CannibalPoem3
Cornering A Criminal Lawyer Over Allegedly Polish Pierogis at the Christmas Party
or How I Learned to Unspool Myself from The Truman Show of Dorian Grey & Love Black Cats
The Allegedly Polish restaurant
preys on ignorant Angelenos,
promising everything is just like Poland
But I have done time in Poland
The restaurant is a concept
concepts are insults to specificity of memories
of Shinky
who is probably knelt now in morning mass,
while I barrel my chest against another bad night in Los Angeles
Cornering a criminal lawyer in a restaurant that could be in any city except the old world ones as shown to me by my Shinky
“What will it cost me to commit felony assault?”
I ask the lawyer
“Short answer,” he says, popping pierogis,
“80K”
His services are the finest, he claims.
30-40K is his fee,
plus bail,
which he’d get me a good deal on so,
80K
Shinky, like me, always knew how to miss things before they were over,
so we never missed a thing.
That is The Trick of Us Lithuanian Vampires,
BCC: Haters.
80K
I nibble on a pierogi.
I commit the number 80,000 to memory.
I need information like this on days like today.
I send it as urgent fact to the infected terrains of my hillbilly brains
Shinky wears wool because it reminds her of the lamb.
Meanwhile, I’m in Los Angeles confronting the price tag of being a mean, mean man.
80K!
By order of presidential decree, all redneck blood must now listen to me,
but the rednecks fuck my flyers into kindling,
a bonfire built for self-immolating.
They submit “the Cannibal Poems.”
it’s just a list of weapons:
Hammer,
Blades,
TEETH
the last one circled in thin alcoholics blood
As Shinky walks to Morning Mass,
I’m stuck inside of a Polish joke with visions of Johanna’s real name
If anyone ever hurt her
I’d fly to Poland as a pro-bono assassin in black leather gloves
But when all you’ve got to protect is a shadow of yourself,
it’s best not to get too infected
In fact it’s kind of fun to watch people have a go at shadow
To witness the old viciousness,
to feel the painful pinch of the chain leash as it threatens to escape my grip
and fly forward with teeth nobody ever bothered to fix,
Redacting cheeks from faces
+_+