GOODBYE, CHARON

 by David Spicer

Charon, no converted souls await you on this side 

of the river. Guided by your two ugly thugs,

Klaus the Klansman and Hector the Hell’s Angel,

you frighten the depressed night with amber hair,

its illicit brilliance shining for your devoted

minions with the dull transience of a caution light.

Charon, no new naive souls clamor for you on this

river side. Your boat collects water every time you                      

row down its waves, long ago bereft of their blue,

now shadowed by our despair. We hear your entreaties,

Charon, but your words are empty as our dead skies.

We see your eyes shine with the chaos of conflict,

but we tire of them: no more limber sycamores

bloom in the daytime. We know when the darkness

appears that you are here, your loud presence deaf

to our ears at this late date. Each of us dies, Charon,

but, if we see our end near, we want a fresh ferryman     

to steer us to our side of the stormy river that rises:

Your speeches are lies, you have cheated the taxman,

we do not need your worthless coins to hide our eyes.

Soon morning will wake and we shall demand you

depart our banks, leave with your henchmen, and veer

near the poison side of this river, where your fate awaits:

your reckoning, your trials that you have forever evaded.

David Spicer has published poems in The American Poetry Review, CircleStreet, Gargoyle, Moria, Oyster River Pages, Ploughshares, Remington Review, Santa Clara Review, The Sheepshead Review, Steam Ticket, Synaeresis, Third Wednesday, The New Verse News, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two being American Maniac (Hekate Publishing) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

ANIMALS IN PARADISE

by David Spicer

“Shelter in Place,” by Christoph Mueller

Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.
Peacocks strut through the streets of Dubai.

Peacocks have strutted, but not in Dubai.
Twenty ducks quack in unison in Wales.

The twenty ducks aren’t wailing. They’re quacking.
And mountain goats have descended into Bern.

The goats aren’t causing shops to burn or collapse.
Christchurch rabbits aren’t afraid of the few cars.

A family of them drive a Suburu.
A man sees pumas in Santiago, Chile.

The pumas purr, eat big bowls of chili.
Monkeys throw bananas at the T***p Tower.

Monkeys, bears, wolves are trumping us humans.
Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.

David Spicer has published poems in Santa Clara Review,  Moria, Oyster River Pages, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection Waiting for the Needle Rain is now available from Hekate Publishing.

HISTORY OF A BIGOT

by David Spicer

“*trigger warning* Rabid Trump supporter” by alex674 at Deviant Art.

I never learned to love
a butterfly’s wings, the ripple of wavy hair.
My old man numbed me with buckles of belts,
along with barbed-wire insults and blame
he loved to wrap around my sensitive head.
He watched with glee when I winced and cried,

a weak kid. As an adolescent I didn’t cry
but with those lack of tears I couldn’t love
myself anymore than a turtle that swallows its head.
I began my journey of odium by growing long hair:
I felt kinship with hippies who blamed
society for their alienated rage and dodged belts

from fathers, who thought nothing of belts
of Jimmy Beam and Johnny Black before they cried
and always found their sons to blame
for being losers in life and love.
Ten years later, I buzz cut my hair,
joined a gang of skinheads

who grunged guitars and cracked heads.
This didn’t happen in Frisco, but the Cotton Belt,
where haters despised long hair and short hair,
but I loathed rednecks— they never cried,
didn’t know the meaning of love
since they never accepted self-blame.

As children, their mothers told them, You’re to blame—
I ought to bash your stupid head
in. Fifteen years later, I still didn’t know love,
so I joined right-wing crackpots who swung belts
at smaller victims, young men we kicked until they cried,
slashing their faces with swastikas, hacking their hair.

Twenty years later, I wonder what happened to my hair.
If I could, I’d find some cretin to cut with blame.
I’d feel better if the whiner whimpered and cried.
Then I’d notch it up and grind his head,
tie up his arms with rusty chains, poison-laced belts,
and after I finished him, I’d call his death my act of love.

I’m not prejudiced. I hate everybody: long hair, bald head.
Who cares, as long as I can blame and whip with a belt?
I can’t cry. I hate myself. I think I’ll buy a gun to love. 


