Privateer
the privateer at my door
salty gatekeeper guarding my treasure
with brass bones, lighting my porch
with honeysuckle eyes
as I stagger home
from another day of swashbuckling
and paying the rent.
Month of Saturday Nights
Strapped in and painted
like a bride before battle, I pose,
slender hips in taut black levi’s,
tender neck wrapped in leather scarves,
Mexican peso
hanging
from
my
lobe.
Half-drunk I creep
along the stained and sticky
sidewalks of La Cienega,
toss my flaming camel
to grab the back wall of the Odyssey,
to jump over and down
to the black hole
of Hollywood.
Beneath the pounding Tom-Toms
I sip slow,
float past smokey mirrored pillars,
weave through voguing mannequins
squirming over the sweaty checkered floor
of the blinking neon cavern;
my mascara melts in streaks
down the bones along my cheeks.
I’m hunting for the heat of a war cry
to steam my inner thighs,
to make me howl
through the glittered cieling
above the darkness
past the moon,
beyond the black hole.
In the back room, shoulders slack,
neck slumped forward, I piss
on piles of steaming ice, stroke
my smeared lips in the dirty silver glass
and walk back out, crawl back up,
jump back down, silhouetted
by the raging headlights
on the boulevard.
Dawn comes cold on Sunday;
my nasty black clothes collapsed
on the floor beside me.
Too tired to wrap a fist
for war games or offensive drills, I surrender
my eyes and snore
like a hag waiting
for the cover
of dusk.
Love Song For the Damned
In the malaria jungle
of my journey
you are the damp towel
cooling my delirium
the serum surging
in my vein.
Standing stiff
against the bullet-ridden wall
before the firing squad
waiting blind
at the gallows
before the rope,
you are the smoke
of my last request
floating gentle
from my lungs