Combating the angles :Milf ok, Milf no way!

I am a sucker for a sexy woman in her 40's and always have been, especially when they have short blonde hair, so when I saw this profile photo I was intrigued:

She looks like she'd be a lot of fun. She's cute and pixie-like. But the lesson comes in digging through all of her photos. I came across this one in her set:

Pixie-like no more. I'm sure she's not a bad lady, and she didn't really work the angles too hard, but still she looks a lot more harsh up close. The lesson is: make sure they have both a full-body (at least full-torso) photo, and and a close up. If they don't then ask, if they say they don't have those photos then let it go, they are hiding something.

Combating the "angles" a guide for men. Lesson 1

Fellas, if you've ever spent any time on the internet dating sites then you have undoubtedly been a victim of the "angles". What are the angles you ask? The angles are the camera tricks used by women to make themselves appear to be something they are not. Usually the angles are used to hide weight or some sort of physical defect. Usually a decent looking woman will have both a full length front view picture, and a face shot. Not so fat girls. I will attempt to give examples as the days go by. Example one: This is a shot I call the "fantasy". It is a gleaming, soft-focused and dreamlike face shot. It appears to show a "dream-girl".

Be advised: NEVER be fooled by such a shot! Actual pretty women want you to see how they look! They don't rely on tricks like this! Here is a non-fantasy shot of the same woman-

Yes it's the same woman! Also notice she is attempting two additional angles in this one, the "overhead"
(trying to conceal body size by using perspective, and the "blackout" (in which she attempts to hide most of her size by using darkness). Just imagine how large she would be in a full-on front shot! I will discuss the "overhead" and "blackout" in more detain in future installments.

Turbodog

Turbodog, Budweiser
fuel a spring fever that
races like a jailbreak
at the zoo.
As I run around like some
cultured ape, looking
through tigers eyes
predatory eyes
like a bionic man
honing in on my idea
of beauty, fairness
soft features
velvet skin
her build either
slight enough to
hoist into the air
and crush in my arms
or maybe just solid enough to deliver
a concrete flesh reality
to my addled brains.
And oh Goddamnit
the testosterone is
pumping all frantic
and mainline
like an old-time
junkie’s worst
nightmare of
total awareness.
Every hair
is a razor blade
set on edge in your skin.
Skin that is
aglisten with
your own blood
and yer just a-grinnin' like
the cultured ape
of a maniac that
you are. Kissing
random ears and
necks in the
crowd with that
total hypno-eyed
Count Dracula groove
of fear and fascination.
Love and sex are
tangled up all
brambles in blue jeans
so you don’t care
as long as it don’t hurt
and she smells good.

Her mind is fluff
but that cotton candy
smile fills your
Technicolor daydreams
with a jumpstart heartbeat.
You are the Goddamn
king of
this jungle. You are
the Goddamn predator
of brick and concrete
and broken glass.
A lover in a land
of gaslit memories
and presentries
of vivid
black and white watercolor
treacheries
rendered by the
most proficient of the
syringe-armed sirens.

There is a question mar shaped scar
in the skin over her heart, but
you don’t even begin to
wonder.

But now Spring fever
has struck like
aluminum
bat in the teeth
as the tide turns
like a Big Wheel with a spinout bar
cause now you’ve
come out
of your hibernation, into a
Prozac-popping April.

Blue skies
night breezes
haunting laughter
brambles
razor hair
velvet skin
Turbodog.

Austin, TX. 1996

This girl

This girl
This blonde thing
In her black tights
Playing punk rocker

The crush I had on her
Following her
Begging of her
Thinking that if
I tried hard enough
I could win her over

But meeting her brother
Who called me Kunta Kinte
And seeing the raggedy
Highway-shack that
She was raised in
Woke me up
To the whole other planet
She was from

And as my passions cooled
I began to search for
Other potential girlfriends
Playing punk-rocker
Who’d never
Ever love me.

"Did you hear that my Jenny got a drawing job with her art?"

I refuse to believe that I can be accused of "picking on" Archie "artists". How can I make fun of someone that is paid actual money for their drawings. But since they are paid actual money (that I paid them by purchasing the book) I feel that it is sometimes necessary to critique their form. From Jughead's Double Digest #126, copyright 2007, I found this:

 

Where do I start?

