I am Spitballing and a Huckster by Mark James Andrews

I am riding shotgun playing 

second fiddle in a season in hell.

There once was love lost and lust

for any man, woman or beast.

I am far gone into Rimbaud madness

having a heart to heart with Satan.

I am gallivanting all over town

arm around the hip of a Tristessa girl.

There once was druggie romance

that put a spell on you in the streets 

of Cholula with hushed promises 

to never tell about that winter week.

I am hamster-wheel spinning

rat racing in factotum days.

There once was nights blotto

malt liquor and Tuinal capsules

half reddish orange

half turquoise blue.

I am swaggering for no reason 

down and out in Paris and London.

There once was a day spent 

with tramps in the workhouse 

sporting as half diamond dog

flexing as half man.

I am tapping out near the end 

deep diving in the Book of Job.

There once was a man in the land

of Uz and you might say born under

a bad sign but still the final word

was always supreme with Yahweh.

I am spitballing and a huckster 

with my final play to trick the dust.

There once was gamble and chance 

carp fishing on Xanax in a lava lake

I am done with being nickel and dimed

with rope burns still fresh and hook baited.

Mark James Andrews lives and writes in Metro Detroit. He is the author of five chapbooks. The latest is At The Ice Cow Queen On Mack from Alien Buddha Press. His poetry has appeared in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Hiram Poetry Review, Slipstream, Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music and many other spots.

DICK by Wayne F. Burke

A middle-aged man with a pot belly, wearing a pork pie hat and sunglasses, stood at the edge of the woods nearby a swimming hole. A bath towel was slung over the man’s shoulder.

     Huge granite boulders surrounded the swimming hole. Sparkling river water shimmied and gleamed over the boulders.

     Two girls stood on a boulder. Each wore a bikini bathing suit.

     Two adolescent hussies, Dick told himself. One girl taller than the other. The taller one more developed than the shorter, but the shorter, Dick noted, had quite a can on her.

     He dropped his shorts and underwear to his ankles in the yellow scrub grass and weeds.

     He squeezed out a dollop of Vaseline into his palm.

     The tall girl looked over at him. He yanked on his joint as the thing stiffened. “Come’on,” he said, “take a good look you little bitches!” He rubbed himself vigorously.

     The taller girl spoke to the shorter girl who glanced at Dick. “You little cunts,” Dick said, “you know you want it!” He held his cock up straight, like a flagpole. “Look! Look at it! You teasing cocksuckers! Bitches!”

     The shorter girl turned her back to Dick. Dick ran his ran his hand up and down his joint; he was giving it to her up ass and she loved it, he told himself. “You love it you little bitch!” he said.

    The taller girl stared.  The shorter girl bent to pick up her towel: her legs spread. Dick felt himself start to cum: he tried to hold back but could not. He swooned, his legs shaky. The taller girl watched his jizzum water the ground like rain drops. You little slut!” He said. “Come and lap it up!” He squeezed out an extra blurt—just for her…

     Dick cleaned up, pulled up his shorts and underwear. He walked back the way he had come--through a path in the woods to a gravel-covered country road.

     He felt empty, dull: his groin over-heated and uncomfortably damp.

     A State Police car was parked along the roadside. Two State Troopers stood beside the car.

     “How you doing fella?” one of the troopers asked.

     Dick swallowed the saliva in his suddenly dry-as-toast mouth. “Oh pretty good.” He had to force the words out. “How about you fellas?” he asked, rallying.

     The slightly buck-toothed trooper’s telescopic eyes bored into Dick’s head.

     “What’cha got there?” the trooper said, nodding to the tube of Vaseline in Dick’s front pocket.

     The other cop, thin-lipped and stone-faced, stood with thumbs stuck into his service belt.

     “What? This?” Dick showed the tube to the cop. “For the skin, you know…I got dry skin and--” He made a motion as if applying the cream to his chest.

     “We know what you use it for,” the stone-faced cop said.

     The bucktooth cop smirked.

     Over the cop’s shoulder a bald eagle flew between tree tops.

     Dick knew they would find his other lewd & lascivious charges. Knew he would not be able to talk his way out of this one. Knew he did not have money enough to keep from going to jail…

     Beads of sweat crawled like fat bugs from off his scalp.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry and prose has been widely published in print and online (including in DISTURB THE UNIVERSE). He is author of 8 published poetry collections, one short story collection, and 3 works of nonfiction. He lives in Vermont (USA)

Don't Eat Paint Chips Or Become A Poet By JPR

"Hey, is your mag open to submissions?"

I run a daily unless the voices tell me not to because they want to party.

"The mag is only open to cuddling and long walks on the beach and quickies behind the dumpster behind Wal-Mart at the moment and donations to my charity: Tip The Strippers Handsomely In Hopes To Get Free Pole Dancing Lessons....”