David Spicer has published poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Literary Nest,The Tipton Poetry Journal, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press), Homeworks: A Book of Tennessee Writers (The University of Tennessee Press), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press), and six chapbooks, the latest of which is Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

TRUTH IS

by David Spicer 

"Truth isn't truth." —Rudy Giuliani

If Truth isn’t Truth, what is it in this Twilight Zone of Lies?

A woman in a red dress who carries a tote bag of secret tapes?

Or a ghoul defending the King Kong of Truth’s desperate enemy?

Truth is Beauty, Keats said two hundred years ago.

Truth is in the mouth of the speaker mouthed to a mime of memes.

Truth is your mother, your mother said, offering you her Judas-goat
     milk.

Twenty women whirling in a field of tulips you lie in every morning
     is Truth.

The Grand Canyon at sunset echoing your prayers you recite on your
     rug.

Heartbeats between the breaths you breathe before you take a 
     morning jog.

I met Truth once in the guise of a beautiful femme fatale on the bed in
     my trailer.

She said, I just pity-loved you, clod, and you think we were lovers?

Truth is, that was her truth, truth is, it wasn’t pleasant, truth is, I’m 
     not over it.

Truth will knock your block off and demolish your stone-cold cities.

Truth will break your soul of week knees and tell you it did you a 
     solid.

Truth is, tell me a truth that doesn’t hurt and I’ll buy you a shot of 
     Truth vodka.

You’ll swig it like a liquid potato and savor it, you’ll swivel your head 
     and squint

your eyes in twisting pain that guts your gullet. Then you’ll make a 
     sound

like air escaping from a tire that’s tired from too much road. You’ll 
     feel good.

Now that’s Truth. Truth isn’t what you want it to be. Truth is what it 
     wants to be.

Truth is your grandmother standing naked in the kitchen in front of 
     you and you’ve

never seen a naked woman before and you don’t know what you’re
     seeing. It’s Truth, baby.

Truth is ugly, a bomb victim said that to me the other day when I
     visited him in the ICU.

Truth is callous. Your brother stealing your $600 while you’re
     sleeping, dreaming of beauty.

Dreaming of the time he outraced some knucklehead on the freeway 
     driving a Charger.

Truth was, your brother’s Chevy packed truth in its carbs and pistons
     and exhaust pipes.

Truth was, it wasn’t a chick magnet like the salesman said it would be.
     That was his truth.

My truth? I don’t know. Truth is the last thing I hope to see or 
     listen to before I disappear.

No, if truth isn’t truth, beauty isn’t beauty, ugly isn’t ugly, nothing is
     nothing but empty words

spinning from a lie peddler, a ghoul defending the King Kong of Lies.
     Truth is, his day

is coming. Truth is, it’ll be welcomed. Truth is, truth is death and it’ll 
     kill you where you stand.

David Spicer has published poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Oddball Magazine, The Literary Nest,The Tipton Poetry Journal, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press), and five chapbooks, the latest of which is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press), released in August of 2017. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

PLANET HELL’S VERY LAST SUPPER/DEATH MATCH

by David Spicer

Smiling, smoking a licorice cigarillo, the Devil commissions Picasso to paint the Very Last Supper’s megalomaniac orgy, a delegation of twelve lunatics vying for Daddy’s attention. Chairs fill, arguments continue, Hitler at one end of the table opposite Beelzebub, Mussolini to the left of the rectangle stash, Stalin scouting Siberian gulags in his head, Idi squealing like a butchered pig. There’s Mao at his side, chomping on a ribeye. They don’t impress Satan, he’s seen it all, he’s their God they love, the Ayatollah and Rasputin arm wrestling, betting a fruit pie against a lemon cake. And there’s Manson with Putin, followed by a pedophile pope. Just arriving, the two newest members, T***p and Kim, known as T***pkim, slap each other on the back, shake hands for two minutes before the Breezy Bully yanks his mitten from Kim’s vice-grip fist and says, Hey, bud, that hurt. Kim says, Don’t be a Dotard, turd. BB says, I don’t like you anymore, Kimmy. The dictator laughs louder than his pin-stripe suit, grabs Breezy Bully’s red tie, twirls him against the barbed wire cage, waits, drop kicking him, bounces on the bully’s big belly with his big belly, ole Lucifer slamming his huge hand on the flaming floor, One! Two! Three! And the winner is . . . Rocket Man! The vanquished President whines, That’s not fair. He cheated. The bad boys boo, Pussy! Pussy! Grab that Pussy, Kimbo! Mussolini barfs. Hitler screams, Death to the American Weasel! Helter Skelter! Manson shouts. I’ll hear his confession, the holy man whispers. Kim grabs a frat paddle, smacking his former fat bro on the ass, Hahahahahahaha. Mao and the others echo Kim. Hahahahahahaha. Suddenly Stalin jumps on the table, shouts Shuttttuppp!! and grabs the loud loser by his small ears, slams him on the table, scizzors his head with yellow boots: Stay down, do-dad, stay down. Do dad bawls. Everyone laughs. Putin says, You’re with the big boys now, Banana Breath, but we’ll toughen up your pink punk butt. The audience of liberals and me-tooers cheers so deafening the world explodes.

