Ross Vassilev's Poems

humped again at the Camel Saloon!

2012-02-05T03:10:00.000-08:00

http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2012/01/white-horses.html

white horses

I throw

a bit of rainbow in the air

for the lost children of the streets

for lost children in slums everywhere

for lost children

in god-awful families that never shoulda been

for Che and the Zapatistas

for Baader-Meinhof and June 2nd

for Joe Hill

for people who think that vulgar stories

are poetry

for the lost generations of East Europeans

since the Fall

for everyone who ever tried to become

an artist and failed

and all that's left

is the arms of the angels

for everyone whose dreams

are all rainbows and white horses:

remember all of them in your prayers to the Gods.

sweetest wallpaper #2!!!

2012-01-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

one in print...

2012-01-29T08:22:00.000-08:00

...in latest issue of CFDL

hoodlum in the night

I was out wandering the summer night at 2 AM

it was wet and warm

under the lights of the strip mall

abandoned at night

I saw a liquor store

and decided I wanted to get drunk

when I looked around

I found a large stone about the size of a soccer ball

I thought what luck!...

do you know how strong reinforced glass is?

I threw the stone at the storefront window several times

but each time it just smacked right off and

hit the pavement with a loud crack

so I went back to wandering the streets

with the eyes of the oncoming cars

staring at me.

one at clutching at straws

2012-01-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

ever do this when you were a kid?

I remember those nights

when I’d put on

my shoes

and go for a walk

going nowhere at all

there was the black night

and the stars above me

and I felt at home

with the stray cats

and abandoned cars

I liked being alone

and I would do

random acts of

vandalism now and then

I’d look at my watch

and it would say 3:04 AM

and one of those nights

I realized

that I would always be alone

it was the only time

that I could be myself

and so I said to myself

fuck, so be it.

one at MFB!

2012-01-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

paranoia--yeah!

the latest terror plot

is a figment of my imagination

or a figment of

someone’s imagination

someone with an orange crush brain

that drips onto the pavement

on hot summer afternoons

my sweat is dripping onto the desk

while a fly buzzes

the room from the wall to

the lampshade

oh I know you were sent

by the Devil with hair on his ass

to harass and torment me

you and my rotten family

and the rotten kids who scream

at the pool all day

and yes, Travis, someday a great rain

is gonna fall and wash away

all this filth—I mean

the flies and the devils

and the kids and then maybe I'll get

a chance to sit quietly

on hot summer afternoons

and suffer in peace.

sweetest wallpaper ever!!!

2012-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

getting away with murder

2012-01-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

Marine charged in Haditha, Iraq, killings pleads guilty to lesser charge - CNN.com

3 at Vintage Poetry

2012-01-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

http://vintagepoetrypublishing.blogspot.com/2012/01/3-poems-by-ross-vassilev-another.html

trinity

the veterans
are coming home
again
as I put a quarter
in the soda machine
and remember a poster
I once saw of a
gorgeous redhead
in a black dress
the veterans
are always coming home
from the latest war
and God must spend
a lot of time
jerking off
while people are busy
killing each other
and giving each
other medals
and somewhere
out in the New Mexico
desert
lies the hollow skull
of a yesterday cow
dull and oblivious
and dessicated
as the bull-brained
mob parading
down the street
behind me
a Georgia O’Keefe
cow skull
a sacred-cow skull
with a yellow rose
in one hollow
eye
calling out to me
across the desert stars.

we’ll be on our way home when the smoke whispers in the sky

these red brick walls
these grey streets that I’ve walked up and down
for so many years
with the sparrows at sunrise
under the afternoon drizzle
with sunshine on the snow like all
the Christmas bullshit suddenly come to life
and I remember the last 20 years
like an old great river that never stops
like a short walk to the end of the street
and I remember that old hobo
who asked me what time it was
and I told him and he said
Is that all?
and then like Bob Dylan
he walked away and disappeared
among the streetlights and dusk.

propaganda of the deed

I see the ghosts of dead anarchists
who took their outrage
and fired guns and threw bombs

I see the ghosts of 60s radicals
marching and fighting in the streets
of Chicago ‘68

these were people who got out
and took action
so everyone knew they really meant it
instead of just writing it down
like me and Langston Hughes

the fire and rage of revolutions
that lit up the nights of bygone days

that set the rich trembling
so they called out the riot police
and if that didn’t work
they called the troops and their boots

and if those revolutions failed
well they came damn close
and the intent and the effort were noble

all those wild dead radicals
and revolutionaries

I’m just a pale reflection of their
sainted shadows.

4 more

2011-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

orange with a yellow center

they call me
Commie piece of shit
asswipe
and the rest of it
I recall the footage
of Allen Ginsberg
holding up a fistful
of Buddhist orange and
yellow flowers
in the dimming light
of Chicago 40 yrs. ago
the yellow for the light
of the world
the orange for all
the knowledge of all
the Buddhas who ever
lived
but give us back
the young man
who punched that cop
that night
when the police riot
broke out
give us back the
Weather Underground
blowing things up
and never killing anyone
give us back Uncle Ho
tearing America
a new one so
the light could shine in
give it all back
and I will forgive all
and everyone
I will set fire to
the clouds
and spread
psychedelic flowers
on their ashes.

frag the pigs

when American soldiers
killed their officers
in Vietnam
they called it “fragging”
cuz they often did it
with fragmentation grenades
but one GI wrote a letter
to his congressman
complaining that his M-16
jammed when he tried
to shoot his CO
an honest letter of protest
while blacks were rioting
in America’s ghettos
and Israel seized the rest
of Palestine and
Che was being murdered
in Bolivia where Evo Morales
was still a boy
with boyish dreams of
leading vast brown-skinned
armies of liberation
against
the White Conquistadors
after 500 years of plunder
and slavery and fuck,
when you least expect it
sometimes even
the wildest dreams
come true.

levitate

I've got
a broken clock
for a head
and these
2 white doves
coming out
of my sleeves
that always
seek out
the Dali sunlight
where
dead soldiers
mutilate
themselves
under
the white flags
of Summer.

email from Cambodia

for Randall Rogers

he writes me that he got busted
for various alleged offenses
including threatening someone
with a gun
(of course, he denies everything
as Bukowski learned from a cellmate
everyone's innocent in here)
he writes that he made friends
with his Cambodian cellmates
and with the guards
telling them all the jokes from
Jimmy Cagney and other old movies
they laughed their asses off
cuz it was all new to them
all charges eventually dropped
now he's free again
back running that hotel in Siem Reap
complete with “Full service cocktail bar
and restaurant. In room massage....”
(read between the lines)
a big round of joints and applause
for the poet laureate of Cambodia!

shadow of grief

2011-12-17T21:26:00.000-08:00

nothing outside
but cold sunlight blinding
the snow
I must have the face
of a decent person
most people think I'm a decent person
until they get to know me
I've got photos that I carry around
in the back of my skull
sometimes they break free
storm my cerebrum
and that's when I get into trouble with the law
I don't apologize for anything
what life's done to me
is far worse than anything I ever did
sometimes I get my revenge on decent people
I used to be a decent person myself
well, that'll toughen them up
give them a taste of my world
in short:
fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody
life's a chain of sucker-punches to the balls
and then you die.

photos in flames

2011-12-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

dust gathering on the stereo
as I shift from young man to middle-aged.
got nothing to show for my 33 years
but my balding head
and the hair on my ass.
sick of poverty and minimum wage.
it’s a hard time to be living in America
as the Empire staggers through the desert.
I’ve got videos saved on my computer
of young women getting off on dildos
and vibrators. I’ve got a turkey sandwich rotting
in the fridge. I’ve got a cockroach
in the corner of my bedroom
that I squashed 6 months ago.
I’ve got a photo of myself age 13
already with a mustache.
I toss and turn all night wrestling with
the demons. I imagine red flowers
sprouting from the wall.
when I was 21 I felt like an old man--
I knew another young man, also 21
he told me that he felt like an old man too--
but he was in college
had something to look forward to--
all I had was the hair on my ass.
fuck everybody.

