------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
your dead father must be proud
flick a booger
across the room
somewhere in hell
your dead father
must be proud
i still catch a
glimpse of him
when i look in
the mirror or
i can hear him
when i start to
laugh at times
it takes everything
i have to not punch
glass or slit my throat
not every crisis
can be solved
with just a few
deep breaths
i have learned
over the years
a glass of something
strong and a woman
willing to put her heels
into the pit of your soul
can do the trick every
time
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a few years at least
trying not to stare
at this beautiful
black woman
with curves in
all the right
places
i have a little
time left before
i am truly a
dirty old man
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an overpass down by the river
i am not looking
forward to dying
alone
but the odds aren't
in my favor of that
ever changing
i figure i might have
a few twists and turns
in the works,
but knowing my luck
that will include dirty
cardboard and living
under an overpass
down by the river
i'm probably a few
years away from
being a springsteen
song
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where even the animals
you'd cry yourself
to sleep if you could
only find the tears
broken,
discarded
a blues song in a
gutter where even
the animals don't
dare to piss
she was this drop
dead beauty
soft, angelic skin
a laugh that immediately
made you feel safe
she'd kiss you like her
life depended on it
as usual in this too
busy fucking world
you lose touch
days become months
and one day you feel
the urge to check the
obituaries
caught dancing with
a train
holes in the carpet
tomorrow makes
no sense
---------------------------------------------------------------
agony says i love you
think of the pain
as a hug from an
old lover
she brushes her hand
across your jeans and
your heart begins to
flutter
of course,
the pain is never
like that
a large knife driven
into your soul, twisted
until agony says i love
you
they tell me i have
a high pain tolerance
not sure what good
that does me anymore
i would pray for death
but i have been disappointed
enough already
break out the watercolors
put on some john coltrane
pretend the talent is still there
how does one paint out
a depression
shallow lines on cardboard
exhaustion hopefully will win
J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Mad Swirl, The Beatnik Cowboy, Disturb the Universe Magazine and The Rye Whiskey Review. His most recent chapbook, with Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of The Unflinching Souls, is now out in the world. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Watching the world walk by Looking at all the fine-looking babes Walking by the street Thinking wild, erotic thoughts Of endless wild libertine passions.
When into the bar Walked the most beautiful women In the Universe. So wild, so free So wonderfully alive.
I did not know what to do As this carnal, deprave
lustful vision of delight
Sauntered through the bar In a skin-tight leather pants
Looked so fine That my eyeballs hurt
And finally
I had to say something So I gathered up
My manly courage
And walked up to her And she looked at me
And instantly
Bewitched my soul Mesmerizing me
With a devilish grin.
I lost all reason And became a raving lunatic Unhinged lunatic Howling at the moon.
Foaming at the mouth A wild, free werewolf Howling at the lunatic light Of the full Moon
Dorothy Parker on the Algonquin Round Table (1919-1929)
You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.
So quick with the wit I wrote little poems satirizing rich matrons their banalities, bigotries and Vogue published me and hired me editorial assistant then staff writer at Vanity Fair a magazine of no opinions while I had plenty.
I was a tough critic a real New York wag like one of the boys at the big round table at the Algonquin Hotel in the speakeasy days cracking lines about booze and dries who didn’t drink from our flasks we jousted with our pointed repartee our competition cutthroat.
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
The word got around about the wonks at the Gonk in the Rose Room for hours our antics soon fodder for newspaper columnists in our little group that grew and grew larger sometimes fifteen, sixteen hangers-on all woozy afternoon.
We dubbed ourselves the Vicious Circle during the terrible days of wisecracks, cuts deeper, more bloody we went for the jugular for public attention however we could grab it Tallulah, Harpo Marx New York Times writers New Yorker founders cynics, comics, all of us sophisticated, cruel.
Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses
I lived on the second floor came down to join in raising hell every day nothing else mattered but jazz clubs and brothels Haig & Haig and bathtub gin under the table pharmacies floating on a sea of booze.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
Lured away we fled west stampeding the studios to work on the talkies the roaring twenties dying with a whimper, not a bang.