David Spicer has had poems in Gargoyle, Rat’s Ass Review, Reed Magazine, Tipton Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Easy Street, Prime Number, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  among others, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and five chapbooks, with the latest, From the Wings of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

7000 PAIRS OF SHOES

by David Spicer

You rest on the Capitol lawn

silent as the senators and congressmen

who ignore you and your former owners

you’re there protesting inaction and corruption

your owners’ names on placards near you

stay on that ground as long as you can

call for your owners to resurrect from the dead

to inhabit you to haunt the bought and paid for politicians

who blame mental illness local cops

unarmed teachers anything but the weapons

yes let their invisible feet wear you again

fly into the sky an invisible insurrection of gentle avengers

every time you see one of the lawmakers strolling down

Pennsylvania Avenue or the steps of the granite

gun church tell the ghosts to slap one of them

on his head knock some compassion into his apathy

perform aerial demonstrations guided by the ghosts

of the 7000 children and of teachers concertgoers,

dancers housewives grandmothers bus drivers

7000 pairs of you all colors and kinds red sneakers brown

slippers blue high heels yellow loafers white crocs

remain together escape from the hired sanitation workers

paid to collect you gather by the Potomac don’t let them

find you and diminish your power no transform your cloth

skin your rubber soles your canvas faces your leather toes

into new life defy science defy reality band together perform miracles

speak for the dead speak for their ghosts speak for future ghosts

oh shoes what will become of you don’t let them take you away

don’t let anybody dump you in the latest landfill and forget about you

whisper shout mutter sing yell into enough ears of enough saviors

who will pick you up and save you for another demonstration

on another lawn at the capitol of a state until you convince

the crooked men with their crooked souls and their crooked suits

to do something to do anything to stop stop stop their crooked silence

until you find more and more shoes thousands of more shoes hundreds

of thousands of more shoes who will join you and join an army

that cannot be stopped an army of 7000000 ghosts of 70000000

ghosts of victims who cannot speak anymore cannot laugh anymore

cannot run anymore cannot enjoy a day with cousins at a picnic on a lawn

much like the capitol lawn cannot return the smile of an infant

because two of the shoes are hers cannot think of a time

when guns didn’t exist cannot live in a land of guns any longer

David Spicer has poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Reed Magazine, Raw, The Ginger Collect, Yellow Mama, Ploughshares, The New Verse News, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.

PUMPKIN MAN

by David Spicer

Portrait pumpkin by Hugh McMahon

His name alone is an October
cartoon, but he’s an omen
that warns us like a hawk
swooping above black snakes
unluckier than the thirteenth
disciple who hovers like a specter.

Infamous Pumpkin Man isn’t a specter,
but he’s full of the famed October
surprises that fall on Friday the 13th,
standing in cornfields, yelling, Oh men,
oh women, kill all the snakes,
hang any women who hawk

their wares at nights and seek to hock
their babies’ souls. No, he isn’t a specter,
but real as a crawling king snake
that strikes on the last day of October.
Pumpkin Man’s more than an omen:
he’s the personification of the number 13,

betrays friends with his straw heart, as the thirteenth
disciple did at the last supper. He’s the hawk’s
nemesis, the hawk unafraid of human omens,
fearless of pumpkin men fearful of specters,
especially on the last day of golden October,
the day of lizards, of alligators, of orange snakes.

