and grabbed onto the shower curtain for dear life.
Pia had found an ingrown hair on my back and had, without asking,
decided to simply extract it with her fingernails.

She put her head on my shoulder,
I turned and kissed her on the forehead.
I felt the locket hanging from her necklace pressing into my back,
And I pulled away slowly.

Guilt is a bitch and a half.

She figured out why I pulled back, almost instantly.
She looked at me,
Glanced down at the locket,
Looked back at me,
Rolled her eyes.

With one tug, the hemp rope snapped.

She tossed the locket over the shower curtain.
I heard it bounce off the back of the toilet and plunk into the bowl.
She gave me a quick playful shove, grinned, went back to washing her hair.

It's amazing how one broken necklace can relieve so much anxiety.

As Pia would say,
Worry about today tomorrow.

- January 20, 2006

Front Range Peyote and the Aztec Warrior Princess

2006-07-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

A million mosquitoes met their end on the windshield of a battered Dodge pick-up
As she stripped to the waist.

She tossed her clothes at tractor trailers, threatened a gas station attendant with Indio revenge, tossed old battered cassette tapes and empty beer cans at imaginary children -

Laughing children.

Anglo children.

monstrous little demons from her past.

The ones who had called her wetback as a child,
The ones who made jokes about her cutting lawns and picking sugar beets,
The ones who turned a nice little suburban "Mexican-American" into a raging Chicana.

The fungus was still raging through her tiny frame as we crossed the border back into Colorado,
Her nipples splitting the wind like firewood as she hung out the passenger window.

She was an Aztec warrior princess.
And she wanted revenge for her Indio ancestors,
Long dead men killed by men
Who looked like me.

Just outside Ault, I pulled right off the highway, plowing through the grasslands
Like a raging madman, pushed to the breaking point by my own
Fungus-inspired illusion.

That federally-owned barbed wire didn't see us coming.

We barely made it out of the car, naked and filled with peyote and doomed by lust,
Boxers shredded by purple-black fingernails before they ever
Knew what hit them.

I had never heard an Aztec princess howl before.

Neither had the prairie dogs, who came out of their holes to watch the spectacle.

The world exploded into a million shades of purple as the sun set over the Rockies,
The stars became glistening spotlights,
And a madman and an Azteca became returned to their animal state,
Liberating a thousand years of Anglo oppression and generational sins
As the grass tore at our backs
And the wind devoured our lustful music.

Slapping Ass Shitfaced Erect

2006-07-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

Visual stimulation
All goddamned visual stimulation
Not a goddamned
rational thought inside her beautiful naked
Mestizo head.

There's nothing but stale quotations from women's magazines
And leftover pop culture crammed in between sitcom trivia and bad techno

Nothing
But
Visual
Stimulation.

Sweat dripped off her breast
Landed smack dab in the shot glass, half empty and now salty
with bronze skin and flailing long black hair whipping my chest

I flip her on her back bored with simply watching
with nothing to do I waste bad tequila all over her body
Return her sweat to its skin
And show her how educated men prefer their cheap booze.

And her teardrop tattoos blend their indigo into my white lap
And the sun outside sings nothing but hot summer fucking,
One-day stands and all-night silence

I look behind her eyes and see nothing
But a need to have something
Inside
to fill the void.

That's all I am is a filler of womanly voids.

I'm a brain a cock an ear to listen.
I serve as the fixer of broken toys, the salvation of dead sexiness, the salve against
The pain of a thousand abusive lovers.

I rarely ask for anything in return.

But something anything beyond visual fucking stimulation
would be nice for a change.

Vagrancy

2006-06-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Black Vagrant, you watch me as if you know me,
As if our flesh were one,
As if my soul were yours to take tonight.

Black Vagrant, I can smell death on you,
The stale cigar smoke stealing your lungs,
The scarred remnants of a diabetic's legs rotten with gout.

Who are you watching, Old Man?
My soul is not for sale.

Death and I made a deal years ago, long before you came.

The Devil shall get half of me,
God the other half,
And the rest will go to charity.

Keep pushing your walker, Old Man.
Death is watching you.

No Sympathy for the Devil

2006-06-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Normally, Tuesday mornings are pretty boring. Get up, drink my five cups of too - damned - strong, black - as - death coffee, eat my Lean Pockets, forget to shave, etc...

But this morning was different.

I woke up and realized Satan was sitting at the foot of my bed, reading the Cincinnati Enquirer.

"What the fuck, man...I'm trying to sleep."

"Dude, lighten up. I'm the Prince of Fucking Darkness... and I'm bored."

"No, seriously. What the hell are you doing in my townhouse?"

