poems by
joshua simon
A Prayer for Venice
Through a grim haze
We sit in my car
At a traffic light
Eagerly awaiting a left turn
My shaft and pubic hair
Still soaked, flaky
With a cum
From across the way, we
Catch a glimpse
Of the street warriors
With their sun hardened flesh
That resembles cut loaves
Of salami, pixeled and splattered
With moles, and dots, and olives
As they embrace and recall memories
Of hep-c tests and nights on the beach
With Jim Beam and on a good night
That red bastard Johnny Walker
From their bags, I spot remnants, Brown sheaths around empty cans
Homemade tattoos of India ink litter their limbs
Some, still fresh from a session around the fire
From the night before
They're all missing their shoes
As their feet serenade the pavement
The sidewalks pulsate with molten sweat
Underneath lonely blades of grass
Anticipating a revolution for air
Nicotine
When I say to her
Why don't you love me?
Why can you still function?
Why aren't you waking up cold, frightened?
And alone
Cold sweats cooling and racing up your spine
How can you resist the embrace?
The affection,
The sweat and the cum?
The nights spent lethargic and intoxicated
Like fattened sultans of Arabia high on hashish
Spread on pillows of ecstasy and indulgence
How can you slice and dice and mutilate a heart
Like Joseph Mengel high on acid
With pleasure, and self-righteousness
Of course.
When things go your way
Theres always a reason to smile.
It's good to get your way
Usually goes one way or the other
But the time will come
Where my path leads out of hell
And we pass each other in the stairwell
As you walk on the other side
Down
Your face is vacant, rotten and yellow
Your hair dangles in fragments caked with stale cocaine
Your breasts sag well below your waist
And your ass jiggles and shakes
As cough yourself
Into violent shakes
And I'll stop for a second
Maybe bum a cig
I can even run back down real quick to fetch a match
And as I close my hands around the frail twig
And light it from beneath
I'll remember that time we met
Bumming a cigarette one night, in bed the next
It moved so fast, but it felt so right
To holding each other for half the morning
And making love maniacally stoned on weed
I'll always try to my best to forget you
But that never, ever works.
And
now you've done it
You've certainly secured your fate
Entrusted to something
Someone
Who barely even knows you
Forget that her mom is a tweaker
Who's married to someone
Who is barely old enough
To even rent a car
Forget that she tells you
She sees things about
Pictures in her mind of
animals and creatures
Crawling about
Minus the LSD of course
And sure, your cock may fit nicely in her
But so will a syringe
Administered by a under paid grad student
At the Looney bin
Down Lambert
No sonny, this is a crazy
Au natural
Too poor to even afford
Psychotropics
To calm the swell
And when you're drunk
probably in your bathroom
You'll look in the mirror
And you may think you see your father
You always think you've become your father
When things just don't seem to work
But take a closer look
And realize this
It's just you.
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