One day, it’s foretold, a ghostly stranger will snake
with a plumber’s auger the second to the thirteenth
straw in Pumpkin Man’s brain, October-
colored, like his hair that barkers have hawked
as a brand, as immortal as a specter’s
mastery of spells, sacrifices, and omens

to belie the trust of women and men.
And Pumpkin Man, alone in the field, will sneak,
or try to sneak, away in his final days like a specter
from a graveyard, and the twelfth and thirteenth
members of a boil of spiraling hawks will
grab his long red tie on the last day of golden October,

strangling him as no omen can, the thirteenth
and last time specters roam the days of October,
celebrating with the world, the snakes, the hawks.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Easy Street, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Yellow Mama,  Midnight Lane Boutique, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. His latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree available from Flutter Press.

CRYING NAZI

by David Spicer




O Crying Nazi, cry all night long
because you’re a goddamn human being,
Crying Nazi, you weep like a mourning
mother at her son’s closed casket.
You weep like a goddamn lynching victim on his nickering horse.
You weep like a maniac suffering a nervous breakdown.
Crying Nazi, I don’t feel sorry for you.
Crying Nazi, are your parents proud of you?
Does your sister call you a creep?
Do you hate yourself, deep down in the coal mine shaft of your soul?
You’re embarrassing yourself, Crying Nazi.
Will you forgive yourself for your crybaby tears, Crying Nazi?
O Crying Nazi, will you ever cry again?
It can’t go well if you do.
Have you cried many times as an adult?
Did women think you’re too sensitive to straddle you?
I don’t understand you, Crying Nazi.
Does the sun ever shine on your glossy pate when you sin?
O Crying Nazi, how many people have you stabbed,
how many Mexicans have you tarred and feathered?
Have you ever prayed in a mosque or synagogue?
I saw you blubber on tv, Crying Nazi, and I’m not empathetic.
You’re a sissy.
Were you a good little boy playing Cowboys & Indians,
always the cowboy?
O Crying Nazi, are you a misogynist, too?
Or do you love all women as long
as they’re not black, brown, yellow, red, or Semites?
Will you ever fall in love with someone?
When you cry, Nazi, do your fellow Nazis
bristle that you’re such a pussy?
Crying Nazi, is acid in your tears?
Do you chew your bile at breakfast or supper?
Do you hate yourself, Crying Nazi?
Crying Nazi, did you study a lot of Hitler books?
Did you read them in lotus position on your easy chair?
Do you idolize Sheriff Joe and David Duke?
Could you ever be your own hero, Crying Nazi?
What shade of red is your blood, Crying Nazi?
Do you bathe yourself with your tears?
Has life been easy or hard for you?
Can you look into the eclipse and see the blackness
in your fellow Nazis?
Will you immolate yourself until your skin
barbecues into blackness?
When did you learn to hate, Crying Nazi?
Did a black boxer beat the hell out of you in the ring
and then brag about it?
Do you cry yourself to sleep in your cell at night?
I wonder if you regret your twenty minutes of infamy.
I wonder if God loves you, Crying Nazi.
Do you hang out with your Nazi buddies in chow hall?
O Crying Nazi, cry for the Charleston Nine.
Cry for Trayvon Martin.
Cry for Ferguson.
Cry for Buchenwald.
Cry for the martyred saints.
Most of all, cry for your fellow Nazis.
Stop crying for yourself, Crying Nazi.
Maybe you’ll meet a girl who loves you
because you’re bald.
Maybe she’ll love you because you’re cute.
Or maybe she’ll love you because you’re a Crying Nazi.
Then you can father crying Nazi babies.
Crying Nazi, you’re an oxymoron.
Do you get high, Crying Nazi?
Do you eat a lot of beef or are you a vegan?
I know you don’t eat nails, Crying Nazi.
They’d make you bawl, Crying Nazi.
Do you jack off in your cell at night, Crying Nazi?
O Crying Nazi, I feel your hateful pain.
How many guns do you own?
I saw you wearing your zebra outfit in jail the other day, Crying Nazi.
You looked sad as a fallen cake.
You looked sadder than a Syrian orphan.
Sadder than a basset hound who’s lost his best friend.
Sadder than a starving cat.
Sadder than a melting snowman.
You didn’t look proud, Crying Nazi.
Where was your Sieg Heil! when you needed it, Crying Nazi?
Will your hate buddies protect you against the Mexican Mafia?
The Black Brotherhood?
High prices in the commissary?
I’m sorry I judge you, Crying Nazi.
So, when you get out of jail, I’ll buy you a Heineken
and a one-way ticket to Death Valley,
throw in a Bible to read on your bus trip
and leave a two-dollar bill in it, Crying Nazi,
along with a little note reading
Prove you’re a goddamn human being, Crying Nazi:
Love yourself a little more, and maybe, just maybe
you can love the rest of us, too,
because we’re all goddamn human beings,
Crying Nazi.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Easy Street, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, TheNewVerse.News, Santa Clara Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. His latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree available from Flutter Press.

