1. How to Write a Short Story

Hell, son, you write one the same way as anything else—
you put pen to paper or fingertips to keys and go wherever
the words take you. All you need is a beginning, middle and end,
and no, you don’t have to plot a course of action, or have a certain
cast of characters in mind. Anyone will do, like for example your
daddy who you say beat on your mama and did the same to you,
booze-driven bastard that he was. Why, there’s a character and
a story right there. Steamy? You say you want something steamy?
Well, pedophiles are all the rage these days—one of them molesting,
say, your sister, or even better, you, as you say happened. Now,
there’s a story that’s not only steamy but topical. So go for it.
Of course, there’s always the classics to fall back on, like, oh,
that farmer’s kid, in his late teens by your telling, who was caught
by his mama humping a cow—or was it a sheep?—in the barn.
That’s not only steamy, it’s sicko steamy. Anyway, as you can see,
there’s plenty of material for you to toy with, and what the hell,
if nothing clicks, there’s always how-to books you can consult,
or even poetry. Now what are you waiting for? Write, boy, write!

2. Life, the Old Drag Queen

Naturally, being the oldest, baddest and best of the lot,
she wants the stage all to herself, her petticoats,
lemon-yellow not white, dragging the floor
as she sashays stage left to right and back again
and again, her lips, plastered with lilac-colored lipstick,
curled and pouty, provocative, seductive,
hair wiggish, tongue waggish, face a rouged anonymous,
mascara-black, her darting eyes glittery streaks of light.

My friend, when she shakes her corseted ample rump
and bounces her boobs like basketballs,
you’d better pay due homage—jump, leap, catcall,
whistle, holler, scream, stamp your feet and laugh
uproariously, but only with her, never at her.
She’s good-natured when she wants to be, but show
a smidgen of disrespect and she can turn on you,
be vicious and bitchy, cold and conniving, evil as hell.

Say what? You want to know if she’s a man or woman?
Idiot! She’s not one or the other. She’s both,
and buster, you’d better give her a standing ovation,
else she’ll kick you where the sun don’t shine, all right,
and you’ll think you have a volcano inside,
and it’s erupting, spewing boiling, gurgling and crackling
lava over every organ in your miserable little body.
Then she’ll exit prancing and giggling. She won’t look back.

3. Johnson at 74

Here I am,
I’ve outlived Jesus by more
than thirty years, and God knows,
I’ve fucked more than my share of women.
And yes, now on this birthday
I’d still like to be great, fucked, famous,
and loved, though not necessarily in that order.
Ginsberg’s gone
and Irish whiskey, or any other, is out,
for good, which sucks serious wind. Then,
today, I got news of one of my oldest buddies,
that he’s in hospital,
suffering from a bum ticker,
and on top of that, saw a news report
about a famous author,
how his 19-year-old daughter and her boyfriend
had been killed in a car wreck.
What do I want now? I’d settle for not
being fucked over by fate,
destiny, happenstance, karma, or whatever
the hell you call it. Put another way,
I’d like to live out whatever days I’ve left
doing something weirdly wonderful,
like editing sentences
for a sci-fi master. That’s what.

4. WIMP, WIG & MARY’S LITTLE LAMB

Man, you ain’t lived if you never got to see Stevie Ray
on stage, one minute his Stratocaster screeching holy double
toil and trouble and then groaning low as some poor body
vomit-rocked by an apocalypse of blues, sweat beading
below the brim of his gambling man’s black bolero hat,
its feather white as an egret’s angling out the back,
gold cowboy boots tap tapping, and his fingers,
oh man, his fingers setting them frets ablaze with sound.

Now Stevie Ray, on stage he never said too much,
just let his Fender and his gut-gritty vocals do the talking
for him, and his talking was his pride and joy, the blues,
the kind that digs a trench inside a man and blows him over
its edge, buries him deep in sorrow then raises him back up.
Stevie Ray was jalapenos and Carolina Reapers
not wimp or wig or Mary’s little lamb, was chitlins
without con carne, was a prodigious snort not scratch-n-sniff.
Stevie Ray was a full-throated primal scream, Texas style.

5. ODE: COMING TO TAMPA

For Kim Davis

Coming to Tampa, I marveled at all the blue
below as we charged through the clouds, and oh,
Ramon, how I craved the magical, the mythical
more than just the Tampa of block after block
of high-rise buildings and urban derring-do.

What I wanted was dolphins in the river,
dolphins frolicking in the early-morning river.
What I wanted was you, Ramon Fernandez,
you singing the praises of the dolphins in the river,
pale Ramon bludgeoning the dolphins into song.

What I wanted was the idea of disorder in Tampa.

What I wanted, Ramon, was unicorns and centaurs,
not the merely mind-begotten bric-a-brac,
not the merely real but the really mythical.
What I wanted was the minarets of Tampa.
What I wanted was less Tampa and more Camelot.

Oh, Ramon, Ramon, where are you when I need you?