Anime is an art form from Japan, and in my opinion it should be left in the hands of the Japanese. When Americans try to do Anime they get their big, bulky American-hands on the pen and fuck everything all to hell. Unfortunately too many 20-somethings were raised on Anime that was readily available on TV, DVD and online. There were books that taught the tricks of drawing Anime and special art supplies. All this and still the round-eyes fuck it all up. I tried drawing in Anime style once and I realized that it wasn't natural to me, SO I FUCKING QUIT IT! Unfortunately the same cannot be said for this... "artist".

I don't know if the blame is still placed on men for women's low self-esteem and body issues. It used to be placed there, but I stopped listening about 15 seconds within the first nonsensical salvo. Men don't push Cosmo or Redbook or any other fashion magazine. At least not straight men. My theory is that gay men and straight women study fashion design and they all have the same terrible drawing style. You know that style that looks like tall thin police-sketches. Rather than learn how to draw they choose to look for "women" whose freakish bodies mimic the horrendous drawing style. Straight men don't like broomstick bodies. If you want to know what a man likes then look at a Hustler magazine. I'm afraid it's women who continue to propagate the whip-thin body form. Now, I can't make out the signature, but by the flowery writing it is clear that this was drawn by a woman. And this woman is not quite through growing up. There are a few points I'd like to make about the body form itself:

1) Say the average American girl of 16 has a head that is 8-inches high. If we look at this drawing and measure the number of heads it would take to reach from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet we come up with nine heads or 72 inches. That means that Sabrina here is six-feet tall. Her waist is six-inches across, which gives it a circumference of 18-inches. If she raised her hand in class her elbow would be six-inches above her head. Her feet are also six-inches long. With her proportions all I can think is that perhaps the artist was attempting to draw a deer.

Are we still blaming men for the body-issues thing? No? Good.

Aside from her freakish height-to-weight ratio she has a huge left hand. She could arm-wrestle an orangutan with that thing. What I find particularly disturbing is her left leg. Did she have an accident? Birth defect? If not then she needs to be sitting with her body facing us to get that leg angle to work.

As I said, I really can't make fun of someone who is possibly making a living as an artist, even if they still draw like they are in high-school art-class. At this point I seriously have to consider working for Archie comics. It's one of those jobs where you'd get to say, "Well, at least I can't do any worse than the last guy!"

Good night nurse!

Another CL ad

Here's a Craigslist personal that caught my eye:

im the one that you want! - 24 (n.atx)

---

Date: 2011-01-21, 5:57PM CST

---

im short hispanic i have a son im kinda shy at first but once i warm up to you im pretty outgoing i like to go out with friends listen to music go to the movies i just like to have a good time i have a couple of tattoos and piercings im thick and curvy in just the right places im looking for someone preferably hispanic but it doesnt matter if ur not...between 21-30.......please have a job and a car i want a man not a boy im always the one to wear the pants in a relationship and i want to be taken care of for once if u think im being picky im sorry i know what i want and i like what i like if u dont like it move on im not here to play games been there done that i want someone who will respect me a treat me the way i deserve to be treated i hate to be lied to im pretty blunt and as long as ur straight up with me im alright with it i have nothing to hide and see no reason to play games i hate to be ignored and love attention if ur interested email me and YOUR PIC GETS MINE!!!





There are several interesting things I find in this ad.

1) This person, much like most young people, obviously uses the text-message as her main form of communication. I say this for a few reasons:

a)This is an ad she is using to find a date, yet she forgets to use any punctuation. It makes me think that this would be what it's like to talk to her. Long run-on sentences without a breath in between. Me staring at her as she goes from subject to subject without pause. "Cupcakes are good my son has Polio does the toilet run like that all the time Christ died because the Jews were Jews..."

b)I thought that perhaps her shift key was broken, but at the end of her run-on missive she screams at me, "YOUR PIC GETS MINE." Which in plain English means that she looks like John Goodman in drag, but wants to date a man that looks like Ricky Martin.

c) There's no foreplay. She goes right into, "i'm short hispanic". It's like finding a page from a Burroughs novel laying on the sidewalk.