THE COLOR WE’VE NEVER SEEN

by David Spicer





I shouldn’t be but I’m scared to near-death
at 4:32 in the morning after reading Huff
Puff on my computer—expecting this country’s
demons to jump from it and give me a heart
attack but I’m not that lucky, and for all it’s
worth, Stephen Stills sings into my ears so my wife
won’t wake up and then Ozzy hoarse-screams,
making me more paranoid than I already am,
while more impotent boys in Challengers kill
more women, and I haven’t slept in days—
I’m worried about the world, I’m a world-class
worrier, who am I to worry, though?,
just an old man with hair that won’t gray
and a heart that strives to stay pale, but the mad king
with the orange face—he scares me to near-death,
and I should be scared—I haven’t escaped
from my bungalow in weeks--the mad king
with the orange face haunts me: he is me,
he is you, he is himself, he is the worst thoughts
in every one of us, the worst that have invaded
every one of our hearts at one time or another
until they grow darker than evil and then the
worst thoughts escape when he beckons them
but does he have real power since he’ll self-destruct?
because we can’t give him that kind of power—
America is now the Jerusalem of the West
over something as stupid as the color
of one’s skin when it’s really one color—
the color we’ve never seen, the color
of a nation’s soul, the color that scares me
to near-death—I shouldn’t be,
and I still cower in my bungalow waiting
for the answer that may never arrive:
the hero that’ll challenge the mad king
with the orange face and the golden children—
yes, let’s have a pay-per-view of Wrestle-Kill—
we deserve this, I say—starring
The Mad King with the Orange Face
and His Golden Children against Fake News
wearing bloody zebra-skin coats, headlines,
nuns’ habits, and potpourri—we deserve this,
I say, but I’m scared to near-death
and I should be at 7:06 in the morning when
light is eons away because we’ve embraced
the night in all its Wrestle-Kill hype
and that scares me and I should be scared
and you should be, too.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books and is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the  early Fall of 2017.

THE TWO DONS

by David Spicer

Two vultures lurk on top of the tree,
both always wanting more, more,
slaves to their animal-egos’ greed,
each desiring money like a whore.
Don and Don, Jr. scowl, dark knights,
as if they despise the world they ravage,
father and son living to pick fights,
doing their best to act the savage.
Women? Just prized possessions
they might grab, fondle, and keep,
depending on their current obsessions
and whether they pounce after they leap.
Will Daddy devour Jr. under the bus?
More than likely, before he eats us.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Zombie Logic Review, Poppy Road Review, The Reed Magazine, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

T***P BUMPS HIS HEAD, A BIGGER

by  David Spicer  

                                         

Cartoon by Darcy, Cleveland.com, May 10, 2017

idiot than ever. No, not impossible:
decades ago he grabbed a Voodoo
princess by her pussy in his penthouse.
Curses galore at the height of your infamy,
Goldie Small Hands! T***p didn’t laugh
but drools today. Today, swastikas curve fetally.
Today, the sheets of KKKers bleed.
Beavis and Butthead chew Tic-Tacs.
T***p’s blonde miracle weeps tangerine tears.
Whitey Pence shocks himself into a coma,
handmaids arcing around him, praying to Buddha.
Chris Christie scarfs twenty cheeseburgers.
Kellyanne Conway talks circles around herself
like a carousel pony. Congress is revolting.
Eddie Munster for Prez! moderates roar.
David Duke for King! fascists yell.
I want Ted Nugent! the Alaskan nincompoop drawls.
On second thought, I want me! Anarchists, nihilists,
and poets celebrate with a three-day bacchanal.
T***p disappears, descends into the earth via ICBM,
lands in China, deported to North Korea.
SUPREME LEADER STUPID HAIRCUT
BEHEADS ORANGE FACE!!! shouts
New York Post. Putin mourns, then farts.
Throngs cheer and party in the world’s megacities.
Back home, T***p’s cronies and their carpet bags
red-eye to the North. Little Jeff Sessions preens
in the mirror of the Justice Department toilet,
tokes his Alabama Bound weed, and dances helter-skelter
like Lorde, collapsing. Eddie Munster! Eddie Munster
for Prez! Gut Medicare, Eddie! Gut Social Security!
his toadies leer and chant. We love Hillary! progressives
scream. Bill Maher, we demand Bill Maher! millennials
moan. GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Bill Maher megahorns.
You’re dreaming again, honey. Wake up,
my wife says, shaking my shoulders.
What’s he done now? I ask.

