Arizona

Alone
in the high desert of Arizona,
both drunk and incredibly thirsty.

I wandered aimlessly, without purpose.

Was it the booze?
The heat?
The fact that I was
reading Todd Moore just hours before I strayed into this hell hole?

What lead me to the place,
to seek out coyote dens to piss into?

3:00am Poet

I once was the poet
sitting in a booth at Denny’s
at three a.m.
drunk,
hunched over
a syrup covered plate of pancakes.

Looking at my reflection in the window
as if
I was an actor
in some low budget B Grade movie.

I made even the night uncomfortable.

I would write incoherent sentences
on the paper placemat,
and draw little pictures
of bug eyed
tortured souls.

I would rattle the nerves
of the waitresses
who would reluctantly come
to refill my coffee.

The encounter
produced a poet -phobia
amongst the late night crew at Denny’s.

A fear
that lasted for years.

5 Minutes

There is only so much
you can learn about the Word
through books.

The rest you learn through
drinking,
fucking,
and getting the shit beat out of you.

Poetry is the exception,
but only if it can be read
and understood
in less than 5 minutes.

Poetry,
stripped back to its guts
can tell the story of life
far better than the novel.
This is because life is a series of events that last only seconds
or maybe a few minutes.

You can drink a beer in five minutes, you can deep kiss your lover in a minute,
you live life in minutes
not years
or days
or even hours.

Read poetry

Australian Blog of The Year

Hungrybison has been nominated for both a critic’s and peoples’ choice award in Australia.

Please vote for hungrybison.wordpress.com for best blog from Australia.

Readers from all nations are welcomed to vote.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BAB2013

To Write

To write, to bleed.
To bleed, to eat.
To eat, to shit.
To shit, to write.

Pink Mist

To write,
is to live in brutality.
Everyday,
a pink mist,
on paper,
on the computer,
brutality.

Unfinished

Nearly 49 years of unfinished work.

All over the world there are pieces of me, images and words on paper, shadows in a young woman’s memory, a ghost in an old man’s heartache.

Everywhere, but all unfinished.

When I was young,
within a heart,
I carved,
with bloody knuckles,
two initials into a tree,
mine alone,

I never returned to add a love’s.
Unfinished.

Outcasts and Specialists

The outcasts 
are
painfully 
aware.

They  accept,
and embrace their awareness,
because in reality
it is better to be an outcast.
 

To be an outcast, 
is not admirable,
nor noticed by most anyway.

Everyone is too distracted,

insulated,

 isolated,

[ compartmentalized ],

educated in a specialty,

ignorant, 
beyond that specialty.

Devoid of any real meaning,
or knowledge,
outside their expertise,
they drink, and laugh, and have titles for each other.

Titles designed to make them feel important,
because they’re specialists.

The God of Los Angeles

The God of Los Angeles.

photo by hungrybison

Commanding,
in stain blasted corduroy vestments,
Papal like, his finger
denotes
the pimp from the dealer.

“These are my children”.

A chain linked fence,
sweetly embraces
the divinity
of the liquor store,
the sex shop.

Whores,
angelically bruised,
come to pay homage,
to kiss his cheek
and to have him lay his hands upon them.

” You are loved my children. You are loved, you are loved.”

Steak Night at The Cuckoo Lounge

“Steak night” at “the Cuckoo Lounge”,
pajama clad refugees,
sullen eyed,
dance their food in slow motion
across their plates,
cut their porterhouses with a butter knife.
Heat blowing full-bore through the vents above their heads,
licks at their hair,
makes them almost look “alive”.

The wisps create the illusion of being outside,
under the clouded skies.

There’s a full moon behind those clouds,
big and bright,
they  just can’t see it.