BUKOWSKI
That shitfaced
Pig
Nah, macho man
Loving
The limbs
Of ladies
Or the fattest
Asses
With smallish
Breast
And suckable
Nips
Like the quim colored lips
Of dead
Soldiers
Where beer
Flows
In winy utterances
Mixing sex
With fucking
Then love
Or appreciation
Of mirrors
Healing acne
With wisdom
Or cocktails
That pussy foot
From sacks
To racetracks
And back
To paddocks
Of saddles
And whips
Plus horns
And leads
With harnesses
That mount
And cinch
The saddlebags
In stirrups
Of lust
As fleshy bits
Rope heartache
To the rhyming
Of losers
And winners
Who’re eternally
Trumped
For never
Having placed
The bet
—that women who blush—
Train their flanks
To lap
The track
Where mares
And stallions
Collide
In a world
Of wonder
And words
Wasted
Unless the final
Thrust
Is
Human nature
And
Human nature
Is
the last word
Of his story.
SHAKESPEARE IN THE DARK
The tweeker’s
Boggy, alcoholic eyes
Bulged unblinkingly
Within inches of mine
Setting the stage
For mere players
In this mosh pit
At the intersection of ol’Frisco
And modernity
While the watery whirl
Of rush hour washed‘round
And Dino denied I’ve come—
To that very corner
Everyday
For the past twenty years
Awaiting my love’s return
from work
But on this day
Where the subway
emerges
And the street cars clank
Like two ships
Passing in the night
I unknowingly missed her
As she unknowingly missed me
But Dino didn’t miss a beat
Manically orating his resurrection
As a bookseller
And one who
Only reads the law
And fuck that storytelling
Crap
With his countenance
Increasingly inscribed
In an ominous glaze
And his lids hoisted
At half-mast
He pulled back the curtain
For the briefest moment
To inquire
Do you read?
What?
There was no answer
Other than His . . .
—Shakespeare—
Leading to
his sidewalk bibliothèque
Where ten tomes of prose
Sat dog-eared and dirty
Along with a soiled sleeping mat
And a rat
Disguised as a pet
Entrapped beneath
A milk crate
—Much Ado About Nothing—
Was crammed into my hand
While two bucks
departed this fool
And his wad of money
Filled Dino’s head
With sugar plums of theft
Or thirst for some complicity
Whose outright criminality
Got quenched with past drinks
And blackouts
At whore houses
In Alaska
And racist chases
In Texas by Rangers
Who took exception
To the pilfering
Of black velvet
Bedspreads—
when shit and damn
My cell phone vibrated
And a distraught
Wifely voice
Rung down the curtain
On two role players
In another performance
Of their life.
WINGED RATS
Bullshit
Unless you consider
They eat the same crap
But you’d be wrong
These low flying
Aviators
Of the cityscape
Got zip codes
And statues
And ordnances as white
As the driven snow.
In some hoods
They’re the only fauna
That doesn’t attack
And kill
As ordered
Or destroy the trees
With piss and shit
And forget the grass.
Instead, these citizens
Of aerial reconnaissance
Clean-up after bums
And partygoers
Doing such civic duties
As eating
the rice and beans
Regurgitated
By soup kitchen
Devotees
Or their counterparts
Boogieing in
From bedroom
Communities
Leaving their suburban
Blight
For clean-up
By those living
Aloft
On the ledge
With only one way
To fall
Pilotless
And no safety net
Dying alone
Earthbound
In their mourning suits
Having seen it all
On the hardest streets
. . . yet nothing . . .
Of remembrance
Not even the homage
Of never more.
Peter Jacob Streitz was born an iconoclastic hick in upstate New York. Raised by a single mom after his dad flew the coop instead of flying The Hump--over the Burma Road in World War Two--where he won the Distinguish Flying Cross by losing both the Japs and his mind. His inevitable departure didn’t affect Peter—as he morphed into an All-American boy and athlete who was awarded a four year, full-boat scholarship to Alfred University (which he rejected) before counter-culturing his way towards the only degree ever given by Boston University in Alternative Education.