Carson McCullers
I was born a man
Lula Carson Smith in the silent crazy jungle floral lush greenery a middle class family jeweler father slouchy devoted mother, siblings in a textile town with mills a base, soldiers, Jim Crow suffering, loneliness, poverty.
Repairing watches and clocks popular in the Depression Father bought us a house camellias, tall holly outside the window where I practiced piano music the foundation until I abandoned it turned to the typewriter stories the new medium of self-expression, art.
I was born a man
so changed my name to match my real self a lanky colt with a Peter Pan quality wild ideas and energy until illness hit when I was 15 and again, and again the trickery and terror of time
as I later learned rheumatic heart disease damaged my poor heart.
Elizabeth Bishop on Her “Friends”
My life was one of words and whiskey deep contemplation keen observation of nature, people farmers and factory workers fishermen, fish, the Amazon jungle, the beach lovers, birds, moose all around me life— difficult, full of joy.
I was born to wealth New England bluenose world of privilege
until my father died I was 8 months old my mother unraveling chronic psychosis, unfit left me with her parents in a Nova Scotia village where I grew up happy running around barefoot taking the cow to pasture past gabled wood houses low hills, tall elms, leaning willows and kind villagers we all sang hymns at the church picnics
until my father’s parents horrified by my wildness took me back to Mass to their cold city manse where Uncle Jack teased where I coughed and coughed until they sent me to breathe ocean air with dear Aunt Maud and I read and read in my little sickbed and I fell in love with the Victorian poets.
Maud’s husband a sadist abused us, hit, groped at an early age I learned about men who would hurt you if you let them— after that I never did.
I played the piano swam and sailed in the long summers I visited Nova Scotia until boarding school Vassar and a life of whiskey and words
and women lovers I always called “friends.”
Elizabeth Bishop on Her Thirst
I was a baby in a crib on the bay at Marblehead Neck when the Great Salem Fire brought in the boats frightened survivors a red sky, intense heat.
Awake, alone, afraid I cried out for mother thirsty and scared but she did not come I could see out the window she stood in the front yard white dress rosy from fire billowing in the heat serving coffee and food to thousands left homeless one thousand were dead.
Alone, awake, afraid all night I called out thirsty and scared but nobody came.
I grew up without her drinking and drinking whiskey straight to oblivion for the rest of my life I drank and I drank it was never enough still thirsty, afraid and alone.
We’re all an archeologist digging through our holy waste. We’re all an archeologist in urgent search of one high missing piece.
Now you’re uncovered under my spotlight;
I maneuver each little potsherd, trying to put your life complete.
So why do you still resist?
Bring me into your days,
oh bring me into your ways,
your arms, your dreams, your thoughts, your schemes.
Bring me, oh bring me deep into your crotch.
After such tender words as these, how can you still resist?
Any poet’s a privileged beast, main course at the culture feast. Every poet’s a privileged beast, society’s sacrificial priest.
And I’m your private cosmic messenger, and — every word like legal tender –
I’m poetry’s last big spender!
You cease, but yet I persist.
Bring me into your days, oh bring me into your ways, your arms,
your dreams, your thoughts, your schemes. Bring me, oh bring me deep into your crotch.
And oh, such tender words as these! How oh how you do resist.
UNKNOTTED
Far off we see those bright quasars
captured by their own black holes,
their old buds dying inside,
hopes fettered to fears,
guards shackled to their convicts.
We’re soft diamonds under iron skies.
Lovers of the youth earth’s noises,
but raised in cold and shady nations
where light is unknotted from the sun,
we end here in ancient silence.
AND, DO YOU STILL GO BY BEATICE?
So, you want to be immortal, is that what you say?
You’ve searched and you’ve lurched down that old Tao way? But you won’t need that potion, and you don’t need to pray: Just sublimate some poet to put you in his lay.
He’ll sonnet/sanit/ize you, fix you in his line to stay. Your locks of jet: they’ll turn to gray, your bones metastasize into clay– but you’ll still be fresh and vital a million years away.
Just convince a versifier your name’s good for a lay.
