Gianni Sacco

Lil Junior
Was born an imposter
Given the name of an Irish lad
By a drunken, beating Irish man
Named Jack

Jack’s gun shot blanks
But he saw this newborn babe
as his own
A miracle child
Jack loved him so much that
He held a knife
To lil Junior’s mother’s neck
Forcing her to leap out
Of the moving auto
Breaking water
Road rash
Police
Labor
Forcing Junior to come
Wailing upon arrival

Junior came into this world
With one eye blind
A second skin
Even he didn’t want to see
This sad scene
He was born into

He came on a wave
Riding the back of disaster
A swath of destruction so wide
The talk was thick for decades

Jack lasted all of six months
Ran out on a rail
By a wanna be mafioso
Leaving lil Junior
The bastard
He was born
To be

The familia spoke
In secret tongues
From the Old Country
Quiet whispered tones
They talked about it
Just outta earshot
Of Junior
Couldn’t have him hear
His bastard birth
Was the biggest
Family
Scandal
Yet

Junior
A miracle
A ray of sunshine
An untouchable bastard
A mystery child
No one was
Quite sure who was who
In the equation
Of mother + ___ = Junior
But the answer
Wasn’t such a mystery
For Junior knew
The truth

Junior is an imposter
He is a nameless soul
He has no home
He has no legacy
He is alone
In all his bastard glory

We’re shadows on a spotlighted street, stretching and crawling and reaching for the light of the burning ember on the end of rolled up, dove-tailed, burning jay.

We stand around in a tight circle
to keep the cops away
to keep the smell away
to keep the others away.

We are a band of tea-heads inhaling to save our lives, chasing the thoughts that only serve to bring us down. Gotta get higher, gotta get nummer, gotta get goner.

We gather around and pass it around and if you’re not in our circle then stay-the-fuck-away.

We don’t need any passers by, tea-heads like only other tea-heads when we stand in the circle. Like the mad ones only liking the other mad ones, like the hipsters only liking the other hispsters, like the poets who stand in front of cold microphones trying to be someone, something, somewhere…

We tea-heads stand here in our circle and pass the rolled up dove-tailed burning ember from tea-head to tea-head and say tea-headed things like, “someday we’ll be the ones, the firestarters”

and

“who knows where we will be lil allen, the whole mad swirl of everything to come begins now, dude. this is our on the road, this is our howl, this is our naked fucking lunch!”

But who gives a fuck what we do ‘cos it’s nothing compared to the truth, the words, or this tight circle of tea-heads standing under cold street spotlights, casting cold shadows on a cold autumn night. The rolled up dove-tailed jay goes wafting away and the circle breaks and we all go our seperate tea-headed ways.

The hot blonde with a blue dress on
checking me checking her out
from over her vintage pink sunglasses
at 8:35pm, Saturday night, 23rd Street, Portland.

A walking sexpot
straight out of Bukowski’s sordid world.
She half turned that fuck-machine body
in that painted on baby blue dress
and caught me red-handed
checking those hips for grips
and fucking her hard in my mind…
…and she smiled as she walked away.

Walking feet strolling down 23rd Street at 10:15pm.
An out-of-towner looking for a friendly smile.
They don’t dole those out here
in Portland Oregon
like Big D does.
I walk in silence
thru Saturday night couples,
missing my woman,
my girl,
my friendly shadows…
my way back home.

To snatch a line from Mr. MoJoRison
“People are strange when you’re a stranger”.
‘Tis true Lizard King,
taking for instance this land-o-port,
no one seems pleased to smile at me.
Hippie chicks with hippie dicks
either not too hip or too hip, anti-hip if you will.
But such is the luck of the transplant walker,
such is the luck of me.

Seedy bar seat 23rd Street, 12:30 am, Saturday night
with cops in combat boots and motorcycle tights
looking for barroom fights to break up.
Don’t look my way officer.
You don’t got no trouble with me.
This stubble you see is a double of me
for the tough guy I was just trying to be.
There surely is somebody somewhere here on 23rd getting…

Robbed
Beaten
Raped
Stomped
Shot
Assaulted
Insulted
Abused
Invaded
Held-up
Held-down
Lying
Crying
Dying

Surely you should be tending to they
and look past me,
writing about you
in this corner seat,
23rd Street, Portland

Yeah sure, it’s true, I got turned on, I got burned out and I got learned too. That’s just the way it goes. But who’s to say whether I minded the burn. And who’s to say the burning was a bad thing anyway? Pain is in the nerves of the feeler. Much like pleasure. And since pain and pleasure seem to bleed into one another, the pain of the fire can almost be called pleasure…the pleasure is in the pain. Pleasure begat the pain. Pleasure was the cause and pain the effect. Fire-burn-pleasure-yearn.