If we break this ad down line by line;

i'm the one you want! - 24= I really want to get married
(n.atx)= Not a tranny cross-dresser 
im short hispanic= I need an Hispanic or two for some reason
i have a son= I grew up with abstainence-only sex education and it didn't take.
im kinda shy at first but once i warm up to you im pretty outgoing= Guys usually wind up hitting on me after the pretty girls have turned them down and the bar's about to close. After they have a one-nighter with me I won't stop calling and dropping by their apartments.
i like to go out with friends listen to music go to the movies i just like to have a good time= I really have no hobbies besides doing what a group of other people are doing first.
i have a couple of tattoos and piercings= Everyone else said it was cool, so I did it too.
im thick and curvy in just the right places= In just the right places to fill out 42 waist pants, or perhaps model Hoverounds.
im looking for someone preferably hispanic but it doesnt matter if ur not...= My parents want me to marry Mexican, but I'm desperate.
between 21-30.......= I don't know how to talk to people outside of my immediate age-group.
please have a job and a car i want a man not a boy im always the one to wear the pants in a relationship and i want to be taken care of for once if u think im being picky im sorry i know what i want and i like what i like if u dont like it move on im not here to play games been there done that i want someone who will respect me a treat me the way i deserve to be treated i hate to be lied to im pretty blunt and as long as ur straight up with me im alright with it i have nothing to hide and see no reason to play games= I have terrible taste and will date the first douchebag that comes along and hands me a smooth line.
i hate to be ignored and love attention= I am extremely needy.
if ur interested email me and YOUR PIC GETS MINE!!= As stated above.

So, a literal and honest reading of this ad would be:

I'm 24 and really want to get married. I'm not a tranny or cross-dresser.

If you happen to have extra I could use an Hispanic or two. I grew up with abstainence-only sex education and it didn't take. Guys usually wind up hitting on me after the pretty girls have turned them down and the bar's about to close. After they have a one-nighter with me I won't stop calling and dropping by their apartments. I really have no hobbies besides doing what a group of other people are doing first. For example, everyone else said it was cool to have tattoos and peircings, so I did it too. I'm fat enough to fill out 42 waist pants, or perhaps model Hoverounds. My parents want me to marry Mexican, but I'm desperate, so whatever...
I don't know how to talk to people outside of my immediate age-group, so don't be outside it. I have terrible taste and will date the first douchebag that comes along and hands me a smooth line. I am extremely needy. 

If you are interested email me. Send me your picture and if it looks like Ricky Martin I'll send you a picture of my Cousin who is very pretty, but looks nothing like John Goodman in drag. If you don't look like Ricky Martin you will never hear from me.

Honesty is the best policy.

Seriously

I responded to this Craigslist personal:

 
and this is the response I received:

The truth of the matter is that CL has been overrun by spammers and only 1/100 ads are posted by a real woman nowadays. So where are the real women? They are on credible dating sites like this one that will not ask you for a card number or anything like that just to sign up. Real women are interested in meeting guys through the internet just not on sites like craigslist. Why? This is the facebook age, and CL is way behind the times. http://www.wingmeet.com

Now, what gets me about this particular spam is that it downgrades most of the Craigslist personals as useless spam, even though it, in itself, was useless spam. 
No big revelations, I just thought this was a strange way to try and get business. 

The American Standard of Beauty

Two water balloons stuck on a coathanger.

Stop That!!

I was tooling around the Information Superhighway when I happened upon this:

 

This is what is known in layman's terms as ,"HOLY FUCKING SHIT, LOOK AT HER ASS!!

 

Of course it's probably Photoshopped, but that doesn't stop my visceral reaction, and my desire to see this photo a little larger, so I click on it.

And I get this page. A larger photo, but her ass is getting cut off. I want the goods, so I click again.
I know what you're thinking; virus, spyware, spam...

No, just a page with information about the causes of Fibromyalgia. Hosted by these two:

Now, I don't want to seem shallow, but this is like running into a strip club only to have the girls come up and start asking you if you "know the Lord". Yes, Fibromyalgia is a problem, and the education of the public about this condition is of utmost importance, however after seeing these two. I ain't gonna read this shit! You know who could convince me to read this article?

                     Dr. Molly Bigass M.D.

Just sayin'...

