Poem That Wants to Use Revelation 3:16 as an Epigraph

A guy who was a regular

at the bar where I used to work

we called Peckerhead because

he looked sort of like a balder

Ginsberg, who looks like a pecker.

Well I have no idea how Ginsberg looks

now, but it’s probably pretty

peckeresque. Peckerhead drank dollar

drafts and was no doubt ten times

smarter than all us smartass bitchy

barmaids put together, maybe he

was a botanist or an actuary

or had some other clever gig. I felt kind

of guilty about it, even though we never

called him Peckerhead to his face, as far

as I know. Ginsberg died April 5 (1997),

birthday of Colin Powell (1937), so happy

b-day C.P. and happy d-day A.G. Inevitably

we would get loaded during our shifts, before

we killed ourselves or caught you-know-what

or left town before either of those things

or worse happened. Did I read somewhere

that Ginsberg fucked a guy who fucked

Whitman? Fucked/got fucked by? So stinky,

who cares. I must not see what fucking

is, other than stinky. If I had anything

to say about gender I’d already

be fucking you or paying Peckerhead

to fuck you. I think he was gay too.

All the girls we saw after work

at the porn store, their skin was

the color of a three-month-old

plaster cast. If I could make you

a real simile it would be like when

I turn into a boy I will wag

a pecker at you like a dirty mop

until it cracks and flops around like

my broken leg. No girls better

go there, Peckerhead always said,

no girls in the porn store.