David Spicer is a retired proofreader for a medical journal and has had poems accepted by or published in Reed Magazine, Alcatraz, The Mocking Heart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Nude Bruce Review and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

PROSTITUTE

an anagram poem by David Spicer

For months I’ve watched Rose,
not a woman of ill repute
but a unique kind of poet,
a smooth blonde who’s a poster
girl for works of prose
she recites by rote
for the misogynist she touts
every morning. She doesn’t protest
when asked to produce tropes
glorifying him, writes riots
of rhetoric that possess a tinge of eros,
that she delivers with poise
to the cameras as though a tourist
familiar with any kind of ruse.
She holds a gold-sequined purse,
proceeds to tutor
male reporters who don’t trust
her to do anything except roust
questions in their heads they store
away, just to deprive them of a rest,
to convince herself she can pour
her special brand of suet
for them, and then stir
it, inducing a rise
from them, supplying enough rope
so they stop, think, and sort
thoughts in their sore
minds, the last step
before she fools them to posit
they have passed a test
which allows them to tour
her body that she’ll pose
for them, and instead she’ll step
forward to reveal her intellect’s tits,
an act she considers anything but trite,
but expected for her kind of prostitute.

David Spicer has had poems in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Gargoyle, Rat’s Ass Review, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, TheNewVerse.News, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Prime Number, among others, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books.

THE YEAR THE CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES

by David Spicer

I celebrated my 68th year without

steak, because I never cared for it anyway.

I listened to Fats Domino sing "Blueberry Hill"

over and over again day after day because I could

see him ambling down the New Orleans

sidewalk as he sang, his voice echoing in the night,

and I loved to think about the day I saw

Hank Aaron break the Babe’s record to boos.

Years before the Cubs won the Series,

I didn’t follow baseball like I did

when I was a kid: Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub,

was beautiful flicking the ball toward second

as the first part of a double play to end the inning,

and Willie Mays beyond beautiful the day he hit four

homers and a double when I was eleven.

Now, I plug for the Cubs and hope they’ll win.

But hell, I don’t even know who their stars are.

The year the Cubs won the Series

a racist, misogynistic, xenophobe billionaire

ran for president and almost won, would’ve

if he hadn’t stepped into his own stink

too many times, his opponent an alleged liar,

cuckoldette, and e-mailer extraordinaire hated

by millions because she was an aggressive woman

destined to capture the holy grail of modern politics

and break through the wall of male white lawyers.

The year the Cubs won the Series

I began reading and writing again, attended

readings where gifted wordsmiths read poems

about the day their mothers died, or the cold night

the Titanic sank. They stood at podiums, glancing

down at a published book too few people bought,

staring out at small groups of poetry lovers and poets.

I enrolled in a workshop—many times—and learned

more about craft from a master and other poets.

The year the Cubs won the Series

millions jogged streets for miles and miles

to get a high unique to themselves, millions

more received blessings of a few states

to smoke dope or eat pot brownies and giggle,

and I kept waiting for my state to bless me,

while millions breathed their first breaths

after billions made love to each other hundreds

of times, and millions breathed final breaths.

The year the Cubs won the Series

celebrities passed away, kicked the bucket,

expired, refused to be, bade the world farewell,

or just dropped dead. My favorites: David

Bowie, who sang "Young Americans,"

Patty Duke, Muhammad Ali—the Greatest—

Guy Clark, and Gene Wilder. They left

the scene, skedadled, died, like all of us do,

when it’s time to howl at Pluto and say goodbye.

