A Jew in Texas. By Mike Zone

wandering dirty sixth street 

crossing in

 and out of bars wondering 

if I could do the random carnal thing 

while she slept

 pounding drinks

 infuriated by exhaustion, depression 

her medication, 

waiting 

always waiting

 just my fate isn’t it?

 the good guy always destined to wait but oh, oh if he embarks on sin 

let him suffer whether he does or not 

the full brunt of whatever 

and whoever 

has come before

masked blue velvet eyes and platinum hair

looking for fight instead 

too in love to fuck

a random stranger

fight instead

like the younger days

 despite the dislocated shoulder

back pain 

hernia 

remember the time you  broke the rich boy’s legs for money?

how that was the best burger you ever ate in a motel room after spending about three months living out of a honda civic?

WHERE ARE THE SIX-SHOOTERS AND THE TEN GALLON WHITE COWBOYS HATS?!

Give me some of the cartel cocaine on the street

 how is this “dirty”?

 police have it closed off

 get you cab right outside the barricades across from a Starbucks

Apparently, no one rides horses down the street

in Austin 

but my Sri Lankan cab driver is obsessed

 with an Irish racecar driver 

“The gentlemen racer”

 telling me 

where to dine, drink and dance

 with my girl 

when she wakes up

 if she ever wakes up…

Did I wander into an Irish pub in Texas intermingling flirtatiously with a Mexican waitress drinking a locally brewed IPA bonding over water never drank but dutifully ordered by families drunk and loading babies into car seats?

Yes, I did…

Instead of blindly stumbling into an oil field 

not unlike one in my dreams 

where two transsexual women took an effeminate rich boy

 fucking him from both ends

 as the field burst into flames

 one having a portrait of the other between her breasts

 real raven haired pulp femme fatale cutie type 

if you’re into that kind of thing

 of which you

 I or maybe all of us may be

Suffocating pores

“at least there is tacos and beer” 

the bald Englishmen of a sexually questionable nature 

as three artificial menopausal barbies

 walked past

 needing to be waterboarded

my ride home

the Russian orphan

 with a kid on the way

 bonding over slyly veiled drug trade 

talked to me of bats 

the  sunset

 then sighed as we drove away 

from the lawfully erected border

“They block off the street

 to keep the civilized tigers 

from eating the rest.”

Mike Zone is the author of A Farewell to Big Ideas, Void Beneath the Skin, Better than the Movie: 4 Screenplays and Fellow Passengers: Public Transit Poetry, Meditations and Musings. A contributing poet to Mad Swirl and contributing writer to the graphic novel series American Anti-hero by Alien Buddha Press. His poetry and stories have appeared in: Horror Sleaze Trash, The Daily Dope Fiend, Outlaw Poetry, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos and Triadæ Magazine.