women's glasses
too big for his face
blue knit cap
bad teeth
oily black cactus needle hairs poked through his rubbery cheeks

trash bags full of the free romance novels
they set out at the library

he was always there
filling up on the worst of the forgotten

he smelled that same smell
we're all familiar with

2 poems

by John Thomas Mensini

piss
sour
sweat
old
stale
mad

he'd spend time with the born-again's who had the trailer next to ours
the husband and wife
so tragic
so perfect
the living reason behind the harsh stereotypes

she was easily 300 pounds
and never out of the baby-blue moo-moo
that had yellow shit stains on the ass
ever so faint

he was 135 pounds wet
greasy thick hair
with the serial killer part

he'd beat the shit out of her regularly
you could hear it though the whole park
her wailing
the sound of her whale body
hurled into the aluminum walls

and we
like everyone else
never did a thing
except listen

I always wondered what they talked about

they said this guy didn't have a home
he slept outside
or in the grey shack
at the foot of the small patch of trees
that we kids naively called 'woods'
on the other side of town

and if you went near there
and he caught you
he'd hook your balls up to a car battery
or hold you at knife point
while he flicked at your inchlong pecker

he walked the old trestle back and forth
to get from wherever it was he actually stayed
to the library
and the long stretch to the trailer homes

and it was this trestle
that he fell from
40 feet down
and wasn't found until summer
because the heat
had helped the sweet sick cabbage smell of human rot to blossom
and by then
the way he was found
was without a head

it seemed
because the break
so severe
the head was only held on by skin
and must have been carried off by the animals
those scavengers
who had quite a remarkable feast
after all those long cold months of winter nothing

I told him I'd be the judge.

first question,
"booze or your wife?"

yeah, that is stupid and obvious, I said.

same to be said about a friend or parent
or just something that is obviously something,
I added.

Second question, he began,
"booze or the world?"

easy, and not so stupid,
booze, specifically beer,
rivers of beer,
holy monk-made/manufactured BEER,
y'know I c'd've been a beer hermit,
a true ho-bo, on an island, in the sand and a hut, a coconut shell even,
and acres of cold beer.

He told me I couldn't pick out an island on the map,
which was half true,
but maps were a bore anyway,
bullshit and false,
_____longitude and latitude do not a distance make
__________when it's down to the memory of travel

that's not the point at all I told him,
and after his digression
steered back to the source,

"beer, booze, what have you,
against a joint that's got a Sword of Damocles
bigger than a hemisphere looming over,
why w'd I give up beer in order to save…
and it feels like an 80's syndicated tv action program…

I'd continue to drink."

"Do you think you have a problem?"
he sucker-punched

With what? I asked coyly

A drinking problem, he lobbed the ball back

Not entirely, I kicked

So you're an ambiguous drunk, he swung

No
I'm a self-centered cat, I dodged

kicked

twirled

then wailed

I can only put one leg in front of the other, like you,
what's you're fucking problem?

He fell

onto a hump
of topsoil

and violets