I don't recall where any of these were published, either

2011-12-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

the ballad of Ian Curtis

suicide clouds
make me think
of ducklings and
red beach balls

I open the closet
and there's Ian
hanging from the rod

a hanged man
is a lead balloon
turning blue

it's a lazy, quiet day

peaceful
as a punk rock sky
over Manchester

peaceful as
despair, depression
or years of
unemployment

peaceful
as bear bottles in
the rusted grass
along forgotten roads
in Ohio.

trying to be of use

I wake around noon
the alarm clock
won’t speak to me
until i get a job.

my sense of being
in the universe is
somewhere between
a gnat on a horse’s
ass and a potato.

there’s a half-dozen
beer bottles on
the counter lined
up in a row waiting
for Andy Warhol
to come back from
the dead and turn
them into art.

I’m useless
as the rusting hulks
of abandoned steel
factories.

the Hell’s Angels are
roaring by outside
selling meth from
Ohio to California
doing something useful
with their lives.

round and round it goes

the British gone
they killed many
Loyalists and raped
their wives and
daughters and killed
many of the wives
and daughters too.

they killed 20 million
Indians and took
half of Mexico cuz
“the Mexicans weren’t
doing anything with

it” and killed several
million more in
Vietnam and bombed
Serbia and then came
9/11 and I live in
a small town in Ohio
and you don’t know
what a shithole
a small town can be
till you’ve lived in
a small town in Ohio.

you’re a loser...

if everywhere you go
you gotta walk through
alleys filled with
garbage cans and
cigarette butts
and broken glass

and every time you see
pink clouds at sunset
you think it’s the Gods
painting the sky in
flowers

and the lyrics to
Social Distortion songs
really are the story
of your life

and you think all the girls
have butterfly wings
but hide them from
everyone

and there’s nowhere
you gotta be cuz you’re
unemployed
and hoping to stay
that way for as long
as they'll let you.

haze

looking up at the sky

white clouds
in a sea of blue

yellow flowers beside
the dirt trail

and small
white butterflies
(they only live
maybe 6 days).

there’s nowhere
I need to be

no one is waiting
for my word on
anything

the cars speeding
from one place
to another have
nothing to do
with me.

I’m a balloon
with hair

I’m a poem
with no grammar
and no syntax
and the words
don’t mean a thing.

when the crickets get to work

sitting on a green bench
there's nothing to do
but ogle teenage girls
while the parking meters
melt in the summer sun.
I tell one blonde wearing
a cheerleader's outfit
she's got nice legs.
she says thanks. got no
brothers or sisters. all
my relatives are back in
the old country.
don't speak the language
anymore and my parents
ain't much. sitting on
a green bench in the hot
sun, nothing to do but
wait for the summer night.

popcorn junkie

at the end
of Casablanca
Bogey and
the French cop
start a beautiful
friendship (of
a homosexual
nature no doubt).

the bullet went
in through the
back of Bugsy's
head, his eye
hitting the wall
across the room.

I remember
my grandfather
bald Stalinist with
a Hitler mustache
the same fiery eyes

drinking vodka
and eating raw
onions like they
were apples

dead of heart
failure at age 69.

he was
an atheist.

free medical advice

working the
graveyard shift
at the factory.

there was
a big blonde
maybe 19

the problem was
her face was
all covered in zits.

I wanted to tell
her there’s
a cure for that

but that got me
fired from one
job already

and I was out of
unemployment
benefits.

I admired her ass
for a while
then clocked in.

it’s people like me
who keep the
economy going.

slacker

the mushrooms of lethargy
are dragging me down
to mind-numbing holocausts
of depression
where the lark muddies
its dying wings
where the dead
grow their flowers
where Sid and Nancy
pogo to ska
amid the great guru
pot dealers
of Kingston
I’m unemployed
dreaming of psychedelic frogs
and
samsaras of butterflies
I’m the pot-bellied
Buddha of the robins
in the yard
the great all-knowing
know-nothing
who stares
at the sky
remembering the 90s
when it was OK
to be young
smart
lazy
and worthless
when the dj’s played
The Spinanes every
Tuesday
on the radio.

grassy knolls

if you think the government is
putting thoughts
in your head you're
probably right
they put chemicals
in the food
and bullshit
on the 6:30 evening news
they put a second
gunman on the grassy knoll
to split open
Jack Kennedy's head
like an Irish watermelon
I believe almost every
conspiracy theory I hear
cuz they're usually right
like war for oil
and COINTELPRO
we paranoids
are people with vague ideas
about what's really
going on.

fuck you, Dow Chemical

2011-12-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

they say some of the dust of 9/11
made it all the way to Ohio
I remember coughing a couple of times
that day
but that was about it
they say when NATO bombed Serbia
and destroyed all that country’s
chemical plants that a chemical cloud
spread over Bulgaria
and the people of Vietnam are still
suffering from the effects of Agent Orange
Agent Blue Agent Green
and whatever other monstrous crap
the American war machine
invented back then
tears for the sufferings of the past
are as numerous as the
20 million dead Indians buried
in mass graves under the soil
of this nation
and I’m not fool enough to think
the future’s gonna be all rosemary
and bluebells
but by the Gods
don’t let it become
another American century.

BAD POEMS*: online chap

2011-12-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

*first published in Books on Blog

12 poems by Ross Vassilev

bad poems

reading
some of my poems
that've been published
here and there
most of 'em are
pretty good but there's
some that are real
shit
the editors musta been
crackheads when they
published them
a bad poem
is a flea bite on my leg
nothing to
worry my balls over
certainly not nearly as bad
as poverty
and the endless wars.

nothing much to do

when I was 15
I put a rock through
the window of some
house just to hear
the sound of glass
shattering. the quiet
afterward was like
poking holes in the
clouds. then I ran
like hell for a while.
then I sat on a green
bench and stared
at the passing cars
which was better than
smashing windows
I guess.

learned a few things

sitting at
the kitchen table
a glass of water
reposes like Buddha.
I look out the window
at the white winter sky
over the rooftops.
a smoking chimney.
the silence of the white air
after getting fired,
wondering what to do
now. so much white air
filling my head. I remember
wanting to be a cop
when I was 5. it was either
that or a fireman. everything
was simple then.
now I’m thinking
maybe I should become
a dope dealer.

the right to remain silent

a million miles
of insanity
have brought me
here:

an open window;

sunlight;

a breeze flutters
the curtains.

I used to live in
New York―

what my parents
didn’t kill
that city did.

now I live in Ohio.

I remember sitting
in the back of
that squad car

the policewoman
reciting my
Miranda rights.

