Old Roach Motel

Holes worn in the floor where your feet go
and sweat lines on the worn out wood desk show though

I know they couldn’t have come from me.

The curtain's on the window closed.
The corner cable runs along the wall to the TV
where the shows are snowy and getting sicker
as the light across the tabletop flickers.

Though shabby and old, the dark atmosphere
glows below the neon motel sign like
many a weary traveler’s shrine.
Within this broken room I sense a ton of fear
and pondering was done in here.

While the smoke was filtered away long ago,
cigarette burns in the carpet, grease on the pillow,
show vibrant as the day they were forged
with the condoms in the sheets,
while in the bathroom the remains disgorged
of alcohol, of poisoning, or just bad meals sit
post-digested and arresting me to kneel!

The blood stains on the fabric embracing me
their pains suffered so near—
some wrist cutter’s final year.
Within these walls there seems no erasing
just what has happened in here.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Charlie and Rag

Rag ties his shoelaces while waiting for the sun
behind the railroad tracks of noise
while passing trains shake his toys
and always wake the other boys
to morning when they go looking for some fun.
And I hear them stirring when the bed posts creek
as Shawn’s harmonica weeps for Rag and
for that strange man who took them in that week.
And I’ll be joining them for some.

They’ve taken their plastic guns out to shoot
the glass bottles on the empty route
where they’re stuck on curbs to sit
like an outfit of badlands misfits
until his landlord comes and gives them all the boot.
But if they still want it, he’ll play his guitar
for all these state wards near and far, but lo they go
and hop the brick wall at “the cave” spot
that works to plant these hotshots.

Now I watch them touch their shadow’s place
on the brick wall crossing the yard.
They’ve played their final deck of cards
and realize life is gonna get hard
just watching the addict scratch the attic of his face.
But even though he’s just a loner they all start
passing around that boner’s stoner to take
the edge off life and hide it away with that guy’s knife
so he can live for one more day.

So Rag lives beneath the stairs an orphan beat
in the enclave trash and old concrete
when he used to live on Elm Street—
now he’s too scared of any treat
because the drugs make him live his life like meat.
See, the bricks made him lose his feet but he still
gets one in the sheet with Charlie and Zach
by the school after he excretes the world’s waste
knowing nothing of defeat.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Backyard Summer

The summer evening sky’s blue glow
in the darkness and the tree shadows
goes draping in the cool air to show
the crickets when to sing a song they know.

Cicadas chirp and night bugs twirp
alone in the distance looking for a mate.
Below the sky the fireflies fly
through the yard lights knowing that it’s late.

And the air is cool, a late evening rule—
the backyard’s draped this summer date.
As darkness shades the blue glow fades,
a light turns on where moths will congregate.

O summer evening sky’s blue glow!
As the backyard trees fade and darken

against the blues in the music show
from the tree where the listeners hearken!

There lawn chairs sit, and bit by bit
they wait the return of the sun.
A backyard light dims flight
to wait out the sleeping for the run.

Clotheslines hang and cicadas twang
and wade through our night of fun.
The air was still and stayed until
morning when our fun was done.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Screens

When I’m online and someone

wants to give a hug to me,
there’s one thing they can say:
“consider it done.”
I’m mad that I can’t know someone
when staring at them in a screen.
Until I can then I’ll just say
“consider it done.”
When I’m online and she just wants
to break the anonymity,
there’s not much we can say but
“consider it done.”

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

This Kid's Big Dream

I once had a big dream of love,

of making love to the girls I knew.

I could show them that I’m from above

like only the angels can.

I had a good dream of mommy,

I had a good dream of daddy,

but I wanted that dream of a girl

and I wanted to give her the whole wide world.

I once had a dream of being a man.

I once had a big dream

of playing on the all-star team,

and beating level three on the big screen

and hanging out if just to be seen.

We once had little dreams in big heads

back before the debts and meds.

I once had a big one.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Pay Up Generation

Just as there were suckers, there were controllers

who took us from strollers and away from our homes

‘til through our parents’ savings they had blown

so our “big dreams” could somehow be grown

when not a shred of light was ever shown them.

But they were all smiling, selling us a throne,

and we were just teen clones crying, applying for a loan,

phoning home lonely and losing what we own.

So debt and death hit us, the millennial young,

when their anthems of mammon were beautifully sung.

But we woke with a yawn while still in our blur,

to uncover at dawn what we couldn’t defer.

So we put life on hold for what we incurred

was to drug landlords who don’t sell a cure and

it’s “buyer beware” when you see nothing more “pure,”

so we all hung on a hook for we bit their lure.