The Man With the X-Ray Eyes

One whole week I'd waited all little boy Christmas eve, for the calendar date to sync the reciept date. Time felt unfulfilled super-powers at half-mast. Big day came overcast monster-making weather. I wheel my muscular-car into the Black and Mexican Wal-Mart parking lot. Head down head to the door, wind whipping dreadlocks Medusa and car-coat wizard's-robes. Wal-mart eye-mart thousand blank stares from the sightless eyes lining the walls.
Hand the lady the reciept and she brings back a shallow white plastic tray with my shades. There they were like a bio-hazard science-experiment inky black wraparounds. Head down head back still wearing Urkel-eyes. Cannot bear the special transformation in front of others.
Raindrops patter splatter mud-dust circles on the windshield. Slip into the seat, close door, nerd eyes dropped and the darkness becomes me, rising reflected smiling in the rearview. Cyclopean ebony blindfold gleams oil-spill in the stormy afternoon twilight.
Back at the Batcave posing before the looking-glass all bad-boy grins dangling cigarette and popped-collar.
These eyes within eyes out now in the herd looking. Finally alpha-males stare-down litle boy darkness phobia Boogeyman. Finally head up eyeballs searching feeling the bodies of the females judging slave-block asses in denim and fishnet. The blindfold, the mask, the darkness gives more sight than natural ocular jellyballs.
More a Jekyll and Hyde face-twister incubated in grey-matter recovered from years of ape-pack monkey-bite locker-room epics.

Footprints Updated

One night a man had a dream.

He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.

For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it.

“Lord, You said that once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.”

The Lord replied, “Really? You know right now there are children with cancer and people starving to death, right? Stop your whining!"

Dodge

Chug chug monkey
choke on the cigar spit black ink. Six cylinders slanted low profile

fed by anemic one barrel spoon-feeding
cocksucker 10 degrees and the engine is made of ice
running high idle carbon trail print in the dirty snow like
a filthy tail or a sooty skid-mark of an invisible turd which has made a hollow under the exhaust.
Chug-a-lug dirty plugs like a pug pounded punchy out of prime red meat slab on a hook
another another. Bench seats worn bumbled infused summer ass-stench. Seasons pass rusty car-cancer spreading body, frame, nuts and bolts. Noise like a pushcart full of rocks and fishing-weights as it rumbles over the potholed streets, amazing raggedy monster thing incubating teenage adventure. Burning memories like only rust-bucket beater into a 40 year-old mind.

Meat

What did I see?

 Does the meat sit high or low? I thought it was baby-fat but look again and it's flabby hanging Auntie arms. How does this hocus-pocus peek-a-boo happen? Girl at the bar-stool seen through inky wraparounds and beer-goggles; back at my place me stripping off her clothes and groping her flesh, my paws sinking into smushy softness, fat sack hanging on the bone tree. Then my pelvis punching penile purple prose against her pillowy center. The veil completely lifted from me upon climax like Dr. Jeckyll and Buster Guts my mind races in horror. Trapped. Held fast in her afterglow

On the eve of my 31st birthday

Piss colored sweat stains drying out on my wifebeater
as bourbon bleeds out of my sleepless pores.

Anti-depressants
that blew me up like summer roadkill
sit unused in my kitchen cabinet.
I will try to feed them to the stray cats.

This seventeen year-old laughter
comes bursting out
all manic and spit-flecked
at funerals
and declarations of love.

Laughter at bitter memories
like a foul chattering wind through the
tracheal cartilage clarinet
deedledeedledeedledeedldeedledeedle...

and my ass itches
and I stink
and women are afraid of me
and I don’t care.

Sleeping with
a blue-steel equalizer
under the pillow.
Waiting for the stranger’s reveille.
goodnight... goodnight.

-Austin, TX. 1998

Nineteen

She makes me lose control I say

cause she’s nineteen with baby-fat

her waist just like a willow branch

her curves a tidal wave.

Her voice is sweet and clears her lungs

much like a mad tormented bull

which snaps its yoke and runs amok

berserking through the abattoir.

She makes me lose control I said

and all my cool has gone the way

of broken ice that’s chipped and shaved

to sculpt and birth a gleaming swan.

She is to me the essence of

the paints and lights of circus shows

and me the boy who walks the aisles

the man who walks the wire.

So if I were to walk the streets

vain as any wealthy patron

with spectacles perched firmly

in this paupers jacket pocket

I would recognize her form, if blind

she, the angel of the storefronts

her silhouette cut razor clean

in contrast to the satin dusk.

And my eyes so cold and jaded

running across her wondrous frame

like Braille beneath blind fingertips

they turn from wolfs to teddy bears.

She makes me lose control I say

my placid Fonzerelli cool

lay torn and tossed like carrion

which falls from awkward vulture jowls.

But if there was a time at which

Id care for things like poise or style

the time is now, as I’m laid low

grinning like an awestruck child.

-Austin, TX. 1994

Mississippi

Southern faces

pale and fat

biscuit dough faces

flat-nosed dead-eyed

faces, faces and bellies

swollen tick bellies

dripping drooping over

belts and skirts

pressed against

buffet line breakfast bars.