I told her to
to save her breath.

she recited them
anyway.

blonde
policewoman
with a big ass

you’ll always have
a place in my dreams.

long ago and not so far away

working as a temp
light assembly
$6 an hour
no rights, no benefits

hated the job
but couldn’t afford
to get fired

imagine
death by boredom
like drowning
in a bathtub
in the suburbs

if I had a soul
I’d say it was like
an opium poppy
turning to stone

there was one boss
I wanted to punch
in the face but never
did of course

I kept on working
doing the same shit
day after day

my soul scattering
like dust
to the universe.

the eagle has landed

death of the spirit as
a dove falls from the sky;
think of death
as a killer clown like
John Wayne Gacy
or Ronald Reagan;
Ronnie, I jerked off to
your daughter Patti
when I saw her
on the cover of Playboy
with some black guy
grabbing her tits
from behind; it didn't
take away from all
the carnage of
your dirty wars in
Central America but
it was something;
Ronnie, you were
Maggie Thatcher minus
the mustache; and when
I think of death
I think of you and
your big phony grin
like a Nazi death-head
with moussed hair.

rosaries

afterschool
we watched the
Irish girls
walking
home in pairs
from
St. Mary’s.
they were all
blondes
or redheads
thin and pretty
stone-faced
mean-looking
not saying a word
not even to
each other.
pale white legs
coming out of
green plaid
skirts
they drove us nuts
but we didn’t
have the balls
to go over
and talk to them
so they remained
a green-clad
mystery
in the grey streets
of Manhattan.

eggs

ask anyone who was ever poor:
eggs are the cheapest food.
we used to eat eggs a lot
and no matter
how many different ways
of cooking them
you might know
you get sick of them pretty fast.
one time in the supermarket
I saw a woman--
her cart was filled all the way
to the top with egg cartons
I guess she was fighting
inflation and
that might seem funny
but war on the poor
is standard business
in America
and if you’re not
on foodstamps
then at the very least
you’re cutting coupons
or maybe shoplifting
and so the “lazy and stupid”
as the rich call us
are multiplying like flies
and someday
we’re taking over.

family heirloom

went for a walk
round midnight
the streets were empty
save for my insanity
the yellow streetlamps
and a few neon lights--
the starry night
sang an ode to
my cage of the mind
I wandered lonely
as a purple orchid
beside
a rusting steel mill
lonely as the last cricket
on a cold night
I felt like tumbleweed
riding the wind
to escape the fire
I was circling
the electric night
in a Ferris wheel of
schizophrenia
and yes,
I was happy.

tax cuts for millionaires

when I used to work
at supermarkets
and warehouses and the like
I always belonged to some union
or other
we never went on strike
cuz the rich only tolerate
the toothless unions that sold out
a long time ago
so I got treated like shit
along with all the rest
I think I was the only one
who ever complained
cuz the American working-class
are cattle
(it was like I never left Bulgaria)
so I worked and sweated
and bitched a lot
while the rest seemed content
playing cards on their lunch breaks
(I really hated those sheeple)
but sometimes I walked home
at night
when the rain had just stopped
and the streets seemed to glow
under the streetlamps
and there was the sound
of water dripping and trickling
everywhere
and the whole thing
was so pretty
and that was about
the only good times there were.

the intellectual

unshaved, unwashed
unemployed
and planning
on staying that way.
I drink beer in the morning
and look out the window.
when the welfare checks
run out
I'll have to leech off my parents
(they're finally good for
something).
I walk in circles in the cold
of the April sun
while the pigeons
plot their uprising.
I read Plato and
wonder what it means
then fall asleep on page 2.
I wake up and watch
Busty Christy
getting it from Tina Holly
then open a letter
telling me to report
for jury duty
and now my criminal record
is finally good for something too.

X

waiting outside the court building
the pigeons marching up and down
like Nazis
I figured the judge would give me
a small fine
he gave me that and a year’s probation
I went straight from the courtroom
to my probation officer across the hall
she was a redhead with
big tits under a white sweater
a big ass in the back of her jeans
talked like a Southerner
told me to get a job
and come back same time
next month

walking home
the sun was low in the afternoon sky
the spiders were sucking
the guts out of flies
and I was one of those
goddam flies
hollowed-out, thrown away--
angry at the sun, the spiders
at everything and everyone

but there was nothing I could do.

***

Some of these poems have appeared previously in print and online journals such as rusty truck, carcinogenic poetry, full of crow, censored poets, my favorite bullet, black-listed magazine, camel saloon, and zygote in my coffee.

Ross Vassilev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1976 and came to the U.S. at the age of 4. After living in various locales, including New York City, he now resides in a rotten, inbred little town in Ohio. He has diabetes and congestive heart disease and is a cynic, pessimist, and general ne'er-do-well. He was the editor of the blogzines Opium Poetry 1.0 and 2.0 and Asphodel Madness 1.0 and 2.0 http://asphodelmadness.wordpress.com. He's had chaps published by Tainted Coffee Press and New Polish Beat. Send dirty jokes and/or hate mail to rossvassilev@gmail.com.

I don't even remember where these were published

2011-12-06T15:23:00.000-08:00

therefore...

walking
down the street
with the sun
the wind
the blue sky
God is waiting
for me to say
something
profound while
the white
butterflies dance
in my head
the cars speed by
and I remember
that day
in 2nd grade
when I got up
and exposed
myself to the girl
sitting in front
of me
I tell God
he doesn't exist
therefore
I'm talking to myself
therefore
I am God with
nothing but
these eyes in my
head staring at
my white hands--
I am alive.

dying state

there was a poet in South Dakota
who used to submit his poems to me
back when I was running my
Opium Poetry blog. they were long, honest
down-to-earth poems about real life
and all its crap, no word-play games
or light-hearted bullshit. he wrote me
long, rambling emails that went
something like don't let them fool ya
stick with the real shit
and not their bullshit and kick their asses
every chance ya get and so on.
he told me about the never-ending pain
in his leg and how whatever disease he had
almost killed him the week before.
then he stopped submitting.
in fact, he stopped submitting anywhere.
I exchanged emails with him one more time
but that was it. he musta stopped writing
his fine boots-on-pavement poems
and who knows why.
sometimes the drive or need or desire
just goes away, I guess.
R.B., I don't know if you're still living
or dead. if dead, I guess all your
problems are over, including that pain in
your leg. but if you're still kicking
then hang in there, buddy,
and kick their asses
every chance ya get.

vampire weather

white light
and naked branches

I turn on the radio
just to hear the voice
of the dj

the year is dying
in Ohio

1000 miles away
white pigeons strut
up and down
the streets
of the revolution

but here
there's an undefined
sickness

it's in the blood
the eyes

so all I can do
is start a revolution
from my bedroom

while Fidel grows old

and Che
becomes God.

a middle finger...

for all the drunks
and their rotten screaming families
for the mental illness
and depression and despair
for the bitch of bad luck
for all the stupid pretty flowers
that sit around and say nothing at all
for the moon and loneliness
for the goth chicks that got away
for the dying songbirds
for the pain of being alive
and the fear of dying
and the lying bearded assholes
who talk about God
and all the rest of you lousy shits
who were no help at all.

