just read the damn poem
at poetry readings
both good &
mediocre poets tend
to preface their work
with short stories:
about how the poem
was written on a tuesday
or that this poem,
which is about picking
tomatoes,
is not really about
picking tomatoes.
most of their stories
are usually longer
& better than
the crap that they
read as their poems.
if I need to be told
that a poem is about
their mother dying from cancer,
this tells me that they couldn’t
figure out how to put this
information into the poem
in the first place.
if you cannot comprehend
my meaning to this poem,
then I haven’t
done my fucking job
& you should ponder
these thoughts at
your earliest convenience.
-Alan Horvath
jobs
most people don’t realize
not every sailor or grunt
gets laid whenever they want to.
some resort to stroke magazines
or standing around school yards
watching adolescent panties.
some take the trip into the city from the base
and walk around the seediest parts of town
looking for the best hotel for the money
to score a piece of ass.
the doorman knows what you want
it’s just a question of how much.
the old elevator creaks up to the top floor
giving you plenty of time to chicken out
or satisfy that itch you have been
carrying since Spain or the Islands.
they never look like you imagine them,
some skinny and ugly or fat and beautiful –
working women and men
who watch the clock just like you do.
they take your dick in their hands and wash it first
with a soft old rag with plenty of soap –
making small talk about family
or girlfriends or the daily news.
then the money comes out
and it’s down to business.
sometimes she is dry – your fault –
but sometimes if you laid the groundwork
out right it’s a tight slippery 15 minutes
with no apologies or looking back –
just a dying to get out into the clean air
and finding the first bus back to base
to wash off her stink and your stink.
this is better than wrestling
with the girls at the bars who want love
or want you to buy beer all night
just to be dumped at midnight
for the local football hero
or working stiff just off from his shit job.
some jobs are like that.
some jobs fuck you over.
some jobs fuck with your mind but
some are just fucking.
soft-weve scott’s bathroom tissue
I wonder where the media
gets this idea
that a visit to the bathroom
should be like floating on a cloud?
long ago I had to take a drunken ex-fiancée
up to the crapper the last night
on leave from boot camp
first the jeans
then the yellow panties
I sat her on the pot
steadying her with one hand
and myself with the other
then I had to wipe both ends
reverse the clothing routine
and carry her down to bed.
I think
she was going to
sleep along that night
diaphanous clouds be-damned
there comes a time in a relationship
when enough is enough
I could only take so much shit
next morning she couldn’t remember
the episode with the crapper
I saw her on the street not long ago
badly dressed and out there in space
she wasn’t someplace I wanted to be
they were nice yellow panties though
food chain
it wasn’t such
a good idea
sixty-five millions ago
that a comet
struck
the
earth
and
killed off the dinosaurs
what
crawled out
of the swamp later
lead to us
dinosaurs
had little more
than eating
on their minds
we need something like that
to keep us in check
or a cataclysmic event
to
wake us up
maybe looking
over
our shoulder now and again
and
seeing a carnivore
might do us some
good
make us
feel
hungry
again
at least
with dinosaurs
you knew where
you stood
to be
eaten quickly
by a predator
is better
than
being
pecked to death
by
bottom
feeders
my little bed
I have a twin bed
just big enough
for one person to sleep in comfortably
this puts a strain on
two people trying to sleep
so we sleep on the floor
my bed is little like a kids
actually it was one of my sons
my dick is little too
so it feels at home in this bed
I’d like a bigger bed
maybe a double so I can stretch out
and not have to use the floor so much
but for now I’ll stay in my little bed
it’s cozy and doesn’t take up a lot of space
and I need the room anyway
to pace and forget my little problems
and create new ones
I can never understand
why people need big beds –
it’s just for sleeping and sex –
not to establish a zip code
or a frontier border crossing
I guess it’s the same reason why people
buy Hummers and Land Rovers
either to match their egos or bank accounts
I think I’ll keep my little bed for now
it makes me feel big
and the sheets are cheaper
and besides
there’s more room on the floor
to do those other things
that require some elbow room
and leverage
mackinaw island
I’m leaning on a store front
in the center of town
bored out of my mind
other men are doing the same
some better but no worse
a bat has fallen from the eaves,