Mine is the story of the man-child who never learned that fire is hot, that hot burns, that burns hurt and that hurts pleasurable. It’s that initial flame is the game that’s got me hooked. It’s this yearning for the burning, it’s this craving for the misbehaving. The fire of addiction is an affliction of my soul. It singes my edges and brings me to my knees always begging please, baby please. When temptation comes a-knocking on my door, (knock-knock) dressed as a hot red head with C’s way up high and tight and a fire burning between her legs just dying for a lying in the sack. (knock-knock) The Asian girl who has a twinkle in her cat like eyes when she says “Hi” from behind the convenient store counter. (knock-knock) The big boned bimbo bottled blonde who’s fat tits push out of her push-up bra and says someday I can tap that fat ass, if I’m lucky. (knock-knock) The studiously bespeckled sex toy dealer with loud orgasmic blasts that lasts and lasts and echoes in the predawn light. (knock-knock) Temptation keeps a’knockin’ and I can’t help but reach for the flame, I am powerless. The misbehavin’ is what I’m cravin’.

Bad lil’ boys need the joys of wicked scenes and slickened toys, things of wet dreams but this time, just this once, I won’t wake up. I can’t wake up. I shant wake up. The beast in me must nourish the lust and bust this gord wide open. I’m as stiff as a board and I dip my head down with a tube up my nose and sniffing the white rose of the devil herself as she holds the flame behind her fine behind and just as I am savorin’ the flavorin’, she’ll burn me to the bone and I’ll like it just fine.

Believe the hype. The fire’s as hot as it looks.

Following the bumblebee…

Flyin’ down I-35
Headin’ North
Head gone
Trippin’ balls

My right hand rips into the wheel
as my left hand, unbeknownst to me,
reaches out and slams a hole
thru the windshield

Brake lights-spot lights
of the devil himself
tracing ’round this concrete trail of death
in these shoddy mechanical metal coffins.

The sky cries silver. No shit. Silver.
My eyes begin to drop,
hanging by threads of nerves.
I notice that my lap is coming closer

I see a highway deconstructing.
It’s pointing to heaven, falling to hell
reaching for heaven, collapsing to hell
Going some where, going no where…

Tripping balls
Daytime, up I-35
Fleeing South
Sanity gone
Bumblebee buzzes

“Shhh,” I say to the menagerie of ghosts,
“my FM is trying to tell me something.
It’s saying shit I’d never heard it say before.”
Echoes echo thru the madhouse of my mind.

Should I stop?
Perhaps pull over?
I am a couple drops over
the illegal trip limit
and after all…

The sky is raining, silver no less
and my eyes, my precious baby blues,
are rolling around the floorboard
vicariously at my feet
and that highway to heaven, to hell
is looking enticing to me right about now.

Maybe I should stop…
the car, the drugs, the games, the ride,
the madness, the insanity.
Hmmm.

But the tracers keeps tracing
and the sky keeps crying…silver
and my eyes keep hanging and dangling
and my shoddy metal coffin keeps driving
and I’m flying
trying to keep up
with the bumblebee…

Flyin north on I-35
Fleeing south
trippin’ balls.

to the view of yet another
unremarkably unfamiliar ceiling

I awoke with
last night’s breath
a stiff lower back
and a stuffed’n’running fuckin’ nose

And I’m not quite hanging-over
as much as I’m hanging-on

white-knuckled &
balls-to-the-walls

on the edge
of respect-ability
of reason-ability
of response-ability

Why, on this particular sunrise,
did the dichotomy inside of me
wrestle with such damned ferocity?

Black and white
began the same age ol’ fight
as my last grasp
began to slip

And now my conniving mind
is trying to find reason
in seeking just
one more ride
down the rail
on this quietly quaint
Sunday morn

The debate began
as I cracked my lids
and got vertical

No don’t.

Ah, just one more for the road.

You can’t.

You can!

My mind played the cliché –

stop/go
yes/no

– games

And the verdict
well, it took too damn long

‘cos it was dawn
and if it was gonna be done
then let’s get it on

Walking the line
I fell to my knees
and kissed her feet
one last time.

and one more for the road.