michael p. lefanto
michael p. lafanto is a street poet from brooklyn, n.y.
A Van Gogh
Maybe I'll pull a Van Gogh
whack my ear off,
lob it on the kitchen table
for the breakfast crowd. Fix it
that for the next five years or so
I'll be a guest of some upstate asylum,
where I'll be forced to write my poetry
on rolls of toilet paper
upside down and backwards
to prevent others from crawling
inside my head, to analyze
or steal my thoughts.
Maybe I'll grow a beard, stop bathing
start saving urine in jars.
Just the first piss of the day.
Anything more then that
even I would consider crazy.
Brizzi's Funeral Home.
I don't plan on going to Brizzi's
one block from here. Where all
who've lived in this family house
of ours seem to end, as far back,
as I could remember.
I don't plan on giving them the chance
to sell a suede lined coffin to my kids.
So I could rest comfortably throughout eternity.
Like the one brought for the wife
that record cold morning two days
before Christmas 1988.
My kids are assholes they'll fall for
that same line of crap as I did.
I'm not giving them a chance to pitch
a flower car so no one is insulted that
their flowers weren't picked to go
to the grave site or an extra limo
to chauffeur third cousins.
Payback for wedding's attended by
the wife and me or arrange
a High Holy Mass
(Whatever the hell that means).
At St Catherine's a church I was forced to attend
as a child,& never went back to as an adult.
No I ain't going to Brizzi's.
Shoot me up to
Deluie's on Bay Parkway
ten blocks away.
I always was a rebel
Alone
When morning arrived
when I awoke
She was still there
sitting at kitchen table
in bra & panties smoking
a mini cigars
rummaging through pocket book
franticly for makeup staring
into my shaving mirror
she somehow managed to ripped
off the shower wall.
I asked if she might be
interested in breakfast.
Avoiding her name
Helen, Elaine
I wasn't sure
Anyway something to work on
over eggs & coffee at Manny's
downstairs up the corner
around the block
out of my apartment.
Epilog on a Marriage
She turned into my mother
and I my father
So we fought a lot
Slept in separate rooms
Spoke only when spoken to.
Said never more
then had to be said.
Touched only at wedding's
when we danced with each other
and gave advice
to the new brides and grooms
on how to stay married so long.
Vision
I see myself there in a few years
walking with cane to the corner
then turning around coming back.
Unable to cross street fast enough
in the time it takes
the light to change.
I see myself
talking to the ladies along the way
down on hands and knees
doggie style
doing their gardening
I don't have sex on my mind anymore.
So I don't really know
what I'm thinking.
361 Cholesterol
Don't wanna know
don't care!
Let it hit me over the head
like I was some dumb cowboy
riding the range
sleeping under the stars
rolling his own cigarettes
washing down stake & eggs with
strong black campfire coffee,
drinking tequila out of a bottle
sucking a lemon & licking salt
off his hand,
stroking out and dying there.
While his stupid horse starves to death
tied to a near by tree!
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