John Martino
Snff-snff!
Something stinks! Who voted?!
I’m just sitting here listening
to VU’s Loaded, skating old school
around my own mental rink.
Who left all of these dishes
submerged in the sink?!
Complaints lodged in triplicate
will be duly noted.
Look at this city whose
name you can’t pronounce
pounded to tears of bone
and dust. Love by a nose,
cries the babe born in squalor.
Bet’cher bottom petro-dollar!
Sweet Jane, ah, sweet, sweet Jane
every time I let the needle drop.
Nothing like a trigger
warning from a cop.
I swear your brain is a bowl
of snap, crackle & pop.
I should tap the top of your skull
with a funnel, tip a pitcher
of whole milk in.
It’s winter. Eastertime, too.
Yours is the face that launched
a thousand shits. I skate away
on razor blades, pushing off
with my left foot, slicing thin lines
of hate across your wide frozen
eyes, each icy, unbereft cheek.
Never trust anyone over thirty
grand. And here is another city
bombed to the brink. Here
are the god thoughts I no longer
think. They form an ossuary
under that pool of square
gray water. Simpler, happier times. . .
Maybe for you, friend. Jesus, Mary
and Joseph take a bow, end
of another childhood show.
John Martino‘s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, HEArt Online, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and the anthology Envy, Vol. 6 from a 7-volume series on the 7 deadly sins by Pure Slush Books. He has worked as a teacher and tutor of English for 22 years. An avid traveler, Martino currently resides in Hong Kong with his wife, Shelley.
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