The lost little writer learned the Mad Editor title was far from just a title.

Then instantly regretted attaching their phone number with their submission. Which is borderline stupid when dealing with someone who hasn't slept in six years.

Crossing my fingers to set the Guinness record.

Sometimes I wish I had followed my dreams and become a serial killer, instead, or a bus driver for invisible people.

JPR is the greatest human residing on his personal island off the coast of Jupiter, Spain. It is a real place in his nonexistent heart.

He likes drawing tits on random sleeping persons' foreheads and calling in bomb threats to Taco Bell.

He once was a roadie for Willie Nelson, so of course he was swimming in the pussy…

He uses humor to mask the fact he hates humanity but likes for people who fear he will want to meet them someday.

He once painted by number. Now, he paints outside the box which has earned him a lifetime ban from Michael’s art supply franchise because they do not support his genius.  Much like you reading this.

He hosts an open mic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean every Saturday night.

He also collects drugs to keep the streets safe where there are no sidewalks.

I like you, I don't care what your friends say about you. You're kinda okay.

guillermo By John Grochalski

guillermo

sits outside

on a bench

 

with his hard on

and his whiskey

 

talking to twelve-year-old girls

nursing an injured pigeon

 

don’t touch that thing,

guillermo says

 

pigeons have diseases

pigeons are nothing but flying rats

 

guillermo drinks his whiskey

and pulls on his crotch

 

he smiles at the twelve-year-old girls

 

he wishes he was as beautiful

as something like a flying rat.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

The Lord Knows Not A Fly by JPR

But the pain knows not an intrusion of verse.

Strangled is the falsehood our lives unmasked perverse.

Its deadline’s communion I guess I ultimately must face alone.

I abandoned all hope, a reward of my ego's facade.

Addiction is a serpent's strength in its promise to strike you down.

I've closed myself off enough, now I can't open my thoughts to anyone.

Help muted being consumed in every drink.

I am eroding as quickly as the shore’s embrace to the tide.

I am alone forever, not even within my final lost soul’s confession may I confide.

None has its  grace to confession foreseen me.

Forever extinguished, the lights glimmer.

For some there truly never was a chance.

I create art, not explain it.

JPR 

The Sunny Side Of The Lobotomy by JPR

 

Tied down, trapped within.

The instruments surround; the compassion can not exist within the ever-sterile environment.

The demon's external promise of hope and science is a bastard's promise soaked with good intentions and doused with kerosene.

All the pretty flowers painted upon the wall behind barred windows cries of a voiceless soul.

Let us play on the lesser children of society's unwanted trash.

No straight jacket needed or padded room's protection.

We are free to make our own choices as long as they don't question the constraints of a society's majority rule.

The hammers strike the skull's fracture.

No demons torment the empty spaces, for those helpful, studied hands have locked them all within.

A once thriving river of confused souls’ imagination is now locked within a nightmare’s perpetual labyrinth.

As the sheep of a higher learning all clamor eager to one day practice destruction under the guise of healing.

No need to trouble yourself, a bullet’s beauty seems a far lesser evil.

Bind your thoughts with your tongue.

Madness is within; let's play God to serve the ego and silence the truths buried in a fact.

There is no answer to all mysteries eternal.

Silence your thoughts and please do throw away this perpetual miseries key.

JPR is a southern gothic writer.

His work has been published in Svartedauden Zine, Piker Press, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Fixator Press, Spill The Words Press, Sava Press, Fearless Poetry Zine and here at The Dope Fiend Daily.

You May Press The Reset Button Now by Wayne Russell

Time gallops away in rebuttal, 

the ocean is something of a 

sledge hammer in my dreams.

Youth down by the pulsating 

riverside, oceans undertow,

snarling jaws or wilderness?

Take your pick

My parents didn't want me,

my siblings I never knew, I 

was a toddler when the the

Sunshine State gave me a

brand new home in the lost

and found.

Time is a thief, and I am the 

candle, worthless; burning at 

both ends. 

Death awaits us all, just 

around the corner; a dilapidated

crescendo circus, a pantomime;

a joke.

Mad times running along with

her mascara, and smudged red 

lipstick, thin and trickling from

dead eyes, draining from mouth

agape, into the drainage of

opium paradise.  

We are all the fools wandering,

translucent, luminous ghost behold,

shanty town broken necklaces.

We are stains composed from shattered

whiskey bottles and shredded time,

wasted, wasted, and lobbed on down

the ghetto into the next generation;

press the reset button now.  

Wayne Russell has been published in many zines, magazines, anthologies, both online and in print. In his spare time he likes to practice his guitar, sing, creative writing, and photography. Waynes first full length poetry book Where Angels Fear can be purchased on Amazon.