Waddling fat asses

large and shapeless in

cop uniform pants

men with guns and

giant sack of flour

women asses cooling in

the air-conditioned SUV

seats racing nascar fantasy

interstates.

Drunken sloppy vomit in

the kudzu Friday night

strip bar night of rat-eyed

Southern faces plastered

with beer drool ogling

women things, genetic

mishap female things

in pretty women

costume bodies

that dont quite fit.

Snatching dollar bills

tentacle quick

fish cold swimming

through cloudy water

sewer music shit plastered

tastes spit covered

mall parking lot.

Buy a stripper something

anything for

fallen Southern belle

deserving entitlement

lazy ex cotton-picker

nose picking moron

cashiers

tattooists

newspaper columnists

TV commercial producers

shaping expectation

whittling down to

Simple Simon pie-faced

Moon Pie doctors

lawyers drawling

drooling professional

babboons looking

down their noses

throwing shit

at the monkeys

in the other tree.

-Jackson, MS. 2003

You're just like me, only you get to sit down!

You would think that if you were going to start doing public-service announcements for a disease such as Cerebral Palsy you might do a little research on the disorder, or at least attempt to treat the characters in a dignified manner, right? Right?  Oh come on, this is an Archie comic. You should know better! Let's see how the Riverdale gang handles such a sensitive topic.

What they do is have their resident Sociopath, Reggie Mantle, challenge a wheelchair-bound Randy to a game of one-on-one. What kind of a kid's writer even comes up with a premise like that? And check out the look on Reggie's face-

Something tells me if Betty wasn't standing there, Reggie just might douse Randy in gasoline and set him ablaze! Seriously, there's something really wrong with the concept of Reggie. Look at his eyes! But does Randy fold under the deflating pressure of cruel reality? No, he accepts the challenge, and-

Okay... He rockets around the aggressive, egotistical jackass, with the speed and dexterity of... well, a person that doesn't have Cerebral Palsy. Have you ever been around someone with Cerebral Palsy? Obviously the Archie gang hasn't. CP patients aren't exactly known for their speed and dexterity, yet Randy here has managed to both outmaneuver and simultaneously exhaust a physically-healthy 17 year-old bully in (judging by Randy's speed) a matter of minutes.

 What do we learn from this, kids? Well, we learn 2 things:

1) People with Cerebral Palsy are a lot faster and more coordinated than other people. Hell maybe their "disease" is actually some sort of superpower, and they only sit down all the time to avoid injuring other people as a result of supersonic walking.

 2) Reggie is probably going to murder Randy in his sleep for showing him up. Y'know, cause that's what Sociopaths do.

It's not just cruel people like Reggie that are a problem for persons with CP. "Hildy" over here, has another problem.

 

Hildy here might not audition for the school production of Romeo and Juliet. But not because they didn't have wheelchairs in Shakespearean times and it would have been an awkward and foreign concept to his reality.You see, it's tough for Hildy to get around. Not because she has CP but because she doesn't have a ramp to the stage. Luckily the janitor happens to be standing there eavesdropping on students' conversations and holding his woodworking tools. Lucky Hildy! Svenson is on it!

Somehow Svenson manages to build a wheelchair ramp within the day's tryouts, without disrupting the auditions. He's good. Or maybe the Riverdale High kids just said, "fuck it, I ain't gonna tryout against a girl in a wheelchair. Only a dick would do that. Maybe Reggie was too homophobic to try out for a woman's part in a play cause that's the only reason he's not up there jamming a stick in her wheels, or calling her a "cripple". But what about Hildy? Why in the hell is she auditioning for this play? Do you know how much work would be involved in re-tooling Romeo and Juliet to accommodate a person in a wheelchair? Not to mention how confused and uncomfortable the whole thing would be for the audience? Come to think of it, maybe Reggie couldn't audition because he's already playing the part of a CP patient named Hildy!

Bus

In pitch blackness
the light from that little
West Texas backwater
looked pretty brilliant.

The bus stopped at a 7-11 where
30 rustic white teens were
"hanging out"
with their cowboy hats, snuff
and cars.
What kind of town does
it take
for the 7-11
to be the popular spot?

I slid down low in my seat
to avoid being seen
through the
window.