The year the Cubs won the Series

Bob Dylan received the Nobel Literature Prize

and the hoity-toity crowd scoffed and griped:

He’s not a poet, he’s a singer-songwriter

or Why didn’t the Swedes give it to a minority?

Dylan remained silent, toured the country,

aloof as a spoiled cat, singing his songs

with his back to the audience, strumming his axe,

and never committed to attend the awards ceremony.

My wife almost bled to death on our porch

the year the Cubs won the Series:

On a sunny day, the corner of the steel door

slammed into her Achilles heel, the red porch

a different shade of red and the sun suddenly pale.

I broke three mops cleaning up her life liquid,

used two bottles of bleach to make sure it disappeared

after I drove her to the ER and waited ten hours,

hoping she’d live almost forever with her new blood.

I drank two glasses of Pinot Noir

the night the Cubs won the Series,

ate too many potato chips over five hours

and a rain delay. I watched a disgraced manager

wearing a bow tie hold a mic crowding his

little lips comment on the game with other

experts about the freshly minted World Champs

from the city of the first black president

crying, hugging, and jumping up and down.

The day after the Cubs won the Series

I promised myself I’d lose a few pounds

the next year by not eating potatoes or rice

or cow or pig but just fish and fruit.

I told myself I’d walk three miles a day and smile

when the sun climbed the trees to the sky

and shined while it still could, while clouds

caressed its hot cheeks. I wonder how

that’ll go for me as I sweat and starve?

David Spicer has had poems in In Between Hangovers,  TheNewVerse.News, Gargoyle, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

MISOGYNY ALA DONALD

by David Spicer

I agree: we need to strike with force

and hijack our favorite fetish. Shout

Shit! at our divorce depositions, buy

a bus ticket to Buffalo, Wyoming

with our lawsuit checks. Before we leave,

let’s sing our inner rock songs, wear

rattlesnake skin cowboy boots, and tickle

Heather on her tasseled tits while she’s

corkscrewing an orgasm down the grind pole

in the dank pit of The Holy Moly.

We can steal a bottle of our favorite Korean

champagne, rub it against the sunburned

barmaid’s crotch and tell her the next

round is on her. We’ll film the janitor

in flagrante delicto and crunch her

cauliflower ears, and then raid the fridge

of its last slices of Boston crème pie.

Bug anybody we can, shout horny

come-ons in our black leather

dusters, and then label each other

The Fuck Geeks of Sauerkraut Doom.

Yep, let’s break the rules every chance

we get and feel great about it, let’s be

boys being boys and climb the prettiest

willow we can find and whistle-whisper

to her so sweetly she sighs and swoons

under the mighty, cloud-kissing moon.

David Spicer has had poems in In Between Hangovers,  TheNewVerse.News, Gargoyle, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

MUSE IN ALFALFA FIELDS

by David Spicer

I roar through Utopia in my steroid
Chevy, cram a baguette in this gorge
of a mouth, a poster boy for broccoli
haters, climbing Hesitation Hill
to the cliff. I’ve declared myself
a winner, the empire below,
the valley with the ultimate prizes—
ruler of this huge county, thousands
following me, migrating to Utopia
to work for me, and women who
think I’m a sweetheart, holding
daisies’ secrets—and I’ve decided this
is the time: I can’t be their gatekeeper
because the face in the cracked mirror
no longer listens to reason, I’m tired
of spewing poison spit from my
darkened haze. No longer a cinch
to win, tired of foes who ruffle
my ego, I’m leaving the keys
in the ignition and detaching the bicycle
from the Chevy’s roof to hop on a nut
cruncher of a seat, riding to the beach
in the rain. Maybe one day I’ll hop back
on the train, but until then, take a tip
from me: when work stops being a gas,
it’s time to muse in alfalfa fields
and disappear to another county.
Not in this dream, you gullible lemmings.

David Spicer has had poems in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Gargoyle, Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, TheNewVerse.News, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers,  Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net, is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

THE OGRE WHO PROMISED US THE WORLD

by David Spicer

Adapted from a DonkeyHotey caricature.

