Don't Look at me

Don’t look at me;
Don’t judge me;
Just except me the way I am;
You say you love me;
You say you belive in me;
Well do you really see me;
Do you really smell me;
What is it like to love me?

I’m a stranger in a kafka nightmare;
I’m a philosopher spitting my venom to the pigs;
I watch as the city decays around me;

Don’t look at me;
Stop staring;
What do you want from me?

I’m foul and dirty;
I live in box on 3rd and Slauson;
You don’t want to know me;
Really babe I’m bad news;

I’m not the one for you;
I’m not the one you want;

I think civil disobedience is a ballet an art;

I think religion is a joke with no punch line.

My skin is wrinkled and old;
My hair is falling out onto the floor;

Don’t look at me that way;

What was that?
What did you say?
Are you serious?

You want to get married?

Seems Okay

You’re a visitor here
A tourist in a falling down city of lost souls
With my newspaper under my arm I head down the street.
It’s a windy day a day that can inspire a child.
They say we have the worst president in history.
They say our government can give a rat’s ass about us little people.
The cab drivers the waitress the window washers the whores the winos the people that make the city a colorful place to live.
“Huh, what a prick.”
I think to myself as I walk past two transvestite whores.
I turn the corner and run into a good friend.
Basco Billy Bones.
Basco is a one-armed Armenian, Mexican, Pilipino.
He runs a newsstand on the corner of 4th and Broadway.
“Howya doing Harold?’ he laughs. Basco has a great smile.
His smile almost covers his whole face.
His rotting teeth screaming to the world not shy for all to see.
“Howya been Basco my friend.”
“Oh been better.”
“What happened?”
"Oh well the cop’s muscle me every time they get a chance."
"And Arleta Jones my girl went back to join the circus."
"NO Shit!" I say slack jawed.
Arleta Jones was Basco's old woman for 12 years.
She worked for many years in the circus as a contortionist.
Arleta was from Miami where she was smuggled over from Cuba by an alpaca rancher named Herb Faust. Herb used smuggle people over from Cuba all the time. For him it felt like he was doing a great service. Until that is, INS agents shot him. That was all in the 80’s sometime.
Arleta wasn’t happy. She needed the circus. So now poor Basco is all-alone.
“Isn’t that a kick in the head?” I put my arm around him to console him a bit.
“I lost my job I tell him.”
So we comfort each other.
We laugh out pain away.
We both head over to a bar and go in.

Some days everything really does seem okay.

I’d trust a wino before I trust a politician.

I'm Gonna have a beer

And so then I rise to my own reflection.
Don’t fuckin talk to me about your rising constitution.
Don’t tell me about your confused state of mind.
Tell your children before it's too late.
Hold on to their pride and self worth.
Rise up from the ashes of disbelief as the world spirals away.
Professor and politician what’s the difference in a world of no more?
When all comes down to it.
I’m gonna have a beer.

By the Early Morning

With the bull tie around my neck the stock white blur of a Saturday afternoon goes to my head like Monday morning traffic.
Hot steaming satisfaction of one early afternoon day. Funnel and grass scoped by dirt falling grains through my fingers lost in perpetual thought, perpetual hurt, perpetual shock as my head slowly hits her breast like soft down pillow.
Nobody knows all the horrors going on everyday.

Document Number one

So I turned my head to the left and watched as Greta Von Bitchkin walked into the bar.
Her hair was all piled up high like a tossed salad.
Two black chopsticks held the whole thing together.
She was a train wreck that looked like an angel.
Tits and ass that never stop.
We live together we fuck, we get drunk together.
We were like two peas in a pod.
She walked up to me and slapped my face.
“You're such an asshole.”
She railed on how I ignore her.
How I don’t clean up after myself.
How I am the single root to all her problems in her world.
So I stared at her and smiled a half smirk.
I turned and ordered another drink. "Scotch!" I call out.
“Sit down” I ask her and pulled out the bar stool for her.
“NO I don’t have too”
"You don’t control me”
"You know what you are?”
The bar tender drops the shot down in front of me.
I shoot it back.
“What am I babe?” "You're a son-of-a-bitch that’s what you are."
I turn away from her.
She’s getting on my nerves now. “Sit down”
I bark at her. “You’re making a scene.”
She spits at me. “I can make all the scenes I want.”
"You can’t control me."

I start to laugh.
I let out a laugh down deep within.
A laugh that both hides my pain, my tears, my regrets and my anger.
A laugh to end all laughs. It shakes the walls and breaks the glasses.
I laugh because I don’t know what to say anymore.

I laugh so that I know I'm still alive.

I lost my job today.

The Birthday Blues

I’m living down today.
I’m putting up my dreams
And I’m cashing in my thoughts.

It’s the birthday blues,

I’m alive an well;
Well still breathing
Still walking.
Still worrying about the what ifs and how comes.

It’s the birthday blues,

What should I do?

It’s a car wash of broken dreams
When I think of my past

The future still ahead
But what does it mean?

It’s the birthday blues,

I sit on my couch and drink beer all day

I’m having trouble bending over to tie my shoe

I think I may have a cataract in my left eye.

It’s the birthday blues,

Someone said that Johnny Cash is still alive

And that someone has the cure for the migraine

Wish I had that cure now.

It’s the birthday blues,

How old was Johnny when he died?
Will I get to that age?

Children call me sir.
I hate that term.
I’d rather “Yeah dumb shit”
Anything is better than Sir.

It’s the birthday blues,

Will I get a chance to have the world laugh at me?

Will I own a house before 2023?

Will the band Men At Work Reunite?

It’s the birthday blues,

Will organized religion cease to be?

Someone once said
"If an idea is good it’s on the verge of being stupid."

Happy Birthday to me.