Negronomicon Intro

It would be fair to say that I’ve been drawing nearly my entire life. The first drawing that I can recall making was at the age of three. I had an old volume of Hans Christian Andersen stories in my bedroom closet and one day I decided to hang out in the closet, saw the book, and noticed an etched-portriat of the author on the endpaper leaf.
I found a pencil and began to copy the image on the previous blank leaf. A strange sensation came over me, a concentration that I wasn’t used to. I remembered looking at the pencil tip and hoping it didn’t dull out before I finished because I knew that if I had to get up to find a sharpener that the magic would be lost. When I finished I had a pencil drawing of Hans Christian Andersen. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was way beyond anything that a three year-old was supposed to be doing. In my memory it was comparable to a concerted effort by an adult that had never drawn before, in the third day of a life-drawing class.
My father had been reading and collecting comic books and magazines all of his life, so I was absorbing comics from my earliest days. I lost my interest in drawing for a few years, but regained it again at the age of 9 or 10 when I saw the cover of CREEPY #75 which featured a winged-demon attacking a hot-air balloon .
At the time (and I think this was a common delusion) I thought that comic books were not drawn, but stamped from a master set of image stamps, or maybe made by some drawing machine. Even though I saw the artists names sometimes listed on the page I would still fall back into the stamping delusion. Cover paintings, on the other hand, were obviously painted by an individual and seeing that painting made me want to be able to draw that image. Unfortunately the intervening 7-year period between drawing Hans Christian Andersen and wanting to draw winged-demons had robbed me of both confidence and concentration.
But… I finally had the most important thing, which was desire.
I
Skip forward a few years and you would find me furiously drawing in my spiral notebooks in an attempt to deal with the boredom and bullying of high-school. The Negronomicon is a collection of the comics that I did between 1996 and 2006. What’s unique about these comics is that they were all drawn at a series of jobs in an attempt to deal with the boredom and frustration with being a Security Guard or a Customer Service Rep or an Ion-Implant Tech. With the exception of the Dog Catcher story these stories were all freehand drawn in notebooks with ballpoint pen. I had no idea when drawing any of them that there would never be so many pages collected together, but as Rupert Everett said in Dellamorte Dellamore, “Life goes on”.
-Al Frank
Austin, TX. 2010

Looking through their eyes

Looking through their eyes
it was hard for me to
walk
as I judged my walk
as stiff and “white”
and hated myself.

I saw myself
through their eyes
on the
Football field
Basketball court
Baseball diamond
Hell of high-school gym class
stumbling around
in ignorance of the rules
and fear of the hurtling spheres
and I judged myself
a useless faggot.

I saw myself through their eyes
talking to white kids
and it appeared both
that I hated being black
and that I was better
than those black faces
watching me.

I saw myself in my
outdated boot-cut jeans
and leather jacket
as a nerd and
a freak.
Something beyond
explanation.

I saw my delicate face
and thin limbs
and heard my “proper” talk
and saw myself as
a victim waiting to happen.
I saw my thin frame
trying to remain invisible
as I walked the halls
between classes
only to wind up hunched
over a spiral binder
drawing comics, while
the teacher talked on about
Algebra.

Through their eyes
I saw myself walking
stiffly to the stage
in my graduation gown
to the deafening sound
of no applause.

And later, through other eyes I saw
my nappy hair and
full lips
set against
the sea of punk rockers
all white.
I saw myself trying to be
punker than them
to camouflage the blackness.

Through their eyes
I saw a strange dreadlocked
black man in an elevator
maybe a rapist
or robber
probably ignorant.

For 40 years I missed
everything that was
right in front of me.
half my life sacrificed
to the beast with a million eyes.

Punk Rock Princess

She showed up last year

with a group of drunken babies, hedonists and

troubled look-at-me’s.

She was plastered with all the

Punk-rock concentrated jim-jams:

Mohawk

ripped fishnets

combat boots

bra through net-top

facial tattoos

plaid miniskirt

bullet-belt

Belladonna gap-tooth smile

and shot through with stainless.

Baptized in a barrel of butcher knives with

an advanced degree in

taking her clothes off.

Not pretty in the Marie Claire Sorority way

but like a blinding light

in the Austin TX swamp of

doughy Bettie Page haircut

pre-fab Rockabilly Stepford wives.

She now spends her time

shaking her ass

to pay for 5-dollar hamburgers and

cab rides for her

cleft-chinned boyfriends.

Rockers with teeth in their

hearts and brains,

bartenders with dead eyes

leather-wearing versions

of young Republicans in

date-rape shirts spelled out in Greek.

This punk-rock world as closed-minded and limited

as any Jew-hating country-club.

Loss follows her as she chases

Dogs made of shadows through

The perfect cobweb.