beating itself against a wooden door
I want to step on it
and put it out of its misery
but I know the stares I’d get
would probably kill me
all these tourist traps
are the same
fudge
tee shirts
and plastic shit
made in Taiwan
most men know this
and stay on the streets
checking out ass
weather
gossip
and the stupidity
of his fellow man
only the brave
or poorly dressed
venture into the stores
a shopping bag in each hand
the bat hasn’t moved
since the plunge
and is already melting
into the peeled molding
the smell of fudge sickens me
I want to kill something and eat it
120,000 mile check-up
yeah
things are slowing down
getting out of bed later
hair graying more
harder to keep the weight off
women not catching my eye
I don’t mind any of that
(except the woman thing)
and I do the maintenance
when necessary
spending time checking out
every crack
but sometimes
it breaks down
just because it wants to
the only thing
I can’t check out
is the computer
in this thing
I think it’s made from the
same stuff black boxes
are made from
I tried rewiring it once
playing different programs
but it didn’t work
sometimes the heart
can tell the mind what to do
but not the other way around
the old saw about
“doctor heal thyself”
is good advice
when the patient
is paying attention
a history lesson
for JFK
we were learning about Mesopotamia
how clay pressed with straw and baked in the sun
stood hundreds of feet high near flood deltas
about the River Niger and how fat hippos
floated and tusked in water stinking of crocodiles
and stayed under long periods to avoid the heat
about pointy-hatted witches who made signs
over unborn babies in the middle of the night
so they knew them by sight when they came for them
about asparagus tips
like little circumcised weenies
poking and thrusting out of firm soil
about unfailing magnets always pointing north
and the water in toilet bowls south of the equator
swirling counterclockwise in Rio de Janeiro
about the stiff muscles of frogs and scalpels
(the joke was: how do you eat frogs?
one little leg over one ear and one over the other)
about erosion and Eurasians
and erasers and lasers
and race relations –
when the voice over the loudspeaker said:
JACK’S BEEN SHOT!
and Jackie sprayed with blood hugging him close
lay heaped in the back of a suicide-door Lincoln
his smiling teeth in a grimace clutching his throat
and little John-John not even in school yet
and we filed out of class
too stunned to think about algebra quizzes
in the heat of Texas, 1963
The Flats Rant
Down along the Flats of Cleveland
the steel mills pump out chunky yellow air.
The people who live along this corridor don’t like the color yellow.
It reminds them of wash left out on the line overnight to dry.
The Japanese who bought these mills say look on the bright side:
Why work when you can sit on your ass and collect unemployment?
In ten or twenty years the air will be clean and the fishing
along the Cuyahoga River will be better than at the Islands
and condos and strip malls will replace coke furnaces.
Tell that to the mothers of children running the streets past curfew
stealing sexual freedom in abandoned cars,
learning the alphabet on burnt out buildings.
Tell that to the part time fathers in the 24 hour bars
counting the change of welfare checks meant for food.
Tell that to the car-jacked moms whose children
sit crying and left on a side street while punks
sit edgy and huddled on a corner rummaging
through billfolds, handbags and diaper bags –
anything to pawn for a bottle of wine or a fix.
The coughing continues in churches reeking of incense
masking the odor of unwashed bodies,
choirboys in fear of the advances of priests.
Tell that to hamburger flippers at five bucks an hour.
Tell that to the workers of abortion clinics in fear
for their lives from relieving the populace of the burden
created by stupidity because sex education wasn’t taught at the right time.
When churches preached abstinence at the wrong time.
We give and give to build worthless stadiums
buy football teams and baseball teams full of business men
too stupid to sign their names after 4 years of college.
Tell all this to the people lining the corridor along the Flats
cleaning toilets for a living.
Working in sweat shops for a living.
Sucking cocks and cunts for a living.
This is what amerika calls a living?
Is this what we saved the world from communism for?
Now those former communists nations are learning the price of freedom.
We are only free because we PAY for it
and now we are running out of patience and money
but hopefully not the will to say what’s on our minds
if only we can get our shoulders off the fucking grind stones
of work and television and this fucked up society we are paying for.
