whisper 2000

i used to wonder
if the girls were talking about me
at recess.

i hoped the girls were
talking about me
at recess.

of course i couldn't ask them
couldn't look at a girl
without going red
and sweating bolts
from the face.

came across an ad
for the whisper 2000
in one of mom's
national enquirers:

made to look
like a little walkman,
plug headphones into it
and point.

stole twenty bucks from mom's purse

stalked the mailbox for six weeks.

bivouacked
on the jungle gym
and pointed it
at their little enclave
by the swing-set.

the girls were
not talking about me
at recess.

or anywhere
else.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

at the iowa state fair

walking around zombie
crotch of august heat
waiting for my girlfriend
to play trumpet
under the main tent
with the local college band.

land-locked huh?
he asked
one bench over
in front of the funnel cake stand.

looked like a plus size wilfred brimley:

red suspenders
no shirt
wheel-barrow gut,
giving cow tongue
to a waffle cone.

how can you tell?
i smiled
wiping sweat
from my brow.

written on your face
like a three-hour
sunday service,
he said

told me he was kenneled too,
his wife had strawberry jam
and pumpkin pie
entered in the competition.

i find this helps
finest corn whiskey
out of van buren county,
he said

told me it was
best chased with cold well-water
but prisoners have to make do
and handed me a flask.

you seen her naked yet?
he asked
putting the waffle cone
out of its misery.

yea
matter of fact
i have,
i said
trying to keep whiskey
from shooting out my nose.

she a keeper?
he asked
taking a hit
off the flask.

ass like a donkey
my friend
ass like a donkey,
i smiled
spreading my hands yardstick
while he
whistled low.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

when my uncle broke his leg

it was before noon
and he was on his
thirty-third beer.

i know it was before noon
because the small-town whistle
downhill from our campground
hadn't blown yet.

i know he was on his
thirty-third
because my cousin and i
were collecting the empties - -

we were gonna
ride our bicycles into town
cash em in for bottle rockets
after he and my dad passed out.

jim and i were
flicking matches into the fire-pit
egging them on to drink more.

my uncle was walking up the steep incline
from the cooler
thirty-third in hand
then he was moaning
flat on his back
clutching his leg (he'd broke it
five years earlier in a
drunk driving accident)

two grey haired female Emts
a few cookies shy of cankle-stew
showed up.

my uncle kept calling them
his sweet angels
reaching around
grabbing ass
of the one
at his head.

finally the park ranger and i
had to lift him
into the ambulance.

embarrassed the hell out of me.

but i was only thirteen

hadn't started drinking yet

and i didn't know that every man on that side of the family

myself included

has an overarching tendency to

fuck anything with a pulse.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

the iron worker

leaning against his truck
smoking a cigarette
waiting on material
for the new office space
one building over

as two stories above
i drink coffee
mixed with crown
and work my way
through schopenhauer's
madness.

the secret of blue collar work
few realize
and even fewer appreciate
is that your body might be
subjugated to machine
but you get to keep your
mind:

your hands might be
torquing a four-headed cap press
but upstairs
you're trying to figure
how in the hell karl marx
got socialism
from hegel

or

you might be on a hog farm
sitting backwards on a sow
draining a packet of boar semen into her cunt
while trying to
wrap your mind around
a priori knowledge.

i learned the hard way
white collar work
is nothing but
whoring out your mind
to insipidly pedantic
crossword puzzles

which

if you have more
than a lemming-compass
and base-ten blueprints
for a mind
is the equivalent
of daily bone-grafts
without anesthesia.

problem is
most of these blue collar guys
don't take advantage:

they work logic
and tiddlywinks polemics
off a handful of
crackhead premises

most of them
glass-eyed shriners
turning lifetimes
of zero-g figure eights.

this guy's cellphone
hanging from a
dale junior lanyard
and the set of
bright orange plastic testicles
dangling from the back bumper of his truck
tell me all i need to know
about which slope of the bell curve
he's nailed to.

