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These truths of which I'm certain—so very
few and far between, but if you take away
any caveat
from our time together, it's that
one ought never, ever say:
"BLOW ME!"
to the spiteful
gods with swollen livers who chew
fistfuls of glitter-dusted scum from loser
Scratch-Off Lottery tickets
—that's right, they'll just lick it a little
at first, but then proceed straightaway to stuff
their fat, blistered monkey God Lips with this
most moist and pungent
detritus, as if digging some fresh Skoal
tobacco with wriggling earthworms, I remember
in fact this colorful Lotto I bought just yesterday
—yah, I had me two Painted Ladies in a row
would have paid off handsome, but I knew
the third skirt was not going to line
up—right?—it's a sinking feeling
you get, like watching a grandiose crack dealer
in his downtown penthouse crib burn stack after
stack of 5 dollar bills with a full metal Bic—for nothing
but cheap histrionic thrills, or to put the kibosh on his
multiplicity of sick sclerotic carpal twitch
which nonetheless catches up
to him, a bit
more and more each day with the charred
Abe faces and drained Bics get fucking
tossed away!—my Drift, my
friends, are you getting now a scratch or even
Sniff?— anyway, I tossed that worthless crumpled-up
lotto ticket into a trash can outside the Minute Store
in a minor gale:
"Fucking Whore!" I wailed,
sand grit all up in my back teeth, and more,
"Ohhhhh, why don't you just go ahead and
BLOW ME?"
And that's when
the foot-long tumbleweed
came spinning up, hard and fast,
out of nowhere!— hit me flush
in the face, and a filthy thorn lacerated
my lower left eyelid, an eighth of an inch
below the retina...
From the open door of a nearby
Astro Van, I heard a little kid snicker:
"Look, mommy! That man
is funny... And he's mad!"
I could have said
something then, hell I could
even say something, say,
n o w,
in the sweet quiescence of
recollection; but the fact is
I'm all kicked back
in my sunken semi-
darkened T.V. room,
with a cold Red Bull
and gauzy eye patch,
the lady on Weather Channel
is giving me a serious boner,
ah, this sweet respite,
it's such a bloody
Windfall!...
It's all
I can do
to keep
my mouth
shut,
and knock wood.
Fat red mnemonic
rubber band wrapped
tight 'round the wrist
of a witless recidivist;
and when it's
snapped
— "OWWWW! That Smarts To The Max!" —
paradoxically translates to
Keystone Cut Up, dumb as fuck
with bubble buttocks and chewing
gum stuck to crack makes one major
dingle berry, look
he's gone
and left car keys
in his truck again!
—with high
beams on all night
like to burn down Sears Die
Hard by degrees, burning
and dying so hard
by degrees...
~~
"Hey baby,
have you
seen my
Slim Jim?...
all I need is
infinitesimal
crack, like
how we hung
our speakers
back at Zip's
Drive In for
the flicks!"...
~~
As last Resort, pour out
some Vegas sunset in mid-
April, break your heart
like hard tack
biscuit for sopping up
Cherry Slurpee from
upturned apple cart,
a twisted fish bone
lifted from steaming shank
of Alaskan salmon, slathered
in diced purple Crayolas
with garnish
of lipstick tips and grapefruit
gristle, never mind those wolf
whistles for a long cool
and lonely hooker with spaghetti
straps on the Strip, licking
her forefinger on MGM corner,
holding it
up to the impossibly dry
western sky
like a washed-up mime got
just one more clever skit
to try,
oh mama, why
not shake it out?
—a clean sucker
punch spiked with
stiletto, just one
little squeeze,
make me taste
what you forgot
to have for lunch.
Dennis Mahagin's poems and stories have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, 42opus, Frigg Magazine, Absinthe Literary Review, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Pequin, The Angler, Mannequin Envy, 3 A.M., Underground Voices, Thieves Jargon, Zygote In My Coffee, and Hiss Quarterly. A book of his poems, entitled Grand Mal, is forthcoming in 2009 from Three Roads Press, which is a new imprint of Cleveland-based Suspect Thoughts Press. Dennis also has a blog, which contains many colorful vignettes, You Tube music videos, and lurid paens to Levitra, Cialis, and L-Arginine. This blog is located at http://fourhourhardon.blogspot.com.