Haiti, 2017
I changed my will after I got intimate and sloppy with Patty,
and I asked the powers-that-be to cremate every part of me
except my stretching mouth and reeled-out tongue,
and that it’s okay by me if they scatter my ashes
in-and-around Port-au-Prince, but I humbly begged
there be two persons assigned to do the scattering,
and one of them must have the task of making sure
insufficient flakes or soot get airborne to smudge
my Patty’s nipples and/or obscure the harbor lights.
(I’d liked to have further requested a port-wide wine tasting
and cracker-crunch, something all ages could get drunk on,
orgy over, and sink their teeth into, but my cowardly
solicitor feared that was rather too forthright
to slide into a standard will-and-testament format.)
Outdoor Potentate
I woke up wanting to have a picnic from jump street
on the parking lot of the dog track outside Birmingham,
but even a mammoth poached egg-sausage-and-wheat toast
breakfast didn’t do a fucking thing to slake my desire
to go picnicking later-on atop that crunchy blacktop.
However, I can’t get anyone to jet down to Alabama
with my needy, needy ass, and I do not want to devour-
the-hell-alone, so it looks like I’ll have to postpone wafting
my counterpane across the beat-up asphalt
and then pulling salami sandwich-after-salami sandwich
(plus vodka and potato salad and celery sticks)
out of my first wife’s big straw basket—
oh it sure seems I’ll not get the chance this day
to be outdoor potentate of all that I observe, of sharing
yummy food with one or more bra-busting and significant
others, of trying to stroke down capped erections
that do not care to shrivel, and the entirety of this while
many a numbered greyhound runs its heart and liver out
‘round and ‘round the track near where we’d lay.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 