- justin hyde

sitting on the grease trap behind taco bell

i was supposed to be
on a greyhound
bound for a fishing boat
in alaska

but i'd
walked past the station
and tossed my ticket
over the fence
of the
catholic school playground.

i was twenty six,
living in my parent's basement
after imploding as a bank examiner
for the federal reserve,

all my possessions
were in the hiking pack
to my left.

even as a young kid
in the trailer park
faking sick from school
for a little solitude

i knew
it was going to end
somewhere like this.

sitting there
on that grease trap
hum of tire
up and down lincoln way
i was surprised
i'd held things together
long as i did.

my old boss
from the bicycle shop
pretended not to see me
as he walked past
to his car.

serendipity,
i thought to myself

and laid back

and

closed my eyes.

- justin hyde

the lady cop

draws portraits
on the back
of wooden
mouse-traps
with exacto knives and
india ink.
can you believe it?
i didn't.

but she's got a
pile of them
on her
headboard.

i reach back
grab
one.

whose this?
i ask.

it's my
shift
captain.

you fuck
him too?

no -
i only fuck
artists.

i'm just a
half-brain
paraplegic heart
with a detachable
conscious,
i say.

no
you're more,
she says
then sings something
in french.

what's that
mean?
i ask.

it means you're
sui generis,
she says
flicking her tongue
across the head
of my dog
fast as a
hummingbird wing.

i grab the fifth
off her nightstand,
watch her
work:

she takes one ball
in her mouth,
growls like a tiger

pops it out,
then the
other.

who am i
to argue
that?

- justin hyde

momentary ceasefire on the way out

i pop the trunk
grab the telescoping
ladder
borrowed from my
father-in-law.

crawl up there
rip off the unused
satellite dish
from a previous
owner.

seth gives me
$25 and three
tall-boys
for it.

wife and i
get generic
baby-food
for ivan
and

share a frozen
pizza
in the empty
living room
before she
moves to her parents
with ivan
and i check in
at the y.

- justin hyde

at the ymca

my room
has a bird's eye
of the third street bridge
and the
des moines river.

one of my parolees
lives across
the hall.

guy like you
bound to land
on his feet,
galvin said
that first night
and introduced me
around.

i've got a picture
of my one year old son
duct taped
to the back
of my door.

my wedding ring
keeps thanking me
from the bottom
of the river

as

that pile of
aa pamphlets
on my desk
pulls
neck and neck
with these bottles of
vanilla
schnapps.

- justin hyde

all these freak-shows

it seems
the more outlandish
they dress
the duller they are.

for instance
two pancake-faced
wafers
next table over:

striped leggings
wooden plugs
in their ears,
airing out
freshly minted tattoos
of japanese calligraphy
on their shoulders.

i'm going on a
green-bean only diet,
buzz-clucks
the one.

i'm so with you,
clutter-spurts
the other
as

a gopher
in nigeria
locks up
from a
heart-attack.

i don't have any tattoos
or piercings,

don't even
wear a watch.

i should have glasses
but that's a
different poem.

if you pegged me at all
it would be for a
sloppily dressed
footnote,

which i'd gladly be
if it wasn't
for all the
voodoo-rickshaws
jackknifing
right here
behind these
eyes.

- justin hyde

sometimes i just need a little reality suspension

says one stay at home
to another
as i stretch out
next to them
on a blue mat
before lifting weights
at the y.

access hollywood or tmz,
unless it's gangs of new york
or something like that,
that's evil,
bad things happening to good people,
she says
as they scissor kick
in unison.

generally i don't talk to people here
(most anywhere for that matter)
but it's 7:15am on a tuesday,
i'm still a shade tanked
tinsel-skulled
from last night
and her voice grates
like a garbage disposal
full of lead-shot.

bad things happening to good people isn't evil,
it's just an exigency of 8 billion pinballs with different agendas,
now wasting a life,
that's evil,
i say
without looking at either of them.

what are you talking about?
says the stork-face with
dimples on her elbow fat.

