James Diaz is founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared most recently in Psaltery & Lyre, The Ekphrastic Review, Quail Bell Magazine and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, (for which his poem, The Balance Between Us, was nominated for the Best of the Net.) He is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and three full length collaborative manuscripts with poet Elisabeth Horan. He currently resides in upstate New York.
Bailiff Took The Handle
mute
at
the
mall
I was face and palm
those memory bones
rattlin' shit from 97
benson bender burner
broke a smile
went dead inside
coil was a pop load
shimmer summer lake
stank
my boyhood all tornado
apple shade
beholden
to the olden
I am golden
like the fail safe
at the back of my throat
no mother can ever beat me that hard again
as bad as spoon and dropper
window shopper
in my Gettysburg dt's
my pliant cross dressing
wounds of my father
and my, how you've grown
into your disease
our money was on dead at 16
we think you owe us
for our bad bet,
now pay up.
###
Poet James Diaz
Tara Reid is throwing verse like a rainbow goddess
whippoorwill, got so many miles
under your nails
rave / Nancy bleeder
the bleachers /\ all some of us had
I was mop and bucket
missed year book photo
cuz, you kn ow - jail
and whatnot
I had a gun
it was my faultline
gone apocalytpic
tara reid dreams
in the Kojak day time lounge
throazine
got a life
it didn't fit
fired the tailor
and wore a paper bag
body
broken
jailer
night rounds
disco <> baby I was
what the neighborhhood
made me
stitches
and smelly socks
and cops
outside
I took two years off
so I could suicide
sally + every door I ever opened
was smoke
and iodine plaster kick
bedtime boy -
every place I go
I bring all these expired hells
with me.
###
Glimmer Poem #1
dropped the element off
on its side ambling
was sleep I couldn't touch
all dressed up
like yesterday was war
and today was peace
but I didn't have the scars
to negotiate / nights along
the water way rushing out
my skin a holiday in
blur / not lines but bodies
giggling sweat stained
and aftershave bridge
& tunnel men with their
eyes burned out like
stars in cement
we claimed these hands
took up in clouds by a god
we never believed in enough
to die for but somehow still
feared.
###
Glimmer Poem #2
I won't bore you on this long drive into nowhere
your father's voice ringing our underneath the tires
state lines signal lives become trapped in territory
it's still the old west no matter how many computer
chips they put in us, gun slinging, tavern singing
woman stealing, ruined yards / slumped bodies
on porches with no lights on, who ever said there was
no sense of humor in looming disaster
never got turned on just by saying the word atom bomb
thermonuclear fishing hole books by dead men
about dead woman who reminded them of their
dead mothers / tomes filled with incestual metaphor
old western sky tapered into blue hills
eating up the residual / tech chip dug into
skin feel the cold coke machine of 2 a.m.
drugged out blue jean alley / a thing is only sacred
until you touch it, and
the night is no longer young, it is burning.
###
Glimmer Poem #3
catching miracle glimmers
in the good heart
with the shine of tomorrow
clearing off day break
bodies spun from cobweb
find their love in corners
how sweet it is deep under wire
oh wood burning
cv cameras
x-ray boys
listen to lighting bugs
hit the street lamp
with pocket book prayers
middle aged man with the keys
in his pockets
don't you know
we have nothing to fear here
when we sleep we are golden
against the mop buckets
and morning call for slop
trays made by unloved whippoorwills
in the dragging there is a whiff of shadow
we bend to the name you do not call
we come running gunning for the door
you leave unlatched
just once, sometimes even the taser
is a blessing.
###
Glimmer Poem #4
If I weren't me, but only
this season passing its
loss over my body like the
buck lost on train rides home
when there really
is no place to call home
anymore, and the stains
along the leather seat
like the face of god
laughing / a bar room
is a place where everything
that went wrong takes
a load off, the cold
heavy wind outside
waiting to pounce
make tender out of hard -
smooth me jagged, verses
held tight against skin
worn loosely
steer clear the bramble
boys / the night light
shedding lines under
towns we never left
all this pain
and none of it useful.
