————————————————————————-
all their little trophies
we used to have cats
when we used to live
out on the farm
they all spoke spanish
i believe one was a buddhist
he would come up to
the front porch and we’d
have long conversations
while i was smoking
my cigarettes
they would bring all
their little trophies
up to that porch
mouse, squirrel, rabbit,
even a fucking snake
all for that shake of the
bag to get some treats
it was like i was a dealer
some rival gang of coyotes
would sneak in and take a
few of them from time to time
i never saw the buddhist one die
i believe he transcended all space and time
i never did say what was in those cigarettes
—————————————————————-
the day of the dead
doing some living
on the day of the
dead
warming temperatures
fresh dead bodies
exposed on the
mountains
if life is a circle
are we just the
jerk
life meanders on
as time starts to
stand still
broken and lost
the endless desires
of a generation that
never got the chance
to make those desires
come true
—————————————————–
games on the radio
some soft music
as we all wait
to die
listening to an
old guy talk
about listening
to baseball games
on the radio back
in the fifties
he pauses
thinks of something
and then starts
about politics
the war has taken
something out of
us all
there is no rush
we’re all going to
be in the ground
soon enough
——————————————————————
election day
i marvel at people who
are proud to be stupid
who picked themselves
up by those proverbial
bootstraps yet still don’t
understand how the game
is played
and here come the outsiders
the grifters that know there
is always some dumb fuck
to make tons of money off of
i sit back and watch
and just laugh
my father was one of those
dumb asses
he always thought he was
smarter than anyone else
in the room
i stole from him much
of my life
money, baseball cards,
whatever i knew that dumb
fuck wouldn’t notice was gone
when i heard the stories that
his second wife drained the
pension and let him die
penniless in the VA
i just shook my head and knew
he never learned his lesson
apparently, no one ever does
———————————————-
haven’t found a sheep yet
thumbing
through the
pages of a
magazine
hoping to
find a
beautiful
face to
lose my
imagination
ini don’t
think this
old farm
magazine
is going
to do the
trick
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia, plotting his escape. He’s been published in many places over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review and The Beatnik Cowboy. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)