i'm saying honestly
you disgust me,
i know your type,
pogo-stick-humping one quick fix
after another: religion, yoga,
the Secret, doctor phil, oprah,
tantric tiddlywink mindfucks -
you avoid reality completely,
that's evil in my book.

you don't know anything about me,
who are you passing judgment?
she gets up
stands over me
fists on hips.

i'm the reincarnated soul
of hume and
bugs bunny,
i smile.

you're a jerk
big fat jerk
you're what's wrong with this country,
she shakes her finger
and kicks my foot.

come on gina
he's just getting goats,
says the nondescript albino
pulling her away
side by side
they mount stairmasters
flipping vogues back to the
pilot-light equilibrium of
sinkhole minds.

- justin hyde

the poem

falls from
the sky,
cracking your skull
like a load of
frozen bowel movements
discharged from a
jet-liner.

you chisel it
to the essential
with heart
and intellect.

too much intellect
and it's
straight
philosophy.

too much heart
and it limps
down the drain
with the
complete works of
mitch album.

getting it right
is a subtle
balance
essentially
devoid
of
any
discernible
merit.

- justin hyde

as i close in on thirty

you're next,
the vet student said
while holding up
giant clippers.

the sheep's balls
and part of its ball-sack
shot ancient torture
up our spines
from the cement floor.

jay, gabe and i
ran back to the trailer park
from the vet school
holding our nuts
the whole way.

worst thing you
could do
to a man,
we all agreed that night
on the merry-go-round
counting stars and
measuring the universe
through ten year old
eyes.

of course the
WORST thing
you could do to a man
was playing out
a hundred yards
in either direction,

there where our fathers
served life sentences
in single wide tombs
with our mothers.

- justin hyde

in the lobby of the county hospital at 3:47am

my mother
let my father
come and go
as he pleased.

when he did
finally show
it was usually shit-faced
and with the
special stink (even
as a nine year old
you pick up
on that)

i didn't fully understand
why she put up with it
until i was
twenty-nine

and i physically
threw her
out of my house
after catching her
in the bathroom
needle in arm

right before
she was supposed to
babysit my son.

i called my dad.
take care of your wife
asshole,
i said
and hung up.

then i got scared
mom might go off
and kill herself (she'd
tried it before)

so i called her cell
told her i'd let
dad know
what happened.

did he say
he was gonna leave me?
she whimpered
in a voice that
shot-through
my spine.

some women
truly believe
no one else
will have them (let alone
love them)

but these
three fresh stitches
in my gut
from a steak-knife
remind me
the one i married
isn't one of them.

- justin hyde

the two bosnian women

their voices
sound like
diesel-powered
jackhammers

they have faces
like rusted shovels
in a rainstorm and

flanks
long since
gone rot.

but those
voices!

do those
have jealous
husbands?
i ask dejan.

they back and
forth
a flash of
bosnian.

that one
is long past-bereaved
widow

and that one
has hemorrhoid-filled
boyfriend
truck driver
on road.

the shovels
smile my
way.

tell them
i want that they
tie me up
pour hot-wax
on my
mechanism
and pluck every hair
from my
asshole.

they gravel-mouth
another bolt of
gibberish.

they say
you couldn’t
handle them,
dejan smiles
and fills my
draw-glass with
tequila.

i take a steel-toe
off
balance it
on my
forearm.

tell them my machete
is just as long
twice as hard
and eager
for a good/

you have
car?
the one
built like a
sherman tank
cuts me off.

before i can
slap my keys
all the way
on the bar
they
prop me up
one at each elbow
toss my ass on the curb
and
drive off.

- justin hyde

barreling through this life

you pick
things up:

learning
to use steady torque
from a low angle
when shouldering
a stalled car
out of an intersection.

the tone of voice
and hand gestures required
to keep peace
with a
sloppy drunk.

how insincerity
at the right moment
is subtle mercy

and

the way women
generally want
understanding
versus solution.

each of us
barreling through this life
gathers tools
for the basic
exigencies.

we learn just enough
to keep the gut in food
and our necks
off the block.

but all of us
are unarmed

mugged

and

continuously
pistol-whipped
by the

greater fight.