###
Addendum for the radiating distance between here and home
I wanted to be girly with skin that wouldn't show scars that wouldn't push shit around / people I can't stand / like stereo freaky glow kids with parties to throw / tomorrows, oh you know nico notch in the belt saffron fleshy pearl hidden rooftop romantics / kohl / bat an eye / I'd be shy with you / in public / photon op, has to hurt when / you slide in / I'm all bible and bone / neon is hell's sharpest arrow / hide my bratty bra / verbal vanguard / worst thing about living is the people you have to live with / the shadows of yourself, on cue / on the wall / baby, I am a girl when I think how unmanly holding my self together has become, eye shadow, lip liner - due north / festive sad travel / I need the cure / is it on you? I need it bad / to be someone else for a while.
James Diaz is the founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. heroinchic.weebly.com/ His work has appeared in Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Pismire, Chronogram and My Favorite Bullet. His first book of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017) He lives in upstate New York.
Cut Your Path Through The Night Like A Troubadour On Fire
the light
becomes
solvent
against
other things
a war is only
people second guessing
themselves
a body
can tell
if you're lying
the best stories
are never written
they sit
alone on bar-stools
thinking of home
trying to pinpoint
that moment
where things took
a wrong turn
is there enough
love here?
what is
the atomic weight
of a memory?
do words care
what happens
to us when we
can't find the
right ones?
there are people
who find themselves
well loved
cared for
and there are those
whose wounds wont close
who leave blood on the car seat
and can't catch
a ride home
to save their life
we are loved
a little at a time
in portions
in what a person can stand
people can't stand much.
Poet James Diaz
In The Next Life You Are Unrecognizable
Where the word in you
came apart
and laughter
was the cruelest sound
you say no one
is spared
but sometimes
you have been
when no one
including yourself
was looking
midnight stretched its fingers
around your throat
like a father
you couldn't outrun
the space where your silence
searched for its counterpart
a stifled scream building its muscle
in the dark
who knows
how much life
may come
your way
when you least expect anything
when you are most beaten
the softest touch
the one that never happens.
Thousand Yard Stare, on the inside
Move this burn
a little
closer
any place the sun touches
scar lines follow
a haunting
is all of those things
you left unsaid
ghosts in the halls
of your voice
what pain brought you here?
did you really think no one would notice
how un-intact-
how broken you are?
This Boy's Life
Put yourself in your own shoes for once
pull at the sky like it was mother on fire
I mean lover on acid
which version do you prefer
the one where it will all be alright
or the one where we all die in the end
I had something for you
but you never showed up
and I go places too you know
back and forth
I've been in handcuffs
I've had the rough stuff
people have been afraid to get too close
and when they did I surprised them by being gentle
I have a low, girlish voice
but the hell in my stomach
would stillborn your life too
here's a short list:
blood on the wall,
mace in the eyes and down my throat
straight jacket
thorazine injections
tied to a board and left on the floor drooling
raped
leg smashed by a mother, age 7
father dipped his bloody hand in my glass of water
and I watched all that red swivel as I it poured down the drain
family feud shoot out at age 9,
told to get down on the floor while the inbreeds brandished rifles
out on the highway
you have no idea what you're capable of surviving until you do
loss works against us
and there is no guarantee
any of us has what it takes.
Secrets & Hallway Trash
The man down the hall is picking up trash
by the elevator
and singing to his sweet Ida
dead now for eighteen years
Thomas tells him it's creeping out the new residents
but all he ever says is “what can I say, I'm in love”
I'm smoking on the fire escape
thinking of Kentucky jails
after midnight
the dice and the heat of the room
piss and sweat and no way out
the boy who blew his fathers face clear off
with a double barrel
the heated fights over fruit juice with the family killer
that's how I learned to never back down
by crossing eyes with murderers
and coming away with the good stuff
“sweet, sweet Ida” lingers down the hall
against the smoke of the wallpaper
you can hear his shaky hands holding him steady
and the sad beautiful blues of that man
makes me want to cry all night long
maybe getting old won't be so bad
just maybe.
This Aloe, This Burn
body bending
through
the slant of
shattered light
I never understood
what to do with myself
these wild
overgrown
inner weeds
choking growth
if air existed
I never had
any of it
in my lungs
I couldn't even say
I love you
without a crack
opening up my face
like an atomic memory
held under water
till it confesses
I did those things
I suffered
laid out on highways
at 2 am
no-forbearance
throat sucker
full of rage
cutting in
and out
of this damaged skin
how do you do it,
live this broken
from the start?