Grown in bedtime politics from the womb

we were soon all sucked dry, as if in a vacuum,

when we woke to the sham (“‘cause it’s all a big scam, man!”)

but we still had to scramble to keep up and pay.

So the holes rose up in the roads we paved

as the ground below us all but caved, and so

we grow gloomy when forced to give up our say while

big schools are resorts and we go there to play.

Meanwhile our troops lay down in the shade

just to die in the stands of the city street parade,

and just like them we think that we won

because telling the truth wouldn’t be quite as fun.

And as the same clouds also blot out their sun

and fill out a blue sky and our freedom is won,

no matter what we go study for, in the long run,

we can’t see the killed, and the free number none.

(And then someone gets billed.)

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

705B McNamara Hall

Now they’re shouting out there in the night

gone spiking their volleys in the lights off

McNamara Hall where they all seem so near

even seven stories down on the ground

when their noise is in the atmosphere.

Now a music mish-mash booms in the air

outside this single lit dorm of mine where

the critters hang stuck on the shut screen

and buzzers leapfrog and fight bare handed

for the fabled glory of my florescent scene.

Here some guys are disposed to yell in the hall

to torture us guys who have to suffer all

night in our bunks until the shade cuts in

and finishes off their drunken staggers blinded

by a limelight hole to throw their guts in.

But even when our suite is trashed like that,

I still say it’s “dorm sweet dorm”—

and a pretty sweet place to crash.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Secondhand High

So I’m still trippin’ on this secondhand high

from under my covers to the painted sky,

and all around my buzzed head I’m feeling dead

because the ceiling has become my sky instead.

And it’s as if I’m in the insane generation

of lonely innocence and keyboard fame

now revealing the ceiling in my deprivation,

floating in my space capsule isolation,

and I’m finding no fool to cast it blame.

Getting sick in the dorm all stuffed nosed,

steam-bathed, hot flashed, and a little time lapsed

with the heat on blast (‘cause it can’t be changed),

so I opened wide winter’s window outside

and soon had myself a snot buffet

and a burning head in bed where I hide

grasping the Dayquil all the next damn day!

Still I’m prancing in the internet hoedown of

videos, crank calls, and no downtowns—

downloads, prank pics, macho breakdowns,

all laughing, spamming, shooting, dreaming,

unchanged by the anon OP scheming.

And when headphone clad I’m feeling glad,

alone, home grown, there’s no solution.

Radical to the bones without dilution I went

unknown and still not a college grad.

So all week decked in my coat and tuque,

my umbrella in the rain, while the students go nuke

about the lecturer who’s coming to speak,

but they’re pillowing up the hallway once clean

with feathers and hanging a big white sheet

so they can sled through that “snowy” scene—

and I’m just a brain who’s trying to cheat.

So I’m still healing at my hangover bedpost

when the fire drill sends us outside like ghosts

at four in the morn when dead almost!

But there are “kids drinking out of paper bags”

all “over the shoulder” to show off the scheme.

“Be keen to sex buying off a nark teen.”

But the RA gives out handshakes, folded unseen,

and pins up notes on the usual theme

of the common room being a messy scene.

So I’m laughing sick all inside and out

and cross-eyed at the protest rally, feeling like

the guy who got nut-shotted back in the alley.

I’m coarse from shouting in the cold with a

frost-bitten finger on the microphone—

not counting the costs, but freezing outside,

too strange to last or do what I’m told.

But down at the Campus Center complex

we still gather there for warmth and subjects,

where they’re throwing petitions wherever you go—

“Legalize pot!” “Bring the troops home!”

“Make the wealthy pay their fair share!”

“Free Hat!” “End the Y chromosome!”

“Cut down on carbon!” “State Healthcare!”

And even faith from the guy who was made sane

preaching the religion of Ibogaine.

“Marijuana should be legal man, you see,”

says this guy on the couch behind me,

“It’s a natural herb, it’s all just evolution—

it provides, so it survives!” (its exchange),

“it heals, so we deals it,” (its solution—

all sacred and symbiotically arranged)

“but deforestation kills it on the Columbian range.”

“Gotta think about sustainable copulation man,

or else risk the evils of overpopulation!”

“Safe sex!” (as if there was such a thing).

But I swear this ain’t no apex of civilization

when even the cults of Martin Luther King

and John Lennon are seen duking it out in the ring,

as if “Gay is okay” is the final revelation with

Nietzsche-lovers lobbing God with bombs

while the other side quotes the Book of Psalms.

Throwing out words like “Dig the Utility!”