- justin hyde

ted kooser

started
showing up
in my sunday
newspaper.

he chooses a poem
from the abyss
and writes an
introduction.

i've read each one
four weeks running

it's helped me
better understand
readers and editors
of the poetry magazines
i don't bother
submitting to:

poetry is something
they do
after the bills are paid
eaves are cleaned out
the hedges are equidistant
all properties
and vehicles
insured.

these are good citizens
they vote in school board elections
replace break-lights the day
they go out.

only then
come their poems
jogging along
in l.l. bean fleece.

all of them
well fed

socially
adjusted

and

relevant
as a
china doll's
cuticles.

- justin hyde

email from a female reader

i like your poems
but why do you
always write
like a gutter-bound
sex-fiend?

i explained how i
came from dirt
currently worked
ten hours a day
with the worst
of felons
drank enough to
scare myself
and didn't
sleep
much.

told her i
didn't know
about the whole
sex-fiend business
but i'd read a study
in scientific american
showing bulls
with testicle circumference
1-2 standard deviations
above the mean
ejaculated five-thousand
more times
during the course
of their breeding
years

how i didn't have any calipers
handy
or normative data on
human testicle circumference
but i'd fired off
two heaters in
seven minutes looking at the
head-shot on her
myspace page
and seeing as how
i'm pushing thirty
she'd better
slide that pouch
down to iowa
pretty quick
if she wanted
her ration.

- justin hyde

at the flying j truck stop

they come off
the road
with duffel bags
and eyes full of
tin-foil.

all of them
walk with
limps.

they stand in line
for the shower

or light cigarettes
and sit around a
black and white tv
like freshly filled
graves.

you don't see
angels like these
in the aisles
of suburban
grocery stores

or flipping through
magazines
at barnes and noble.

i don't buy
magazines.

but if
they were filled
with photographs
of these people
i would.

i would tear out
the pages
and tape them
to my walls.

- justin hyde

my contribution to that canon of nullity

early on
i promised myself
i'd never
write a poem
about not
being able
to write a
poem.

it seems
all the great
and even
spectacularly
forgettable
poets
have tried polishing
that turd
at least once.

all of them
struck me as
candy-ass
glorification of
defeat

but

not once
in twenty-nine years
have i
held myself
to my word

and

three days straight
there's been
no magic
beyond
seeing how high of a
meniscus
i can pee
into empty beer bottles
before they go
waterfall.

- justin hyde

my newest client at work release

stabbed correctional officers
with pens
on two separate occasions
while in prison.

he's in my office right now
twirling a bic
between his fingers
telling me the arson charges
were bullshit.

he'd been living
with his aunt
but she kicked him out
for smearing shit
on his bedroom walls.

the only reason
i set that fire
on her sidewalk
was to keep warm.

guy's a full blown schizo,
doesn't belong here,
but the prisons
are overcrowded.

i should ask for the pen
in a calm voice.

i should always have
another parole officer
in the office
when i meet with
this guy.

but i just stare
at the pen
like a golden-ticket.

wishing he'd snap
and make me
the trifecta.

i could parlay it
into a month off
paid.

maybe early retirement
and a lump-sum payment
if he buries it
in my eye.

- justin hyde

in the waiting area while my oil is changed

any friendship
without christ
is stifling,

the hook-nosed woman
with a bible in her
lap
says to her
daughter.

god is mind-scramble
for tapioca
brains,
i think
to myself.

marriage too
for that
matter

hell

the mere act
of participating
in this diminishing
farce
on a daily basis
requires
self-lobotomy

and

pulling
the punch
on our murder
impulse day
after day

it becomes
very
clear

any play
short of suicide
is

fixed.