The Devil lit up a plump Honduran Maduro and sipped on the last of my Wild Turkey 101.

"Pfft...cable's out at my place," Mr. Morning Fucking Star explained. "Plus the old lady's got her Anti-Christian Ladies' Brunch this morning, the kids are screaming, and I think I've got hemorrhoids."

"Dude, I've got to be at work in, like, two three hours..." I explained. "And that is the cheapest smelling cigar I've smelled in years. Whadidya do? Steal that off a hobo?"

I quickly pulled on some underwear, not completely comfortable lying in bed naked with the Devil staring at my junk.

"Dude, where the fuck did ya get the banana sling there?" Lucifer said, staring over the Sports section. "The whole mankini thing is so not you."

"A friend."

"Oh yeah. I remember her. Do you remember when she used to --"

I interrupted him with a grunt.

"Dude, you were such a total bastard back then," Lucifer continued. "You used to ruin more good lingerie than a closet full of moths. C'mon... admit you miss me..."

"Dude, I really don't want to talk about it." I said. "Besides, don't you have something better to do than critique my choice of underwear?"

"Well, I do have that new Left Behind book launch later this morning, a couple of preachers to corrupt before 10ish, and my usual afternoon German scat porn viewing with my boy Karl out in Washington..."

"Karl who?"

"Oh you know I can't say. But, well...you don't think the political party goons have box seats in Heaven, do you?"

Satan winks. I hate it when he winks.

He follows me downstairs, through the living room, into the kitchen. As I'm fixing the coffee, Don Diablo's stealing Mp3s off my laptop. He walks over to the stereo and puts on Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers.

I tried ignoring the motherfucker, but, well, it's damned near impossible to ignore a huge reddish man in a white suit, a virtual Tom Wolfe/John Waters clone who stinks of brimstone.

"So what the fuck do you want from me?" I ask.

"I want your first-born child's immortal soul."

Donnie D. just stares at me with this serious look on his face, then bursts into laughter.

"Dude, that's like so 1654. Besides, your soul ain't worth shit on eBay."

I'm not amused.

Lucifer walks into the kitchen, I hear the microwave door open, and helplessly watch as the Fallen One devours my breakfast.

"I need you to do me a favor"

"Oh, for fuck's sake...what? I'll do whatever you want...just leave me alone already."

The Devil picks up my coffee cup and takes a big sip of my first cup o the day. When he sits the mug down, I notice chunks of food floating in there.

Hell hath no fury like the Devil's backwash.

Satan let loose a ferocious belch before he spoke again.

"I need you to go back to being that fucking asshole we all knew and admired down in the Pit. We had so much hope for you, actually. You used to be such a fun guy."

I got up and poured myself a new cup of joe, in a clean mug.

"Remember that girl with the George Clinton dreadlocks in the port-o-john in Morro Bay? That hot waitress in Baton Rouge?

"How about that 43-year-old? You totally knew she was married, man - don't lie. The tanline on her ring finger, the "you're my son's age" slip-up, and, oh yeah, how can I forget, the fact that you'd just been shot down by her daughter...that was VENGEFUL SHIT..."

I turned on the T.V., put on Headline News, and tried to ignore Old Scratch.

"C'mon. Remember T__? The hood of that old Dodge pick-up you had? Back in '97? Right on the corner of 23rd Avenue and 12th Street in Greeley... that was pretty cool."

My ears perk up a bit. Recognizing this old trick, I get up and change the CD in the stereo. Good - the fucker forgot to take out Live at Folsom Prison.

Don Diablo stretches out on the couch, relights his Maduro, and stares at the television.

"Oh, and we can't forget about M____. Man, talk about a firecracker. I still can' believe you're embarrassed that your roommate caught you guys using HER fuzzy handcuffs in HER bathroom."

I can't take it anymore.

"Dude, either tell me what you want or get the flying fuck out of my life. I lived it and I don't need a history lesson from a wannabe antagonist. Go bug John Milton or something."

The Devil just laughed.

"You know, I laughed when you told that girl a few weeks ago that you don't really care about sex anymore," Donnie D. said. "That was the funniest damn thing I've heard come out of your mouth in months.

"Clock's ticking, my man. You're closer to 40 than you are to 14. And I know your sorry ass...."

I finally decided to do what I usually do when the Devil comes a-callin'. I picked up my mankini-covered ass and left him flipping through the channels, trying to decide between watching infomercials or VH1.

I went up to the bathroom, took a shower, intentionally forgot to shave, and went to work. And it was a very good day, actually.

