Can't sleep
lay awake
hear she's wrappin' presents for the kids.
I didn't buy any, can't sleep.
Back aches
neck aches
get up and say
I can't sleep.
Can't sleep without me? she says.
I dunno,  I mutter
stumble into the kitchen
drink rum
drink beer
can't sleep
jesus, jesus
on the kitchen table
find a little piece of somethin'
shit from a napkin?
somethin' from a nose?
I suck it up.
It's just a lot of  bread,
Not shit, yet.
 

Morons, writers, kids
Draw lines
Down the paper.
Pleasure?
Sometimes, rarely
Therapy?
What the fuck,
Just lines,
No meaning to the lines.
Kids are not morons.
Morons are not writers.
Writers are kids and morons.
 

Lies mixed with honesty,
In that stuff I wrote at school.
I got used to mixing this cocktail:
That's what they craved,
didn't realize what they taught.
But I learned something:
I learned to get by
And to get other things instead of knowledge:
Drinks, cars, girls.
I don't remember the taste of honesty
doubt it exists,
yet there's a hangover from the cocktails,
this slight hangover.
 

A drunken eastern European

washes his dirty shirts
in a western European laundry,
with westerm European money
that western Europe has given him.
Then he goes home
in his clean shirt
and begins thinking what happened:
Did he wash his thoughts as well,
or,  were they washed for free?
He can't remember,
either way,
his thoughts are dirty
and,
he likes it this way.
Eastern Europeans should display
a label with washing intructions:
Please wash the outside only,
Do not turn the inside out.

Standing at the kitchen window,
blowing smoke into the cold night,
I sing to myself:
Where to get money, where?

One in the morning,
6 beers in my stomach,
where to get money,
where to get money?

In the house next door,
this guy comes to the window to smoke.
We look at each other,
then turn away.
Ashamed?
Embarrassed?

poems turn sour
when they don't get published

only a few stay sweet.

women turn sour
when they don't get fucked

'cause ya only know what fucking is
when ya fuck.

you only know what your poems are
when they get published

so,
remember your poems need to fuck.