- justin hyde

at the food-court

teenage cottontails
hop on by
you imagine
pinning them down
pumping lightning
splitting their sides
up the seams.

your wife
folds her
napkin

her face
makes you
sick

you think
she's weak
and needy

you're
wrong.

that dark haired
father of two
behind you

right now
she's imagining
his breath
across the hairs
of her neck

the rough brush
of his hand
down the length
of her
thigh

she's got
three different ways
in mind
to get rid of you
with no evidence

but she'd also
kill a man
and bury him
for you.

she's a
ten millimeter
locked and loaded
with hollow points
and

you don't even
know it.

- justin hyde

after the fireball passes

you can't remember
what it was
to be eighteen

but you know
any magic
is in youth

and the way teenage girls
behind cash registers
regard you
with all the longing
of tree sap
and turtle shit
makes it clear

you're
shot.

- justin hyde

at the blairstown american legion

the old man
rubbing golf-ball size knuckles
tells me
he was a pigeoneer
in WWII but
never made it
to the european theater
cause he couldn't read
well enough
to pass the
test.

i mainly fed
the little fuckers,
scooped up their shit
and drank myself
senseless.

i tell him
i’m looking for people
that might have known
my grandfather.

oh hell yea
i knew the stocky fucker,
first met him
when he came back from korea
with that mangled hand

he worked on my roofing crew
a couple years,
your grandpa
could finish
a pint of whiskey
before noon
and still drive a straighter nail
than any ten of these
spic leeches
runnin' loose
around here.

he orders us both
a double shot
of black velvet
and leans in
close.

now you didn't hear it
from me
but if you're lookin
for the whole truth
like you say you are

you probably got a few
unclaimed aunts and
uncles
around here.

- justin hyde

an old drinking buddy

chuck downed jack
and diet coke
by the pitcher.

said he could drink it
day and night
and keep it
to a steady buzz

but if he touched
anything else
he'd go
tokyo-joe
billy-goat.

not even one beer,
he said.

i got him on tequila
once
on a nine-ball bet.

we ended up
at the strip club
across from
the firestone
plant.

didn't see him at southport
for the next
couple days.

sitting there
one in the afternoon
firming my tequila base
i felt a sharp blow
to the back of my
head.

flashed 180
cocked my fist
but she got her nails
into my face.

his wife told me
he was shacked up
in the randolph
with a bunch of
whores.

he'd cleaned out
their
checking account

lost his good job
at meineke.

i'd better go get him
or she'd make trouble
for me.

i walked up
to his room.

the door
was open.

they were smoking
crack
wide in the clear.

him, three whores
and a large black
man.

chuck didn't
recognize me

but he welcomed me
to the party.

i asked the black
man
if he had a blade
or a gun.

who the fuck
was i?

i said
i was asking them
to leave.

if he didn't want to
he better show
his cards

otherwise
there was gonna be
a fight.

he bulldozed
his shoulder
against mine
on the way out.

rotten whores
shot death
from their eyes
but followed
suit.

i got chuck
in a cold
shower.

he sobered up
enough
to recognize
my face.

i told him
the damage
and
apologized.

he told me
he'd been burning the barn
every four years
or so
for the last thirty

how it wasn't my fault,
he'd felt it coming on
for a month.

he dug a clump of bills
from a pillow
case.

slapped a twenty
in my hand.

yesterday
was he and vicke's
twenty-third
anniversary.

told me
go down the street
get a two-litter diet coke
and some jack.

he needed
sobering up
quick.

- justin hyde

after my forty hours and all the penny-candy brains in between

on top of
all that,

my wife strangles
the solitude required
to get a line down,

clucking in my face
how i don't fuck her
enough -

you'd rather
lock yourself in here
and drink beer
than spend time
with me.

that kind of shit
torques me
like a rusty switchblade
in the ass.

just last night
she unplugged the computer
and shoved an overdraft notice
under my nose -

is beer more important
than your family?
we're going to lose the house
if you keep this shit up!
are you trying to make me
divorce you?
look at me!

i raised the monitor
straight to the sky,
tossed it whistle-clean
through the guest-room
window -

there bitch!
happy?
you finally snuffed out
my last bit
of spirit,

i won't write another
god damned poem,
i won't drink anymore beer,
i'll start enjoying my dying
like a good boy
and stick you
three times a week
like clockwork,

it'll be a
motherfucking
l ron hubbard
utopia.

fucking idiot!
she slammed the door
and stormed off.

she's right
of course,

and many other
deplorable things
on top of that.

but let me
tell you something
brother:

just then,

standing there
in the darkness,
cold wind blowing
across the shards.

i felt more alive
than a million dollar racehorse
down the stretch.