Singsong Dipshit in Prada

2006-05-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

What the flying monkeyfuck is Prada?

I’ve heard of Pravda.
That’s a Russian newspaper.

And why is this dipshit trying to impress me.
I don’t give care where he bought his sunglasses.

What kind of man bumps another man
at a grocery store at four in the afternoon

On a half-dead Saturday and then complains
about his scratched Prada sunglasses?

Did you leave your balls at home,
Or are those windshields you’re wearing supposed to impress me?

I think I read about this in Pravda.
That famous Russian newspaper.

Why would I give a flying monkeyfuck about Prada?
Prada?

Bombscare Sonnets and Typhoid Chicken Salad

2006-02-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

I just opened up 200 million years’ worth of junk mail...
Stuffed neatly down the sides of my couch

By the aliens and Elvis and Jesus H Christ himself.
I opened up envelope upon envelope,

Credit card applications and coupon book, bible literature
and End Times gobbledygook and penis enlargement flyers,

Now I feel better, couch feels softer, the 200 million years’ worth
of complete and utter dead tree bullshit has been reduced to landfill

Elvis has left the goddamned building Jesus walked across the dishwater
And the aliens have quit jabbing me

in the ass
with
the DVD
remote...

Nomadic Brainchild of the Dunes

2005-11-22T08:44:00.000-08:00

The sun splits the sand, burns holes down into the dust,
Seashells and driftwood lie beneath the surface,
Boots crush crush crush down on the white white floor.

And she sings beautiful ballads to the coastal blossoms,
Humming Mexican folksong through black painted lips,
The sun splits the sand, burns holes down into the dust.

Blankets mere saltwater payday, sweat blended with ocean,
And she bares her breasts towards the Pacific,
And she sings beautiful ballads to the coastal blossoms.

The nakedness of her Indio forebears, her jeans tossed aside,
Boxer drawers and brown flesh seducing the dunes,
Blankets mere saltwater payday, sweat blended with ocean.

Dumbass Political Fuck Buddy

2005-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

"Rubbing alcohol's in the cabinet.
Above the toilet.
Sorry about the cat."

Yeah, I figured that much out.
Your cat just doesn't like me.

As I'm cleaning the wound,
Sitting on the toilet,
She comes into her bathroom,
Copy of Mother Jones in her hand.

She couldn't believe George W. would be campaigning
in San Luis Obispo motherfucking California
in the goddamned summer of 2000.

"Ralph Nader is the only hope for America."

I kept quiet, kept cleaning the wound inflicted
By her dumbass cat.

The little bitch had a nasty set of claws on her.
Its not my fault mommy doesn't clean out the litter box,
Not my fault the apartment is filled with
Che Gueverra posters and Greenpeace fliers and biodiesel
literature than goddamned catfood.

"I think its like sad and stuff, you know.
Gore should just drop out and let progressives like Nader win,
Then we'll get things done, end this destruction of our planet
and stuff."

She's wearing my shirt and I can smell incense burning.
And its 2:30 in the goddamned morning.

I notice a condom hanging from my shirt sleeve.

The shirt she's wearing.

I get up off the toilet and grab the spent contraceptive, flip it into
the trashcan.

"That's really sweet!"
And so she kisses me.
Mother Jones still rolled up in her hand.

Yeah, sweet.
Whatever.
Can I go home now?

No foreplay, bad missionary sex betwixt a drunkard Democrat and
a ganja'd up Green.
Bipartisanship gone awry.
And any afterglow ruined by the refusal to let me light
up a Marlboro on the balcony and one pissed off cat.

"You know,
I think you and me should like do this
more often. Its been awhile since I've been
with a guy and Melissa doesn't really care
Because she's not really a lesbian and we're like both
into experimenting with different things,

"You know?"

Jesus, what was I drinking?

Spinach Nuggets and Yogurt: Devolving into an Adult

2005-09-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Freezer’s full of healthy stuff, bland meat synonyms shaped like
the real thing, graying fake chicken patties loaded with this shit called
soy isoflavones and no trans fats and half the calories of junk food

Where did the malt liquor go?
Did I lose the taste for it? Did I grow out of my little vato wannabe gangster
Punk-ass bitch lifestyle, past heartache and pain and Quick and the Dead lovers?

I once kissed a gal in East Las Vegas, New Mexico, while her grandmother slept
In the next room and I once hid in shame when I tripped out on acid and
the sky turned beige and purple and the devil was coming to get me.

I once pissed blood for a week after getting drilled in the kidneys at fifteen,
Licked my wounds clean in the back of a busted Chevy Celebrity, once threw up
beer brats and tequila and passed out with my balls hanging out.

