Seven Deadly Dysfunctions

The Gambler:

Vegas dreams seem to
Brighten under night skies
Time flies when your
Losing everything

Horses bunch muscles
That crunch across crisp
Grass, and the sound of
Your last pass at the track

Leaves you breathless
Stranded senseless
Keep it up
The luck can always change

Your life but your
Pockets flap empty
With dreams of high rolling
and the tally keeps on tolling.

The Nympho:

Pucker up those sweet lips
For a kiss from the burgundy
Lipstick. Smeared on married
Men’s collars by the end of the night.

Feeling high on your sex drive
Downtown dinners by candle flame
Lighting faces of strangers
That you refer to as “dates”

Back to the apartment, condo, house
For after dinner drinks and
Whip cream dreams, fantasies
Lived for your hedonistic tendencies

Nights crash and mash together
As you strip off your little black dress
Thigh highs, high heels,
And lacey soiled panties.


The Homeless:

Steal for your meal
Or fight through trash
Blazes and dumpster mazes
In the dark back alleys

Hold out your hand
Rattle change in the
Tin can, the sins that
Can never be forever

Roll out the pallet
Underground, rain smashes
Against sadness. Cough through
The cold, molder in the rashes

Of your uncovered arms.
The wet tarmac your home
Sweet home if only the
Bugs would bug off.

The Drunk:

Slobbering, lost in a
Half-empty bottle, liberating
Your sins with gin
And tonic headaches

Alienated on a barstool
Pouring sob stories with
Drinks, guts thrown up
In the sinks of your life.

Hopeless, yet buzzing to
Stay alive, pretending to
Thrive amidst college
Frat boys and crusty old barflies

Rolling home, face half
Caked with vomit face paint
Moaning, calling for their
Mothers during morning hangovers.


The Pervert:

Eyes wide, hands down dirty
Pants. The calm of the stroke
And the agony of the climax.
The impulse pulse of naked sex.

Morning through night
It drives right through thoughts
of red fingernails curved
against skin milky pale

The chase and the lust,
It screams inside, manic
About to BUST in your head
Bodies exposed on a bed of pink satin.

They don’t see you
But you always see them
And it turns your power switch
Pitched to the key of fever.

The Druggie:

Glassy-eyed smile, fried brain
Matter cries out for
Just one more hit of the shit
That keeps you “alive”

Inhale the vapor, or the
Snow white lines, crimes
Of your passion cooked
Up under match light.

Roll up you’re sleeve and
Show me your tracks
They don’t take you anywhere
But through the glittering trash

Of familiar alleys and fires
Of hundreds of liars and
You feel the hunger getting
Ever fucking stronger.

The Suicidal:

Pillow wet, sweat and tears
Sleeping for fear of waking
Shaking for the apathy of
Taking what you feel

And shoving it underneath
A sheet in the morgue of
Your memories, finally
Revealing metaphors of your pain.

Ashamed of the maimed
Sense of your rotted self
Esteem keeps you green with
The envy of being sane.

Throwing yourself aware
Into despair that seems
To tear your broken seams
into shreds.