THE ONLY GOOD COMMIE IS A DEAD COMMIE!

waiting for the
unemployment check
as the bad memories
bounce round inside the
hollow of my
hallowed skull--
waiting for the sun
to finally flame out and
burn the world to a cinder
no more hot afternoons
under a laughing clown sun
no more trying
to get the landlord to fix
the fucking air conditioner--
waiting for something
to happen
while naked girls
dance on my walls
while I grow like a weed
useless, uninvited
drinking beer
on lazy afternoons
and looking up
your daughter's skirt.

spiral

the Feds went after the hippies
cuz what good are young
Americans who
only want peace and love
instead of killing people
in Vietnam?

so they unleashed the FBI
pitbulls trained in state
terror, set them loose on
the flower children
and the pitbulls tore them
to shreds.

in the 70s the young people
were still getting stoned
but they didn’t care about
anything so it was OK.

in the 80s the citizens
were reduced to consumers
and if you were too stoned
to flip burgers at McDonald’s
they sent you off to prison
for 10 years, paroled
all the murderers and rapists
to make room for ya.

it’s been the same ever since
and the 60s will never happen
again. now we’re just
wasting time, riding out
the spiral of America’s
broken wings.

hope and flowers

you don’t have to
search far to
find poverty in
this town.

you see it in
the people
poorly dressed
beat-up looking
tired looking

half the storefronts
on mainstreet
are empty.

poverty in this town
grows like
weeds in the yards
of condemned
homes.

and as for weed
you can find
plenty of that too

it’s the one luxury
it seems everyone
can afford.

but the days are
getting warmer

the first white flowers
are out

and they can never
take that away.

the Jim Morrison poem

Jim Morrison
dying from
an overdose
in a bathtub
somewhere
in Paris.

a bathtub is
no place for
a poet and
blues singer
to go.

at least he
coulda died
in some park

a jail cell in
New York
piss all over
the floor

a whorehouse
in Bangkok
his arm round
some princess

on stage
after waving
his cock for
the audience.

anyplace but
a goddamn
bathtub

like some
washed-up
junkie
ex-rock
and roll
star.

arse poetica

I guess you're a poet
when you stop bullshitting
and start telling the truth.
anyone can bullshit.
just listen to the generals in Iraq.
and the truth is always
more fun to listen to than lies.
like the truth about getting arrested:
they cuff your hands behind you
always a bit too tight
so that afterward you've got
a little pink welt on one or both wrists.
then they take your belt and shoes
in case you're thinking
of hanging yourself
(has anyone ever done it with
shoelaces?)
but sitting in the back of the squad car
is not unpleasant
and if you're lucky
you'll have your own private cell
with a metal sink and crapper
and yellow walls.
you can read whatever's been carved
in the wooden bench
or count the dried wads of toilet paper
stuck to the ceiling.
in all, not a bad way
to waste a Saturday night.

another one

2011-11-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

afterbirth

there’s nothing
to do in this town but
scream

...(angels of blue sky
where the clouds are
gutted)...

I don’t like children

I like empty yellow
cardboard cups
that people leave
standing
beside lonely walls

sometimes
there’s a kind of soft
grey light falling--

tricks of light are
illusions
from the Gods...

none of this is real.

various poems of mine

2011-11-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

end of days

we saw an old
homeless guy with
a slit in the back
of his pants
we laughed
we were kids
we thought it was
funny at the time
I don't think it was
so funny now.
it was a chill windy
night in New York
Reagan was President
already senile
the first lady was
blowing Frank Sinatra
and consulting
astrologers
on foreign policy.
we didn't know it
at the time but
the Soviet Union
was on its last legs
and America was
only 20 years behind
and soon nothing
would be funny at all.

Honduras, 2009

drifting like the ghost
of Trotsky
in the white dawn
the white sky above me
is the same over
Tegucigalpa
where the U.S. just
overthrew democracy
again.
all the generals were
trained at
The School of The Americas
in the state of Georgia
the school where
they instruct
pro-American terrorists
in the dirty work
of empire to protect
“our hemisphere”
as the North Americans
call it. the coup took place
a week ago.
we'll see what happens next.

turning on the light of learning

well, there were the dyke gym teachers
the dyke English teachers
and the ex-Marine who became a teacher
cuz he couldn't find a real job
most of them were unambitious
content to rot their lives away
surrounded by the dumb teenage mob
and the worst were the teachers
who tried to inspire the kids
but it's your parents and the kids
who'll crush you
the teachers don't count for shit
and to all my former teachers
all I have to say is:
you're less than the acne on my neck.

sensitive

I guess the greatest
fear of any poet
is having their work
laughed at.

telling a poet their
work sucks is one thing

but I think most poets
would rather line
people up against a wall
and open fire
than have their poetry
laughed at

especially young poets.

but then you turn 30
and say fuck it
to self-doubt

you couldn’t care less
if anyone likes it or not
cuz you like it
and that’s what matters

so you start sending
it all out
left and right, everywhere

like a monkey
throwing shit from a tree.

dig?

worms devour the night
as the Tao drinks wine in a tree
he’s no help at all
just like the rest of you
humanity, you remind me of
the headless mice my cat
leaves in the yard
or the pigeon’s head
she once left by the door.
while Nazis bury Jewish gold
at the ends of rainbows
the angels
of our better nature
are tied to trees
and sodomized
the angels
of our better nature
have slashed their wrists
and hung themselves
with piano wire.

halcyon days

world full of
powerless, penniless
revolutionaries
screaming their ideas
onto paper
while serial killers
and outlaw bikers
roam California highways

disillusioned
Trotskyites
feeding their hunger
on the stale bread
of frustration
while bums sit in alleys
their brains shredded
by LSD

a tear for the lost
is a wet brown leaf
in Fall

those who know
sit in hot empty rooms
in the cancerous summer
tubes in their arms
pumping them full of
insanity
and stark raving loneliness

they sweat the blood
of the Gods
so remember them
as the sky fills with sulfur.

no shit

I have dreams like
being in Russia
amid all the poverty that
Gorby and Yeltsin and
the rest of the asshole
traitorous Right created
it's often so realistic
I wake up feeling sick

or I dream that I'm
wandering in some strange
place and there's other
people there but they
ignore me and I ignore
them (dreams imitating life)

or this town is a raging
inferno and the flames are
kissing the night sky
and when all the white trash
have been burned alive
Satan puts out the flames
by pissing on them.

I guess I must be crazy.

the new napalm

you’d cut my head off
and feed it
to Saddam Hussein
use it to fertilize
the white phosphorous desert

the ashes
of my personal sorrow
will keep
the stock market up
and fill your barren hearts
with atomic warheads

my head bursts out in flowers
that wither under your
military-industrial
cannibal death-plex
that the hangman laughs at
in his drunken stupor
in his depleted uranium
dreams.

upon realizing things will never get any better

dusk falling through the windows
I’m half asleep
thinking of Hitler and his dog
and the dead rats in my head.
a wasted life--
my screaming parents
the lousy jobs in warehouses and
supermarkets and restaurant kitchens
sitting in my room, the sunlight
dripping cancer from the walls.
I remember that time I had to walk home
in the rain down a broken discarded street
white litter everywhere
thinking maybe the Gods just gave up
and quit trying.

holding on

I went for a stroll with
my crooked legs

and people started laughing—

you ever felt like shit?

ever felt like pissing on
people’s faces?

ever felt like you were a dirty
rag in the gutter?

ever stared at passing cars
under a filthy afternoon sky?

ever felt like the graffiti on
the wall was right?

ever felt like you were no
better off than the homeless
and the addicts?

ever put a rock through
a window just for the hell of it?

ever worried the squad car’s
sirens were coming for you?

ever wished you owned an Uzi?

if the answer to all of the
above is yes,
then you must be a poet too.

the eyes have it

sitting in the unemployment office
with several drab-looking women
and their babies
some of the babies are crying
I tune them out
I close my eyes
the room turns orange
I see a procession of Buddhist monks
some of them are on fire
Nixon rises up from his grave
with his phony smile
and maggots in his eyes
I see a GI screaming in the jungle
both his legs blown off
I see a young man punching a cop
outside the DNC in Chicago ‘68
and Nancy Spungen lying on
the bathroom floor with
a knife in her belly
then I look up and a fat woman
with glasses says to me
sir, do you have your paperwork?