James Diaz is the founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. heroinchic.weebly.com/ His work has appeared in Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Pismire, Collective Exile and Epigraph. He lives in upstate New York.
Isolation Central (the gravity belt poem, midway)
Cagey it was all Cagney like
x amount of hair do
starving starlings
condom park police-less
hostile punked out love
a sweat bond, this was 90 no when/or/where
some tiny miracles mean more
than a meal a day
having any luck
is having too much for some
I bang on the roof of your car
you're so fucking philosophical during a crisis
you can't even hear
straight
I've become a raindrop
the city warns its children to be wary of
happiness is a metaphor for not knowing just how fucked up we are inside.
Poet James Diaz
I Kissed The Foot Of A Footman
as if I were Sheba
and you an igloo gut figurine
down the hall is an ex-con next to an ex-queen
I don't deserve the level of suspicion I get
stepping outside
you'd think I was a ball of light
eating the bottom out of the earth
only a fast food neon
hugging chem smell makes me human
are you home? I need my left shoe back.
I need my sole/soul back.
Typical Bastard
Every lit down bar
stole some measure of my mind
had to give a social justice lecture
to an emotional/banker
was run down by Vance
he was no saint either
a god taken to freeway sleeping
the only after life
garbage breeze
setting water in a line
that travels nowhere
It's the day after the day before
you get one phone call
but numbers don't work
in this world
I'm a consumed bird, this is my life.
Tallest Building I Ain't Never
Spot me
or whatever
time the town closes
in an hour
as if
bartender
I didn't know
you live and
some don't
make it
dirty water drinking
sophisticated
subway conversations
by sterilized him and her
right next to those who are
already slowly dying
garbage bags on their feet
so annoying
but the i-phone
is outdated
graphic for sexual
service my end of the world
is bad day
hand bag
sold out
next
on line
next
there you are! Yes you!
The universe is in your back yard,
you are sixteen today
and your parents named you
after a vegetable,
Spinach Rodriguez
future Senator
earthly pain in the ass.
What world window
have you forgotten to close lately?
In there, look- some bent
in pain are watching
the day turn to night,
and sleep is beside the point
now
aren't you glad you came
for the drinks
but stayed for the social
consciousness?
Are we there yet?
The I Is Not Neutral
That shit
is over
talking about what got you
here
you might need
me when I no longer
need myself
so
fuck this rehabilitation scheme
mumbling all the time
I feel...
right?
Somehow unresolved, no
I am a nervous wreck!!!
Ever walk into a department store
and suddenly realize that you're
not supposed to be in there
because you are fucking homeless
and being completely without
ontologically
is a crime
from which we don't recover?
Isn't that interesting?
From a rhetorical viewpoint,
which gender device
is the author employing
when he/she writes
'I no longer need myself'?
COLD, I CAN'T FEEL MY FEET
CAN'T YOU SEE HOW small my world
has become?
Class, what do we think,
should we give him some money
even if it gets spent on booze?
Thirty Years A Memory
Tell yourself
how every island
lives with its own house
already sold
and how nothing grows
just because there is soil
and water available
to it.
Sometimes Silence Says it All
Parked her car out side
said Dale is at it again
been drinking on the job
lost it
and is taking it out on the kitchen table
axed it up
said he's building a boat
gonna sail around the world
see all the shit he never got to see
said he ain't interested in love anymore
even worse
says he don't know how much longer he can take it
all the things they keep our of your reach
"I guess what I'm asking is, can I stay here the night"
we drink all night by the fire
and I can see so much fear in her eyes
I don't know what to say
sometimes silence says it all.
Mood For Taro And Weeping
I want to undo
your bra strap
with a willow
branch
from the back yard
of a forgotten philosopher
Canetti, Coldplay
apocalypse pouring
like water from
the cup of your hands
into chronic pulse
the quirk where
language seizes up
by the 'not now'
and 'night, over there'
are you a thing with
a clasp and a hook
or
are you a non-working phone booth in Berlin
hit by heavy rain,
a worn out waitress
with nowhere to go
and everywhere to be?
On my finger is the boundary
marker
for your strange mouth
bruised fruit
fit into earth
womb war mediated by puns
you hope hunger is a traditional
allusion to the inside
of translation, what comes out is;
the world is made from stories
you've never told.
After we fuck
let's pull out all of the bad radishes
from the garden
so that the vegetable roots of the young
will have room
for their errors
