Mayor of Buffalo

A fascination with poverty
has drawn me to a $200 a month
upstairs flat at 13 Haag’s Alley.

Fractured windows everywhere.
I devour a mountain of chicken wings
while the mice munch paint chips.

Not a phone jack to be found.
I fantasize about Ilsa, She-Wolf
of the SS, and am convinced fortune
cookies must foretell the future.

The kitchen sink reduced to
an urban myth, I wash my dishes
at The Sweet Spot Saloon,
where the bartender Jesus
changes money into beer.

After I stumble home, I change
Into my cherised “Buffalo: City of
No Illusions” T-shirt.
I gaze upon my sparkling college degree.

(stanza break)

Master of Arts. English, no less.
Not one professor ever mentioned
Henry C. Bukowski, Jr. Not one.

Life and Death in the Charity Ward.
Buckwheat Zydeco playing at Lafayette Square.
Pretend he doesn’t exist.

Love Is a Dog From Hell.
Jazz through the night on local FM radio.
Not our kind.

Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail.
Gargantuan $4.99 pizzas at Bocce Club.
Perverse dipsomaniac.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man.
Sidewalks strewn with self-realized condoms.
Unclean and rough.

Tales of Ordinary Madness.
Tires squealing at 4 a. m.
But he won’t go away.

Women.
Sunday morning polka jamborees.
My eyes brim with laughter.

(stanza break)

Ham on Rye.
A sign reading “Scums Welcome” at Delbert’s Deli.
My hands shake with ecstasy.

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame.
Chemical fumes from Niagara Falls waft through the sunrise.
My lips curl with disgust.

Factotum.
Driving a Rambler rustbucket.
My soul stirs with joy.

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck.
Watching every second of every Bills game.
Not uplifted, but completed.

It Catches My Heart in Its Hand.
Dining on 39 cent cheeseburgers at McDonald’s.
No longer afraid of the dark.

- David Kowalczyk

Waltzing In Invisible Vienna

North Beach.
The laws of quantum physics
are suspended here.

The Last Beatnik
waltzes into Vesuvio’s.
Only weeks ago, a Mardu Fox clone
was the afternoon barmaid.
Her Nubian princess body
shimmering with sweat,
glistening with possibility.

Today, it takes an act of Congress
to get the bluestocking
engrossed in Fleurs de Mal to fetch
a pint of Anchor Steam Ale.

Stigmata tattoo her alabaster arms.
Her forehead veins protrude like sequoias.
She is chanting Hare Krishna beneath her breath.

(stanza break)

The Last Beatnik sneers at this
vestal virgin barkeep. He imagines her
explaining postmodernism to her deaf aunt
and giving the fifty-year old paperboy a copy
of Being and Nothingness for Christmas.

He stares into his beer.
Faces appear on the bubbles.
Ginsberg, Moriarty, Burroughs…

His breathing becomes labored.
His face cracks from sadness.
The only loss ever permanent:
loss of our illusions.

North Beach.
Birds are barking.
Sea lions are
swimming through the sky.

- David Kowalczyk

My Dream Is Turquoise Marzipan

I am living at the San Diego Zoo
in a cage filled with crack vials,
banana peels, and expired bus passes.

I alternate covering my eyes,
my mouth, my ears,
while geriatric Republicans from
Tucson toss peanuts at me.

They are wise.
They feel the magic.
They know that I know
what I know, that I am
who I am because
I understand the serpent.

- David Kowalczyk

Live Wild. Never Die.

Live as if today was
conceived in the savage
warmth of prayer.

As though spiders
were now busily
connecting all which
has unfolded with all
yet to unfold.

Live as if you were
a malignant child
whose demons were
bursting into flames.

As though your dreams
were a way of singing
and every day
was October.

Live as if
you were finally
ready to breath.

- David Kowalczyk

Bittersweet

Never has a day
been more perfect
for a funeral:
as fresh and clear
as the morning dew.

Yet at Berry Funeral Home,
four cadavers have resolved
to elude the final kiss of the earth,
to rise beyond what the truly limited
term “death”.

Their arms flapping in concert,
they’re soon pirouetting about
the ceiling like eagles at play
on a mountaintop.

The mortician enteres, and
stares in disbelief. His doubt
stuns their new wings, and
they slowly flutter downwards,
only to catch themselves, and
rise again.

They will fall and rise, rise
and fall, again and forever,
without ever touching the ground.

Is this not the definition
of heaven?

- David Kowalczyk

Poem for a Truculent Optometrist

His eyes are full
of wandering demons.
His lips are poisonous snakes.
His hair is red, although
it once was brown.

His life consists of the
slow, constant dimming
of the heart, and the
relentless loss of play.

More angry than hungry,
he is gnawing on a plastic fork.
The voices inside him
begin to chatter once again.

“I hope you find what you
are searching for,” is all they
ever say. He shivers with disgust.

He remembers what his grandmother
told him as a child: “That which we
love, we can never see.”

He gazes at the sky
towards a mysterious world
invisible to human eyes.

He gets up
from his chair, and walks
towards the strange and unseen world.
The voices fall silent.

- David Kowalczyk