Amerika über alles

my friend Bob Flanagan
wrote a novel called
Maggot
about the horrors of
Parris Island
where they turn
Marine recruits into
killing machines

hearing the stories
on the news of
what American soldiers
are doing to Iraqi civilians
I’d say
mission accomplished

but the business
of the American people
is war

without war
we’d be just another
peaceful country

wasting away
the summer afternoons
drinking beer and
smoking pot in
the glorious setting sun.

fuck…

America
John Wayne
Jesus
the morning alarm
$6 an hour
pots and pans
time cards
shift managers
Ronald Reagan
Patti Reagan
all the teachers who told me
I’d never amount to shit
(they were right)
missionaries who ring my doorbell
at 9 in the morning
the people who put up
the skyscrapers
that fuck the sky over Manhattan
football, baseball
your wife
your niece
your teenage daughter
high school cheerleaders
little pink houses
small-town values
the military-industrial complex that
rules America and the world
the butchers at My Lai
the butchers at Wounded Knee
the policewoman with the big ass
who arrested me
cops, judges, probation officers
and most of all
you.

angels of mercy, angels of light

I remember
the dust of 9/11
in the blue Indian sky
over Manhattan
where hippies
and Yippies are still
putting flowers
in the guns of
American soldiers
where Diana Oughton
is still making bombs
in her top-floor
Greenwich flat and
suicide bombers
still wait in vain
for their 72 virgins
I used to live in
that place
full of the homeless
and the insane
a place that chews up
your soul
and spits it out
for the dogs to
crap on
so did I cry on 9/11
like everyone
else?
the answer to that one
is no.

more pubs

2011-11-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

they call it wage slavery

getting to work tired
feeling like a zombie
but they make you sweat
so the owners can buy
more cars, bigger yachts

the two 15-minute breaks
were an insult
the ½ hour lunch a joke

I’d sit there staring at
the blue walls in the
non-smoking break room
dreaming of revolution
and teenage girls licking
each other’s pussies
Lenin with a pair of
busty Russian blondes.

the dreams of the meek
are simple and poetic

the dreams of the meek
are beautiful.

the scarecrow men with smiles

rotting in Ohio
in the bowels of the Empire
in the heart
of the Axis of Evil
crows descend
from dead trees
and peck out my arsenic mind
I am not safe in the belly
of the beast
I am not safe
in their military-industrial
horror, I fear
the Pentagon media
and the scarecrow men
moving their wet lips
on tv
I am not safe from
their sordid lies
the eyes of the beast
are upon me.

I let the door hit my ass on my way out

genteel poverty
is my version of paradise.
I work only
as much
as I want to
make only as much
money as I need
to survive. I'm
a kind of gentleman
when you think about it
old new gentry
in a moth-eaten
small apartment of
a mansion.
the type-A people
can hustle all they want:
if they inherit
the earth
they can have it.
the summer sun
is no match for my
air conditioner
(when it's working)
and in the evenings
when the Buddha stars
come pouring down
a bottle of
hard lemonade
is the nectar of
the good-for-nothing
Gods.

lost my heart over there

ragged streets
under a white sky
if happiness was
something you could
buy from the ice cream
truck when it comes
jingling down the street
or balloons
red yellow and green
rising up into blue sky
under the lying sun…
back when days like
that mattered.
there’s no end to what
they can do to you
and they’ll do it to you
till you end up in
some alley
among the stray cats
hoping more for angels
than Gods, hoping
to catch a glimpse of
silken wings.

still (more dead than) alive in some rathole somewhere in America

I'm still alive
cuz when I wake up
in the morning
I feel this pain in my right leg
like one of those hairy
crippled smith-Gods that
never shave, just sit around
playing with themselves
in the forge all day
dreaming of nymphs
Goddesses
and high school cheerleaders
I'm still alive
cuz I hate with the heart
of a true Bolshevik
I mean slitting throats
bayoneting the class enemies
setting fire to the churches
a real bloodbath orgy of
killing before sipping
my iced tea
this world is mostly insanity
like Maupassant going
mad from the syphilis he got
from some Parisian whore
and Henry Miller laughing
at Parisian whores
and Apollinaire dying
a thousand deaths
in Paris
living is slowly dying
like the surgeon removing
one piece this month
another the next
I'm sorry if this poem
didn't cheer you up.

end of the rope

north of here
is a place that
used to have
50,000 people
now it’s barely
half that
the factories
closed down
Walmart drove
all the small
shops under
now everyone
hustles for
minimum wage
wondering how
they’re gonna
pay the bills
everyone but
the very poor
has moved out
it’s where the
American dream
hanged itself
and didn’t even
leave a note.

second-hand view

there’s days when
it’s difficult just getting
out of bed
nearly impossible
brushing one’s teeth
or taking a shower.
days like that
the only thing to do
is sit by the window
look up at the clouds in
the sky. what
you’re born into
is a matter of luck
most of it bad.
I let the blue sky
enter my head, let the
wind carry
my worn-out soul
you can see it among
the trees
rags and all.

no cure for what I’ve got

your unshakeable
American optimism
sickens me.
I never wanted to be one of you
mowing your phony lawns
like in 50s Leave It To Beaver land
getting all teary-eyed
saluting the flag
under fireworks on the 4th of July.
I hate John Wayne and
all fat cowboys.
my American dream is to live
on foodstamps while not supporting
the troops
and not watching football
or baseball
while the cat leaves
headless mice in the yard.
but it’s too late:
watching tv all day
I’m already
a fat lazy
unhappy American.
yes, I’m looking for sympathy.

the meaning of life...

is white clouds and a lollipop.
the meaning of life
got lost somewhere in
dreams of Loni Anderson
and these pills that I'm taking
that make the room lean
first to the left
and then to the right.
what I'm going through here
is some kind of
unraveling of the spirit
or maybe
a Los Alamos of the mind.
I'm writing to you
from the other side
of something
and I'm staring at a clock with
no hands.
these pills remind me
of the dead
blackbird
I came across once
staring up at me
with its dead black eye
like lost soldiers
in long forgotten wars.

fuck everybody

my grandfather was
an asshole
even when sober
but when he got
drunk every night
on rakia
that's when his
demons came out:
screaming at
everyone
his bald head with
a Hitler mustache
looking like
the Devil himself
till he finally
crawled into bed
round midnight
and slept. his inner
demons wouldn't
let him be and
I wasn't there when
he finally croaked
so I'm just guessing
what his
dying words were.

the old country

I remember
a pond
filled with red
and white fish
and a young
Orthodox priest
dressed all
in black with
a black beard
and my drunk
grandfather
keeling over
one night,
slamming his
bald head
into a metal
bed frame (I
still don’t know
how it didn’t
kill him.)
our relatives
say that since
the fall of
Communism
the country’s
really gone
to the dogs
everyone living
in poverty
and misery
all the young
people
moving abroad
in search of
a better life.

