Unicorn Junkie
By: M.R. Barnsley
Published by Beeber Publications at Smashwords
© Copyright 2009 M.R. Barnsley
Contents
1 Dirty
2 Baby Delilah Cries at the Moon
5 The First Five Lines Are the Title
7 Possession: Class D Substance
9 They Say I’m Not a Team Player
11 News at 11
12 RBH
13 Summer 2003
14 The Day I Fell In Love With You
15 Tragedy
16 Winter 2003
17 Dogs
18 Haiku 47
22 A Confession: My Secret to Dieting Success
Let’s Begin…
Dirty
She’ll go home tonight
To her vibrator and fantasies
She’ll power it up
With batteries and electricity
And have an orgasm
Thinking about god knows what
But it’s lonely for her
Because when she’s done
And the vibrating stops…
She’s had her fill
She’ll lie next to nothing
And when she has a nightmare
She’ll reach for the man
She wishes was there but isn’t
And feel only cool cotton sheets
I envy that emptiness
That loneliness
I’ll scream out the window
For the whores to stop singing
Their song about nothing
But I’ll only be a dog
Barking at the moon
Baby Delilah Cries at the Moon
blackened baby hole,
a womb of concrete and water
impregnated two days ago
by fear, shame, and a rejection
of motherly love,
similar in means to Moses
but with opposing ends
aside from the audience
of alley cats and garbage
(and with the natural exception of her mother)
an old Puerto Rican woman
was the first to hear Delilah
still in pseudo-utero,
herald her own presence into the world
with red lights
camera crews
and a song
written about
blackness
flashlights
and loneliness.
Maybe We’s Like Fish
dirty old boat
moving past the breakers
lines in tow
pulling huge nets behind
scooping them up like french fries
emptied onto the deck
checked and sorted into good and bad
dumped into factories
packaged neatly: Styrofoam and plastic wrap
cut up, eaten and shat
staying alive is work enough
when tempted by worms hiding hooks
or by feathering flies and
maybe we’re like that:
this god’s got his big net of Sin
and all we got is water
On The Death of Mei Ling, 19
Bang Bang Baby,
Run!
It’s a Chinese Fire drill.
2am
Downtown Crossing
Is as empty as her mind
&
The ringing snapshots
Echoing up
Flashing down
A wet cobblestone street
The Asian whores from Chinatown
Can’t pay their rent this month,
So their pimps respond in kind,
With kind words and kind hands
A siren drones on, out into the night
And screams with a calming madness.
She’s considered a statistic,
Her unfortunate end the result,
Of her unfortunate life
The lonely merry-go-round spins on,
And insists the ride’s not over,
Keeping company
With the ghostly riders of it’s past,
Who hang in the air,
Dancing there like the spider’s silken tears.
The city sleeps,
And its streets,
Cry, bleed, and protest,
The dawning of a new day
The First Five Lines Are The Title
crazy people,
looking back at Dinosaurs
with half-closed eyes,
bloodshot and glassy from irritation
caused by the dust mites and skin flakes of academia.
there’s nothing T-Rex
can say to the grizzly,
save a warning about
bullets and weather,
that the bear doesn’t already know.
rhyme, rhythm, and form
label Existence a “soul”
but they call that soul “art”.
the art of the soul can go on existing,
like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”
which waits on a wall somewhere
like how an old man
hangs around in his shared space,
an assisted-living dorm room
for his middle aged, yuppie children
to show up with grandkids and updates,
to take Gramps out on a three-day tour
of relatives and friends, all strangers,
who forgot grandpa’s soul
his existence, his art, because like Van Gogh
you can see it everyday
reproduced on post-cards,
tote bags, and ½ price posters.
existence, art and soul,
tell science what they are,
not the other way around
but,
crazy people,
believing in foreign forms
and dead languages
leave the future a mirror,
reflecting only the pox-pecked scars,
each one telling a story of
inquisitions & religious fervor,
or of flora as woman and love.
but the mirror is two-way for some
and with the right lighting
only those with diamonds for eyes
can see the Technicolor splendor on the
other side.
Heartache Is An Ugly Bitch
You're a fool, Ugly.
A tired dog, a hungry dog,
scratching at a door
too thick
too nice
too... closed
for anyone inside to hear you.
Oh sure, out on the streets,
down the dark alleys,
by the dumpsters and sewers,
they'll look down at you
and maybe they'll think you're cute.
Maybe they'll call you over
scratching their fingers together
saying "Here Boy!" to you
saying "Oh, he's so cute and homeless" to each other
and maybe you'll walk over
of course you'll walk over
but when you get close
and they can see your imperfections
like the light shining on your matted fur
or the wind blowing your stink to them
they'll see you
they'll smell you
and with wrinkled noses, repulsed,
they won't offer a hand out to pet you
instead, they’ll say "ewww"
right at you
"oh, he's gross"
so with no food to eat
and no hands to pet
you'll slink back down the alley
and resolve to
never
be called over
again.
Possession: Class D Substance
I was once an ally for those who smoked pot
Saying “I don’t give a fuck, it’s my right”
Until I got arrested
Possession: Class D Substance
Is what they called it
And I stayed up all night
Swearing at that camera in my cell
Screaming, “I’m insane, I’m an artist, don’t you know me?”
Thinking that I was somehow innocent
And that all the cops in Abington had lost their minds
It wasn’t until after I went through some forced, alien form of rehab
In a place in North Attleboro, Mass — a thirty minute commute mind you—
That I realized I was wrong…
Seeing people with no hope and no place to sleep
Can really shock the hell out of a white middle class kid
Who only went into this place to avoid a jail sentence
Someone who wasn’t taking it seriously
But when the pretty girl, the former cheerleader
The girl you would have killed to fuck in high school
Breaks down and starts into her hysterics because her asshole boyfriend
Couldn’t care less if she died or not
And wishes maybe she had…
And she remembers the rape so vividly
Even down to the cheap cologne he was wearing
She starts into these hysterical crying sessions