- justin hyde

wife made me sell my sports car

it wasn't anything ritzy,
a 2000 celica gt.
i bought it when i got my first job out of college,
before i fucked my credit
and started quitting jobs because of mental instability.
but anyway
we have a five month old son
and the hemorrhaging of money is pretty severe.
i wasn't willing to get a part time job above my forty
so we traded it in on a matchbox kia,
payments went from 346 to 132,
insurance from 110 to 65.
but the thing is
i'm more vain than i thought
because it used to be at stoplights
i'd pull even with the car beside me
and if it was a female i'd flash her a smile
because honestly
for all my misanthropic tendencies
i'm a flirt and a whore.
but now i hang back a length or half,
my verve severely hamstrung by this shitbox car
thinking how like it or not
we're saddled with these very petty
human deficiencies.
ain't that a bitch.

- justin hyde

drunkest ever

guy to my right
whispered in my ear
how the woman to my left
had been stuck
with every stick
in seven counties
and she was married
to a jealous prick.

she pulled her hair
up over the back of her head,
grabbed my hand
and ran my fingers
over two scars
the size and shape
of leeches,

said she'd had brain tumors
as a little girl
and now
she could talk to angels.

late into the night
she lifted her shirt
and cracky
the eighty year old bartender
pinched her button tits
and said they reminded him
of windshield wipers.

last thing i remember
is moving sacks of cans
from the passenger seat
of her k car
and getting in.

i woke up
in the hayloft
of a barn,

it was raining
cats and dogs.

a large owl
stared me down
from the rafters,

my penis
was chaffed
stem to stern

and i had
two human teeth
in my right fist.

- justin hyde

after a few months of steady weight lifting

my body
seems to build
excessive stores
of testosterone,

i have
constant flashes
of violent
urges

and masturbate
three or four
times a day.

usually it
comes to a head
with me goading
some lippy ass-clown
in the bar,

then, more often
than not (as i'm
a loner)

i get jumped
by his friends
in the parking
lot.

this is no way
to do things,
i say to myself
this morning.
some day
one of them
will have a knife
or you will
kill someone.

but my right hand
is once again
a mess,

ribs are painful
dented
fenders,

and i am wearing
the cat's grin -

proud
as if i'd invented
the motherfucking
wheel.

- justin hyde

a minor concern

the job
or wife's family
will google my name
and discover
all this.

i'm not ashamed
of any of it,

but the masses
are not equipped.

i wouldn't mind
being fired,
but i've got a kid now,
wife and
mortgage (thanks
to wife's credit)

and seven-fifty an hour
temp labor
would no longer cut it.

i couldn't care less
if wife's family
finds out
i'm a lecherous
fuck,

but wife
puts much stock
in trivial matters
such as image.

i've considered using
a pen name,

but the vanity
won't allow it.

so i go to work
waiting for boss
to call me
into his office,

sister in law
or wife's cousin
to pull me aside
at a family function
and

slap me
in the face

or maybe
green-light
the cock.

- justin hyde

when i'm out in public with my wife and son

i scout the crowd
for the low-swing
of that special breadbasket ass
i'll be visualizing
next time my wife sucks me off.

but i'm also cataloging
every set of eyes,

feathering my glock
and scanning for guys
i revoked back to prison
who've since been released.

my job is never anything
but business
on my end,

but our chum-bucket lot
tends to go jackal
in the settling of
one-sided scores.

- justin hyde