shit happens.

betrayed

Ho Chi Minh
kicked some
Yankee ass
reunited
the nation
now Vietnam’s
“Communist”
government
has imposed
capitalism
on the country.
what American
bombs and
Agent Orange
couldn’t do
greed and the
Almighty Dollar
have. did all
those
Viet Cong
heroes
die for nothing?
Wall Street
is a cancer
spreading to
the whole
damn world.

you won't read this in the papers

I shoulda been a 60s radical
throwing rocks and bombs
punching cops between acid trips
at the '68 Democratic Convention

my only weapon is my computer
the words I type are Molotov cocktails
that I hurl through the windows
of the empty rancid skulls
of the American Right
(I know it ain't much)

congenitally stupid nation
might-makes-right
kill-the-poor
social Darwinist fascism
iron-fisted police state
that woulda cracked even Lenin

this country needs a real revolution

not another Founding Fathers
bullshit revolution

a real revolution
led by someone named
Castro or Chavez
or maybe even Trotsky.

new poetry ezine

2011-11-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

http://projectagentorange.com/wordpress/

*make sure you check out submit guidelines as to what editor is looking for.

pubs 1

2011-10-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

brownstone jungle

I played
basketball
afterschool
with all the
Irish kids.

we’d watch
the Irish girls
walk home in
pairs from the
Catholic girls’
school in their
mini-skirts.

we’d go home
before night
fell cuz that’s
when all the
muggers came
out to hunt.

there’s parts
of Manhattan
that go empty
soon as night
falls.

New York is
the city that
never sleeps
and they turn
all their shit
into musicals.

rock and roll motel

Keith Richards
offers
Jimi Hendrix
a line of coke

Mick Jagger
and Bob Dylan
are tripping
on acid in
the bathroom

Jim Morrison
soaks in the
tub singing
this is the end

and veterans
of foreign wars
flashback while
sodomizing
underage girls.

there’s a sign
on the front
door that says

WHITES ONLY

but they made
an exception
for Jimi.

feeling down for no reason at all

the SS go
marching
through
my dreams.

I wake up
with acne
on the back
of my neck
and a huge
centipede
on the wall.

the phone
rings.

I pick it up
and a woman
offers
me a new
credit card--

it’s a tough
choice
between
her and
the Nazis.

Dallas

Andy Warhol made a few
dozen reproductions of the
image of Marilyn Monroe
and called it art.

President Kennedy
got to fuck Marilyn and
Judith Campbell and just
about everything else.
nobody should have it so
good. but they took care
of that in Dallas.

I often think I was there
when they shot Kennedy
from the grassy knoll.
and I bet everyone else
was thinking the same
thing: the fucker had it
too good for too long.

pimps and other capitalists

you'll see your face
in the half-light
grabbing mouthfuls
of blue sky
and you'll realize
this world
wasn't made for
someone like you
this world is for
the greedy
the power-hungry
the sadists and
rapists
to indulge in
to drench in the
suffering they inflict
upon others
not you
who gets dizzy
when the flowers
whisper and
mourning doves
flutter through your
brain.

drink from the rose

6 found dead in a house
in Memphis.

cold pizza mornings.

fucking landlord
won’t fix the shower.

I remember the motel in
Jersey

the two girls who cleaned
the rooms

an Asian and Chicana.

lesbian dreams.

unkind

looking in the mirror
receding hairline
pot belly
I splash some water
on my face
flush the toilet.
I walk to the bedroom
I’ve got sweaty balls
and one leg shorter
than the other.
night coming in
through the windows
I hear something
crash upstairs
something heavy
like a fridge or
some kid jumping
from a couch
or table. I say
what the hell?
hell is other people.
hell is poverty.
hell is my neighbor
and her retard son.
hell is sitting
at the window looking
out at the night,
too insane to go
anywhere
to do anything.

the Mexicans

there were five or six of them
all short stocky and brown
real mestizos. when they walked
past me one of them looked at
me and said something in
Spanish. then they all looked
at me and laughed. they
climbed in the back of
a dusty old pick-up and
it drove off. I told myself
I coulda taken them all.

rural charm

my dad told me
that one time

he saw
a chicken
get its head
cut off
with an axe

and the
headless
chicken
promptly
ran off

blood
spouting
from the
stump of
its neck
like some
geyser in
Hell.

sometimes
I wish
I’d been
raised
on a farm.

cold

bony trees
and cold air
and the sun
a smoldering
cigarette

I don’t mind
the cold
or the empty
street

there’s
comfort in
loneliness
in my white
breath

I think of
the sun
going down

of the hare
and the
frightened
mouse

of sparrows
chirping
on a ledge.

brittle

nothing
to do but sit
in a chair and
look around
the room
as nothing
disturbs
the silence
not even the
maggots
in my head
and hope
no one is
looking in
through the
curtains
or through
the asshole
in the sky
as the walls
crash down
and the dogs
move in
for the kill.

my side of it

my fat co-worker told
the boss to go fuck
himself and then he
stormed out. then the
boss stormed out.

so I was left alone in
the back room, sitting
there listening to
My Bloody Valentine
on the small radio.

the song was beautiful.

and the silence of the
rest of the world was
beautiful.

and I thought the world
sure is beautiful when
there aren’t any people
around to fuck it up.

don’t you agree?

New York's finest

some guy
in New York
went down
in a hail of
police bullets
the other night.

40
to be exact.

25
from the gun
of just one cop.

they say
he reloaded
TWICE
and kept on
shooting.

the city is
investigating
if the victim
was on drugs.

as for the cop
everyone
just assumes
he was.

those students are damn lucky

when the Athenian peltasts
defeated the Spartan hoplites
at Sphakteria
Bettany Hughes held my hand
during the whole bloodbath

she's a professor of Classics
at some British University

she's a beautiful brunette
who oughtta be in porn

she told me about how
when Menelaos
found runaway Helen in Troy
he was gonna kill her
but then she showed him
her tits and so he forgave her

so the story goes

Bettany, I wish you'd show
your tits

now that'd be something
to see on PBS.

somewhere in your back pocket

death is a man's head on a dog's body;

death is the Germans hanging people in Belarus;

death is 3 crows on a telephone wire;

poverty will be the death of Eastern Europe;

death is stock brokers trading money;

death is not waiting for you:

death has her hands full counting gold teeth;

death is Akira Kurosawa drinking tea in a garden
with snow on all the bare branches.

humanity is a bitch

to survive in America
you gotta tiptoe
among nightshades
of nuclear war

dance round
mushroom clouds
of serial killers

escape from
the hangman’s noose
of poverty and the
chopping block
of the prison system.

when I was young
I wanted to save
humanity (like you’re
supposed to, I guess)

now I’m 32
and I just say

fuck it.

discursive

hitting the pavement
when there’s nowhere to go
the sky is dizzy
and aimless
when you’re crazy
your only friends
are the ones in your head
and maybe
the DJ on the radio
the flowers are dying
they last only a week or so
and when I see my face
in the puddles
I don’t like what I see
all you normal people
out there
I’m not one of you.

pubs 2

2011-10-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

fire in the mind

the insane
have their own
asylum
inside
their skulls
they
don't lock up
the insane
to cure them
they
lock 'em up
to keep them
away from
everyone else
escaping
from the asylum
inside
your skull
is
putting out the
darkness
with the sun
then you start
to remember
the
last few years
and
you wonder
at it all
in total horror
like a
bad dream
you know
was real but
then you
never run outta
shit to
write about.

memorial day

an obituary on
the evening news

some soldier
killed in Iraq

he was only 20.

