BoySlut

then you start paying an ex-girlfriend for blow-jobs

started as a half-joke
over texts:

“obviously
i’m using you –
we’ve established
that redundancy
over the last year –
it only seems fair.”

plus she’s struggling to make it
with a kid
and getting her cna.

only reason she agreed
is because
she still thinks someday
she’s going to suck my heart
out of there
instead of another
mouthful of jizz.

i know better

tell her so repeatedly

bluntly.

but when you
enter a woman’s heart
through the front door
you can drive her
off a cliff
if you choose to do so.

standing in line
to buy a newspaper
i contemplate
this new
personal nadir.

cash back?
asks the clerk
as i hand her
my debit card.

twenty dollars

please.

 

three days now

the young praying mantis
has been studying the
topography
of my apartment
millimeter by millimeter
looking for an escape hatch.

his long front legs
end in filaments
thinner than
the finest paint brush:

he works them
out and back
steady measured arcs
like a
master fly-fisher.

i lean over
watching him
probe up the window sill:

he turns his
alien head
towards me briefly

then back to the
task at hand.

he’s got
more finesse
and grace of character
than any thirty of you
i’d hit
tossing a soup can
out my
third story window

 

sitting around after realizing the 19 year old waitress stood you up

think about
a light bulb

china

the moose

and the mongoose.

think about
the little hairs
on the inside
of your intestines

a rainbow
over algiers

the indolence
of your hands.

think about
the owl

the icicle

the color
of your throat

and the inertia
of sand.

contemplate
the parakeet

the five senses

this tumor
they call
the gift of life.

look around

it’s hokum

gum on a stick

a real

horse-suicide.

 

please

do something
with your allotted
37¢ of soul
besides lean against a fence
next to a dolled up
canary yellow fixed-gear
smoking a corn-cob pipe
like this hipster poof-tart
cocksucker
corrupting
my view.