I denounce the day the ogre who promised
us the world arrived, disturbing the village’s
decorum. I witnessed his ancient resolve
as he scolded and attacked the town leaders
to the students’ cheers and drumbeats,
ignored the fact that the shylocks’ siege
had doomed us. He wanted those who
murmured against him imprisoned, chuckled
at and dismissed Vera—his experienced opponent
for Mayor—called her a typist for the shylocks.
He gestured like a conductor of a mad orchestra
in his speeches, pointed at his audiences like
an angry mentor, declared victory to thunderous
fanfare when defeat seemed certain. After we
expressed hope but asked how he’d fulfill his
guarantees, he twitched, paced the interview room,
beet-faced. The day I met him, I had returned
from singing hymns in German trenches,
an asthenic figure, searching for a hero
and ready to serve, and dazzled by his gruff
wail and white-haired pledges: free goldfish
for the children, higher wages for all, a jail cell
for the untouchable shylocks. But he offered no
solutions for our bombed houses without walls,
only those vows that tumbled from his mouth
like the fantasy sausages we loved, before the elders
voted for Vera, who destroyed him at the polls,
and he vanished into the sleepy hills he called home.

David Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, concis, Jersey Devil Press, The American Poetry Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

POLITICIAN

by David Spicer

Landlocked again in frozen Iowa,
I’m still the captain of my ship,
I’ll still charm all of you sardines
and mackerel until you swoon,
all of you sharks and seagulls
who’ll swallow anything,
I won’t show mercy when you
float in the fever you catch.
I can cajole you to destroy each other,
or dazzle you to hug in a unified trance
before you lose grip and slide
into the twilight of your dance.
I can convince you to swim in oil-soaked ice,
and you’ll delight in this devilish smile
while we brandish my motto for the mission:
Our Love of Me Beams Like a Hundred
Lighthouses. Your wet minds are useless,
I’m a trickster who’ll defeat any fool
or liar, so when belief sinks in your
hypnotized faces, I’ll swagger
toward you — I’m a riot of one,
and you’ll stutter at my beck and call,
for I possess the ships, the oars, the nets,
I’m my own harpoon: none of you can
elude the epidemic of me as I gore
you, skewer you, and sell your
sorry souls to the highest bidder.


David Spicer has poems accepted by or published in such magazines as Reed Magazine, The Curly Mind, Slim Volume, Yellow Chair Review, Jersey Devil Press, TheNewVerse.News , On the Rush, Circle Seven, Phantom Kangaroo, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., and elsewhere. He is also the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, plus eight unpublished manuscripts.

A MASH NOTE TO HILLARY

by David Spicer

You’re an American pioneer.
A world warrior.
You scare the hell out of everybody.
Except your believers.

Why do you want this job?
Don’t give me patriotic bunk
You recite on Hardball.
You want what you want.

Is your ego the size of Texas and Ohio?
Are you Machiavelli’s spiritual great granddaughter?

Your lemon meringue pantsuit fails the fashion test.
That laugh could chop wood.
If I hear On Day One again,
I’ll yank out my bazooka and shoot the Milky Way.

You thought the job a divine right.
You owned the nomination.

Then along came Barack Obama,
Grinning like a llama.
A meteor that seduced a nation:
The Blessed Orator.
The Golden-Tongued Angel.
Smooth as peanut butter on fresh bread.
You'd  met your match.
You hated it.
Live with it.
               
You fight in the era of the last bastion
Of white males.
They resist, a phalanx poised
To confront and destroy you.
Don’t concede.

You’ve been reviled.
Caricatured. Pilloried.
You don’t care. You persevere.

You’re not our mother, our sister, our daughter,
Our girlfriend, our waitress, our opera escort,
But our leader.

And a cat with twenty lives.
Not in double digits yet.

Hillary, you’re my hero.
Tougher than the meanest missile in the world.

Answer this note.
Please.

What about Bill? you might ask.
Forget him, though you love the guy.
Divorce him on Day One.
(Remember, hell hath no fury . . .
He doesn’t want you President anyway.)
Throw him out on the steps with his humidor.

We’ll elope to the Ukraine.
The world our oyster.


David Spicer is  seeking a publisher crazy enough to print his manuscript American Maniac. He has had poems in The New Verse News, The Naugatuck River Review, Spudgun, Yellow Mama, and elsewhere.