I'm supposed
to honor his
sacrifice
in a faraway
desert

sitting here
channel-surfing
looking for
something
to relieve
the boredom

wishing some
martial arts
was on.

tough luck.

big blonde

getting out of
the squad car
that night
hands cuffed
behind me
wishing that
I was standing
on a corner
under neon
far from here
that the world
would go fuck
itself and die
that the police
woman with
the big ass was
a hooker and
the cuffs and
the outfit were
just a game we
were playing
but then she
wouldn't have
put 'em on so
tight.

last one out

4000 dead
American soldiers
in Iraq as the red
cardinal hops from
branch to branch
in a small leafy tree.

4000 dead
American soldiers
in Iraq as young
people in Columbus
stick needles in
their arms and see
Jesus in the sky.

4000 dead
American soldiers
in Iraq and that
ain't even counting
the contractors;
and for once let's
be honest: no one
really gives a damn.

Kabul

memories
of gone empires
in the opiate
dreams
of fakirs and sages

gone religions
are mountain flowers
while the faiths
of Abraham
wait to join them

the only constant
is the rape
of the people
and the blood-red
poppies at the doors
of the angels.

wheels of history

another tv
documentary
on Hitler
and the Nazis.

Adolf in his
brown shorts

except for
the mustache
he could be
a Boy Scout.

I come from
a country
that fought
for Hitler
and no one
regrets it.

then the
Warsaw Pact

and now we’re
on your side.

America
I guess your
luck’s run out.

Jerusalem is your holy land but not mine

I’m old enough to remember
when they were still putting out music
on cassettes
I’m even old enough to remember vinyl
and Dawn Wells in Gilligan’s Island reruns
back then
there was hope in the world
at least for most people
before America’s endless wars
and global economic crises
now I’ve given up trying
just lie on the couch all day
while the spiders wrap their victims
in the corners
I’ve given up on sunsets and rainbows
and basic human decency
just waiting for the monster
with the body of a lion
the head of a rat
and darkness pouring from its eyes.

snake

my hatred
like a black rose
twisted round my heart

my insanity
like barbed wire
tearing at my brain

I’ve got crooked legs
and diabetes too

I’ve got $20 in my wallet

I’ve got 33 years
smeared like shit on
a blank page

I’ve got a photo
of a pair of boobs
someone emailed me

no face, no name

I wonder who the fuck she is?

abstract art and the defeat of Socialism

old men walking down the street
walking towards death

lost in a country not my own
I'm walking towards something myself
but I’m not sure what it is

it ain't right to be led around
like a dog on a leash
(I should be so lucky)

the blackbirds cry
as the sun dances on cold white air
there's people walking down the street
in Russia
talking in Russian
(it seems unbelievable)

as the blackbirds tear their guts out
there's dark matter
swimming through my head

and for a moment
I can forget.

lost

the stars are
drunk
and this moth
circling
the room
is even more
lost
than I am.
my family came
to America
when I was 3.
before that
I had a country
to call home
but then
Communism
fell and that
country is gone
now
forever.
it starts to rain
outside as
the moth
tells me about
fate
and things
lost and
left behind.

small paradise

grass
and red brick
surreal
afternoon light
of Ohio autumn
the point is just
to be
like the
white clouds
and the sparrows
sometimes
the only sound
is a girl’s
rollerskates
on the pavement.

one poet to another

read a few poems by
nila northSun ‘bout
growing up on some
Indian reservation
living on government
food with alcoholic
diabetic relatives and
riding round in dusty
old pick-up trucks
which is still a helluva
lot better than growing
up in New York where
all I remember is winos
walkin round talking
to themselves
and the steam coming
up through the grates
under my feet and all
those dogs and all that
dogshit.

the 4th Reich

the whole world
is sending troops
to help the Americans
fight their dirty war
in Afghanistan
where fat American
soldiers kill pregnant
women, pull children
out of their beds
and execute them
the West European
cocksuckers are there
the East European
cocksuckers are there
too
when the American
military finally leaves
Afghanistan the same
way they left Vietnam--
with their tails
between their legs--
Glenn Beck and the
rest of the insane
idiot neo-Nazi
White Right are gonna
impose fascism
and all the cocksuckers
in Europe will be on
their knees
blowing the trumpets
for the empire.

fireworks

my co-workers at the supermarket
didn’t seem to realize
they were being exploited
they were always cheery
always showed up on time
I often said to myself
don’t they get it?
there was one woman who worked there
40 hrs. a week and 35 hrs. a week
at another place
when did she sleep?
maybe they all knew the truth
but kept those smiles on their faces
in spite of everything
(maybe I’m giving them too much credit)
I was always late for work
always clocked out early
wasn’t interested in promotion —
the managers worked 60 hrs. a week
every 4th of July they gave each of us
a small American flag
I told someone
they can keep their fucking flags
and pay us more money.

the Arthur Bremer poem

a young man
sitting up in
bed all night
naked staring
at his penis

scrawling page
after page of
endless insane
ramblings
in his notebook

trying to decide
whether to shoot
himself or the
UPS guy or the
mayor

listening to the
same album
over and over
after shaving
his head

after mailing out
pages ripped
from porn mags
mailing them
to people he
doesn’t know

feeling
insignificant
as a hanger
in the closet

unknown
to the world

and the world
better hope
he stays that
way.

tell me about it

she said

whatever happened
to Mazzy Star?
they were damn good

as the air filled
with smoke.

I said

if those cigarettes
don’t kill you
you’ll kill
me.

she said

don’t be such a
wimp. you even got
the face of a wimp.

I said

would it help
if I grew a beard?

she said

no.

where empires go to die

waiting for progress in the human race
waiting for the Empire to fall while
Ho Chi Minh laughs from his mausoleum
Uncle Ho was one tough little shit
with a goatee
he told the Yanks
We’ll fight one day longer than you will
and goddam, he was right
what’s more
it seems the spirit of Westmoreland
has possessed the minds
of the American generals in Afghanistan
they keep repeating the same
old bullshit--
Just a few thousand more troops
and we’ll win this thing.

devil

the newspapers don't care

the fat woman
with a face like a prison
don't care. you might
as well lie in bed all day
and talk to the walls

or hang yourself from
a tree like that
pusher that Kurt Cobain
saw one day.

you might as well
stagger drunk across
the street and get hit by
a car unless you find

something to keep you
alive, to keep you going:
try hatred.

rolling thunder

ask me if I support the troops
and the honest answer is
no.

what matters most to me right now
is white butterflies

the patriots can go off to Iraq
or Afghanistan and get themselves
killed if they want. I couldn’t
care less--

bin Laden never did anything
to me

(when you look at things my way
nothing really matters.)

