Pages

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

$1400 a month for this?

—Poems by John Grochalski, Brooklyn, NY
—Anonymous Photos of Brooklyn in Winter
 


drunk on wine

drunk on wine
going to buy more wine

i watch the people along third avenue
gussied up for a saturday night

sober grotesque clowns
strangled on their cheap perfume and cologne

cascading in the hopeless hope
of their carnal civility

i suddenly wish that i didn’t need another
bottle of red wine

and that i never had to come out
amongst these glamorous
stinking swine

in the first place.






$1400 a month for this?
 

a shower that dribbles
like warm piss

cracks in the linoleum
cracks in the blinds

black mold on the ceiling
plaster in cracks on the floor

clogged drains
and faucets that need a screwdriver
to shut off

barking dogs
and bitching kids

outside of ripped, screen windows
propped up by books

lights that flicker
for no reason at all

thunder neighbors rolling across the landscape
in the middle of the humid night

cockroaches that got the blues

and the landlord’s phone
that just keeps ringing and ringing

its siren call
for next month’s rent check

paid in full
by the first of the month.






the pirate

the little girl
is so obvious

she could be president
when she gets older

she says to me
you have long hair and an earring

i tell her i’m a pirate

she sticks out her tongue
and says,

you’re nothing but an ugly girl

before leaving

taking the shreds
of my dignity with her

like dog shit smeared
on the heel of her boot. 




                               

 red meat

america separates
families at the border

america puts kids in cages
and leaves them there for years

america eats too much red meat
red meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner

it eats red meat shaped like bombs
while it kills itself at thankless jobs

and watches too much television

america watches kids
living in cages on television

in between commercials
for big cars and more red meat

gets drunk and jerks off to torture porn

then it gets on its knees
and prays for freedom and the love of god

before america
wraps itself up snug in the american flag

and puts its bloated body
full of red meat

to bed.

____________________

today’s littlenip:

godot
—john grochalski

the world continues
to go to hell
while i wait on packed buses
for genius to climb on board
and ask me
for the time.

___________________

Thank you, John Grochalski, for coming back to the Kitchen with your red-hot poems from that ice-cold borough (burrow?) of Brooklyn in January. And don’t wait so long next time!

For up-coming poetry events in our area, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, with gratitude for prodigal poets who return ~



  
















Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.