Saturday Feature: Barfly

Reiki Master

You're sitting in a wooden chair leaning slightly forward
holding a small crystal ball in each hand and feeling a little silly,
she asks you where the pain is, you put a finger on your
lower spine, she does her invisible work and asks about
your left leg, which is stiff and tight from the hip down,
she asks "how is your relationship with your mother?",
you pause then answer "distant", and she tells you that
is the pain in your leg. So you go to her when the session
ends, after months, and you hug her and she hugs you, and you
tell her about it and you both laugh, and now, hours later,
there is no pain.

Kicking The Placebo

Saw a picture today of my spine
With all it's accompanying bone and soft tissue
And right there from atop Lumbar Number 5 squirted a very distinct bulb
A malevolent think bubble protruding right out from
Between the bones that hold me up
Impinging upon the rights and freedoms of my S-1 nerve
Causing pain and tingling down through my left hip, buttock, leg and foot
My very own herniated disk

That's right, punk. You're mine.
It's not the other way around

I aim to dis-inherniate you
To visualize you down to nothing
To make you crawl back between those vertebrae and
Get back the hell to work
You are most unwelcome in my house in your current form.

Every breath I draw, everything I consume,
Is the most kick-ass, thermo-nuclear
Anti-Inflammatory in the universe.

While everything I exhale or expel from this body
Is your paltry and pathetic power, B.


 

Eggs And Grits With Nebraska Rolling By

Breakfast at Denny's with three numb toes, and
that kid behind the counter's so worried about his share
of the tips that he's blind to all the toast, bacon, pancakes
and Moon Over My Hammies backing up
in the cook's window there...

But it's not lost on me. I tense up, almost choke on some ham...

They've got one Brazilian in there cooking alone
she's holding her own against the rush pretty good
muttering curses in Portuguesa to maintain that head of steam,
I'm pretty sure love's not making it into the eggs this morning...

I feel for her a little, but she's the one guilty of these sad and watery grits...

None are deserving this morning
or we all deserve it,
depends on whether you're taken up
by the meanness in the world
or not...

 

Mai Tai

They discover the meaning of my gestures before
I have finished making them, already building
3-D printers and portable assembly lines to manufacture my
next frail, half-hearted desire at the lowest possible cost.

Instant market research results
middle-aged American male
probably lonely, possibly disturbed
a tempest in a teapot, a nine-volt parade.

Maximum velocity means simply continuing to drift
on the vaguest of air currents given that
all the bartenders seem appealing
and twenty years younger with boyfriends and big plans.

I Feel Nothing/ I Feel Everything

Tonnage

I wish you could stay here every night.
If your job was near here, you'd move all of your stuff here too, right?
Are you going to get Mom flowers and a box of chocolates
Shaped like a heart for her birthday?
I wish we could hang out all the time.
We should get her flowers.