I’d rather think of red roses
and Joely Richardson dancing
nude and buxom in
Lady Chatterley
as it starts to rain outside.

chop my head off and stick on a pole

roaming the hot streets
praying for rain
if you’re like me--
beat down by uncontrollable
unknowable forces
then you need to find something useful
to waste your days with
like playing guitar
exposing yourself to Girl Scouts
or shooting people just to impress Jodie Foster.

one at Vintage Poetry

2011-10-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

http://vintagepoetrypublishing.blogspot.com/2011/10/poetry-by-ross-vassile.html

rosaries

afterschool
we watched the
Irish girls
walking
home in pairs
from
St. Mary’s.
they were all
blondes
or redheads
thin and pretty
stone-faced
mean-looking
not saying a word
not even to
each other.
pale white legs
coming out of
green plaid
skirts
they drove us nuts
but we didn’t
have the balls
to go over
and talk to them
so they remained
a green-clad
mystery
in the grey streets
of Manhattan.

2 at Lit Up Magazine I lost then found again

2011-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/1868/#respond

loser

you’re a loser

if everywhere you go
you gotta walk through
alleys filled with
garbage cans and
cigarette butts
and broken glass

and every time you see
pink clouds at sunset
you think it’s the Gods
painting the sky in
flowers

and the lyrics to
Social Distortion songs
really are the story
of your life

and you think all the girls
have butterfly wings
but hide them from
everyone

and there’s nowhere
you gotta be cuz you’re
unemployed and
hoping to stay that way
for as long as you can.

haze

looking up at the sky

white clouds
in a sea of blue

yellow flowers beside
the dirt trail

and small
white butterflies
(they only live
maybe 6 days).

there’s nowhere
I need to be

no one is waiting
for my input
on anything

the cars speeding
from one place
to another have
nothing to do
with myself.

I’m a balloon
with hair

I’m a poem
with no grammar
no syntax--

and the words
don’t mean a thing.

awesome new radio show

2011-07-26T04:37:00.000-07:00

http://theshow.newamericandream.info/shows/

one at amphibi.us

2011-06-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

http://amphibi.us/all/discursive/

discursive

hitting the pavement
when there’s nowhere to go
the sky is dizzy
and aimless
when you’re crazy
your only friends
are the ones in your head
and maybe
the DJ on the radio
the flowers are dying
they last only a week or so
and when I see my face
in the puddles
I don’t like what I see
all you normal people
out there
I’m not one of you.

some of my poems translated into Russian

2011-06-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

http://slova.name/slova-9/ross-vasilev.html

use Google Translate if nothing else works. just copy the Russian text and paste it into the Google Translate box.

VILLAGE IDIOT*: online chap

2011-06-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

*first published in Full of Crow

10 poems by Ross Vassilev

plague

lost in a nowhere little town
I was lost everywhere
always something wrong with my psyche
the rickets
the way the sun turned
I’d been losing it (mostly at home)
little by little for a while
then at 15
I think it was
I lost it all the way
the sky was always sick-looking
people like so many flies
circling round shit
insanity is a time when you forget
everything
then it comes back
like a trickle of acid on your palm
and you wonder
did it really happen
or is it just my imagination?
to be honest, I’m still not sure.

you think you know but I know more

I was the knock-kneed kid
who stammered

I liked sloshing through banks
of yellow leaves in Autumn;

people thought I was insane:

well, I guess I was:

the insane grow up to be poets;

the normal kids grow up
to work in banks

rotting their lives away
making money.

now pardon me while I talk
with the sunlight

and expose myself
to the ghost of Jane Russell.

siren song

the walls were yellow
there were 4 wads of toilet paper
stuck to the ceiling

they arrested me for
allegedly
grabbing some chick’s ass

I was so drunk I don’t even remember
if I did it or not

the policewoman who arrested me
was a tall buxom blonde
with an ass even BIGGER
than the one I was accused
of molesting

sitting on the wooden bench
in my little yellow cell
there was nothing to do
but wait and wait…

chicks with big asses
will be my downfall.

a miserable profession

I’m the poet who moved back in with his parents
after getting fired from his last job

I’m the 6-foot-1 poet who’s fat and diabetic

I’m the would-be pseudo-poet who’s giving it a try

I’m the poet who sits on the patio summer nights
listening to the crickets
and staring up at the stars

I’m the poet with no health insurance

I’m the poet who downloads girls-with-dildos movies
on my computer

I’m the poet who listens to X and The Clash

I’m the poet rotting in a dull little town in Ohio

I’m the poet who writes poetry to kill time
while I’m dying.

life is meant to be wasted

half-asleep
on the couch
memories
running through my head
like
playing at the beach
near Burgas
with a blonde girl
when I was
5 or 6,
stepping over a
homeless woman
who
was blocking
the doorway in
New York,
that counselor
asking me
if I ever masturbate
(too bad she wasn’t
better looking)
I lied
and said no.
half-asleep
on the couch
doing nothing
and the sun
coming in
through
the summer trees.

workin for the man

my first day
clearing rocks
from a field.
we carried
them in metal
buckets that
got heavier as
the sun rose.
by noon the
heat weighed
a ton and the
world seemed
not worth
a pig’s balls.
I sat down
every chance
I got when
no one
was looking.
finally the
boss caught me
and that was
the end of it:
my first and
last day
on the job.

not much there at all

lying in bed at night
when I was 19
listening to the indie rock
station. the guy was singing
if I wear your hand-me-
downs… with grungy guitar-
work in the background.
I was half-seriously thinking
of going out some night
climbing the fire-escape of
the tallest building in town
and jumping. but of course
I never did. I was too
immobilized by depression
to even kill myself. maybe
that song was what saved me.
and there was another song
by a band called Helium.
the girl sang you are the MOST
BEAUTI-FUL THING…
and sometimes 2 good songs
is all there is.

fuck the army

I’d never fight for any goddam
country, not even my own
and by that I mean Bulgaria.
I’d never fight for America either.
I mostly feel contempt for people
in the military. maybe
I should feel more sympathy
but my grandfather was an officer
in the Bulgarian army.
I remember him
getting drunk every night
terrorizing my mother and
granma. a real sonofabitch.
so the only soldiers
I feel any compassion for
are the ones who shoot
their officers, go home, open
a bottle of beer in front of the tv
and watch Casino. at least those
gangsters only kill each other.

a dime for heroism

working at a supermarket
stocking shelves with
merchandise.
I wondered
was I born for the sole purpose
of working minimum wage
in America?
I recalled the Viet Cong motto:
“born in the North to die in the South”
only my journey was far less
heroic. I wondered if I might be
doing this kind of work the rest of
my life. the idea filled me
with terror.
so I worked half-speed,
showered every other day
even during summer.
I was rude to my boss and
co-workers, the customers too--
I didn’t give a shit.
one day my boss finally
got so sick of my mouth
he canned me.
so I went on benefits
and after a while
I said to myself
getting paid for NOT working--
now here’s an IDEA!
so I decided maybe there was
hope after all. I think getting fired
from that job saved my life.

village idiot

I’m 33.
unemployed.
got fired so I moved
back in with my parents.
sick of working.
I sit up all night watching
Fellini movies.
I’d rather make art than money
but I can’t make either.
fuck the American dream.
I know left from right
and right from wrong.
I know who the bad guys are.
I’m a bum.
an idiot. a loser.
I’m a Sandinista.
I’m a goddam
good-for-nothing foreigner.
I’ve got a 3-day beard
cuz I’m too lazy to shave.
truth be told
I’m the village idiot.
this country is overrun
with village idiots
living off their parents
and contributing nothing.
give us all a hand.

6 new poems at Zygote!

2011-06-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/100s/issue134rossvassilev.html