“proletariat,” “dialectic,” “hedonic necessity.”

But as far as I can see, Epicurus can suck it,

Plato’s where it’s at, and Hegel—well, fuck it.

“But I think Marx made some good points,”

says this girl (and thank God she’s cute),

“So did Conrad,” I’d say, but then I’d be a brute.

“John 3:16!” and yet “God is dead!” and

“No he’s not, he never was!” but then instead

in pops this chick singing about witching

while the atheists are worshipping St. Dawkins

and St. Hitchens, and go right on bitching

until someone brings up Sagan and Hawkin’s—

but Rawls and Nozick are still seen balking

with Russell and Quine, and they won’t stop

because there’s always more to namedrop!

So I get out of there to go somewhere

if just to grab a bite at the dining hall there,

and it’s sandwich wrap day and tomato soup,

and it’s grab a seat and wait in the lines

because it’s all packed in like a chicken coop—

get up for a second, leave the confines, and

a million settlers are waiting to swoop!

So I sit with my Collegian, reading the page—

“That’s out of context!!” a guy shouts in rage.

The Opinion section—take it or leave it,

with the headlines: “Farewell Frat Row,”

“New Art Installation” and “Can you believe it?

Construction Abounds!” and “Chance of Snow.”

And the ads: “Does your dorm smell like ass?

Call the cleaning service! Quick and cheap!” and

“keep your hands off the Quad’s grass…”

So I “make it like home,” to sit there alone,

as everyone’s plugged in, all in the zone,

fearing they’ll hear something too unclear

that doesn’t fit and gets their minds blown—

while some are protesting on the offensive,

and staging their “Die Ins” and “Lie Downs”

because textbooks are too expensive.

Some are throwing Frisbees on the grounds

‘cause the S-U’s a construction zone.

Some will be hitting up the ABC tonight in town

to get on with one of the “female drones.”

But I’ll be running back up to the dorm,

‘cause I’m sick and tired, checking for mail.

Having breakfast for supper is now the norm,

staying up all night, trying not to fail
my Pre-Cal final or my chance to transform.  

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Your Tuition At Work

I swear they’re prospectin’ on the campus lawn—

their construction always cutting us off

as we make our freezing journey to class at dawn

where their muddy coffee-like puddles pool.

They go and plant a hedge to make the place look cool

when the visitors are around, but the next day yank it out—

(it’s costly to keep on grounds!).

They lay a brick path for them and even plant trees

to keep our grasses clean from our shortcuts on the greens,

and pull it all out on the next pass.

“Your tuition at work!” the sign reads.

But I just want to get to class. 

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row

Stone Me

Blunts are lying on the wet sidewalk along the lane

where the rain can’t fall and this young man remains

upright and walking to class on this ball,

where two talking out the dorm’s window pane

stay in the vein of the guy Judas had slain—

but then it came upon me like the greenest wind

howling deep from the boasting guts of guys near

driven insane by the fear of Judas dying

and trying to be just like him!

Still I got friends downstairs killing me

with homemade cares (their medicine mix is laced).

Still Edison bulbs are growing dim in every puff,

and they’re not telling me what’s in that stuff.

Still it had this bitter taste.

Like chemicals clean in this machine of meat

beating on the scene in there and staring

into me with his mean teeth he bares,

like being a full metal jacket armed magazine,

Ray “offered me” ‘cause he likes being a pain

every waking moment when staying up late—

now making a mess at the flop with the screened gate

in the unseen night and waiting for this machine

to collapse under its own weight.

Yet the trip did find its gain driving circles

through my brain in my time of waking.

“Follow the trail to the East Pleasant Street bus stop”

and maybe tomorrow the no doz will make me drop.

Maybe the Earth is shaking.

Find some blunts rolled up in your pillows

and it don’t take long to understand when

you’ve been put out in the sand.

When the joke was up and he set me free from

the chains on my brain and nothing looked the same,

I was trapped, and in the gap of time that

had elapsed they were clapping hands and

laughing at the gag they made of me that day,

but I think I can adapt.

Doug is blazed and running, yet I can’t say

it wasn’t coming (I let them dig that deep).

Sitting blank in their basement with a flickering light

I guess I dared them not to come in for a bite,

and let them hit me in my sleep.

Now the couch spring hurts my back

and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Can’t move about or sit up straight,

and I’m cramped into the slack

of a basement in someone’s flat.

And when dizzy memories of the day

leave me all alone and upright,

I know now I was just some fun for some

crazy seniors last night.

NEXT

--Farewell Frat Row