And now I have a freezer full of spinach nuggets and meatless lasagna and lean turkey,
yogurt in 20 different varieties, fair-trade coffee and sugar-free iced tea,
I’ve even picked up a tan this summer.

Devolving into the primordial abyss of adulthood has killed my caveman, cracked my libido,
Turned my macho bullshit into granola-filled bouquets and stone-cold organic soymilk.

And, the strange thing is,
I feel happy about it.

Fucking shit.
That’s a bitch and a half, ain’t it, folks?

Numerology

2005-08-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Count off my cycles of life
Count count count my days
Count my vowels

Steal my soul like a camera

Tick off days
Tick off women
Count my days
like a calendar in hell

Count count my days
Count my vowels
Steal my soul like a camera.

Lunch with Gary Gringo

2005-07-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

This guy, Gary, was the whitest guy I've ever met.

Cranked public radio jazz from his convertible,
Had no rhythm to speak of,
Loved abstract art yet hated hip-hop,
Enjoyed ballet, read Balzac, criticized my smoking,
Drank bottled water constantly, infused with just enough lemon
To make his whole aura radiate citrus.

Gary and I met for lunch in Avila Beach,
It was a Friday afternoon, sun was shining that California shine,
Skater kids were grinding curbs, girls were sunbaked bronze,
Chicano Spanish and Okie English and West Coast jargon
hung a wreath of symphony on the coastal breeze.

Gary pulled up in his sports car with a bleach-blonde,
blue-eyed, Hitler Youth of a girl.

Gary's date opened her mouth, but not a single
coherent thoughtful sound crossed her lips.

Just noise.

Something about breast augmentation.
Then something about all the “dirty Mexicans” moving
up the coast.
Then another screeching rumble about how I'd look
so much more attractive
If I plucked my eyebrows.

Gary nodded.

The skater kids kept grinding pavement, girls baked away into skin cancer,
The Chicano Spanish and Okie English and West Coast jargon
disappeared as we entered the restaurant.

Shit.

I'll be screaming "Kill Whitey"
by the end of
lunch.

Sold

2005-07-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Fortune fakes miracles like orgasms,
Bad luck's tombstone rots away on the other side
of Fate's favorite landscapes, the grave filled with slit wrist suicides
and children choking on birthday cake and happy winter's
long-forgotten frozen cattle.
Fortune buys and sells Fate, the broker of Life and Death,
the seed sown into souls and bodies by that old bastard Time,
God's own rogue trader.
Bad Luck's been blowing at my back.
Fate's done sold my soul for a mansion in heaven,
Fortune's creditor has called for my debt to be paid.
Love is not within my line of credit.

Spit and Crowbars

2005-06-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

I never punched somebody that didn't have it coming.
I never kicked a man when he was down
unless he tried to get up.

Living life as the motherfucking Wild Bunch, the white trash William Holden,
Hands taking the place of pistols,
Fists firing automatic rounds,
Defensively.
Offensively.
Occassionally for money.

My hands now hurt, arthritis setting in,
still in my 20s, still alive,
According to the last x-rays,
I've got a hundred mended bones in my right hand,
a dozen or so in my left.

And now I'm a pacifist,
Eternally reminded on cold days that I
once lived my life
like the motherfucking Wild Bunch, a white trash peckerwood
William Holden, making last stands for forgotten
shadows of ideas, for the lost souls of friends.

Swordfish Stalks Nola

2005-06-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Broken old jazz band of a wino,
banging off quick rhythms on pie plates and
trashcan lids, stomping feet to his own liquored
beat, singing hymns to the tourists and fortunetellers
down in Jackson Square.

There's a half-tuned piano a block away with my name on it,
two pints of cheap drugstore rum
keep my soul cold and my body warm,
That old wino's racket fills my head as I roll down
Decatur, down towards the French Market,
Down to eat an expensive meal with expensive tourists
in ugly, expensive tourist outfits.

Stonewashed cathedrals of life and death
carve holes in the sky by the I-10 offramps,
Canal Street bustles with hustlers, ebony transsexual
tourist traps and street vendors pawning designer knockoff jewelry.

Two pints of dark dark rum
and a belly full of etouffee -

Right now, there's a million tiny whiskers drowning
themselves as flushing toilets harmonize with the
the Jazz Band Wino over at Tulane

Sundresses hang loose from the shoulders
of Iowa college girls down for the Jazz Festival

Sunglasses hide blatant metrosexual daintiness from the
faces of a dozen yankee frat boys hunting girls from Iowa.

Broken, broken, broken old jazz band of a wino -
I should've bought that man a drink.