“Bad” And Other Poems, Karl Koweski

Karl Koweski has a fiction collection out called “Low Life” -which he is anything but. He shares the spine of this book with Melissa Hansen. And the rumor is, it’s hot. “Burning holes in mailboxes across America kind of hot.”

1. bad

2. Gordon Lightfoot sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald

3. the lifeless eyes of Sonny Liston

4. support system in times of sadness


bad

“I aim to bring peace to Liberia”
Prince Johnson tells the three
European journalists assembled in
the lobby of his headquarters
once the Bong Iron Ore Company
where a month earlier Samuel K Doe,
ex president of Liberia,
was not executed by Johnson’s men,
but definitely expired from
wounds received, including the
severing of his ears which
were then force fed to him

the journalists contemplating
the books they each will write
detailing their own bravery
under the constant threat
of crazed nigger annihilation
rather than offering a testimony
to the horrors of civil war
violence at a genocidal level
before the world’s apathetic eyes

it’s time for the morning concert
an acoustic guitar thumps against
Prince Johnson’s bandolier
after warming up with a few
Christian hymns, the Field Marshall
launches into a reggae version
of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”

a jack-booted boy of fifteen,
a red beret perched atop
a shock of blonde hair looted
from a Monrovian wig maker
pounds the bongos ecstatically

Prince Johnson stops the song
after the second verse and
addresses the journalists
“the enemy wishes to wage
a war of nerves,
the Independent National
Patriotic Front of Liberia
prefers a battle of bullets”

his face shines with sweat
he taps his yellow lizard skin
shoes in time to music
only he can hear

he scoffs at the stories
of Charles Taylor’s men,
their invulnerability to bullets
“if all it takes to achieve
immortality is to feast
on the hearts of young girls,
none of us would ever die”

the stale air pedaled into the room
is ripe with the stench of
men with no cure for bullets

Prince Johnson strums
the chorus of Michael Jackson’s
PYT:  Pretty Young Things
his laugh is contagious
no one in the room can afford
not to laugh
and the journalists ask themselves
if all this is worth another chapter
in a book no one will read


Gordon Lightfoot sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald

“nothing better than
Gordon Lightfoot on LP”
Malinda sighs, luxuriating
on the sofa as the vinyl spins

“tell that to the poor souls
who went down with the
Edmund Fitzgerald”
Omaha said

“what the hell does that mean?
the song’s commemorating the lives
of the men who died on board”

“time’s not linear,” he said, simply

“all right, you know what,
it’s time to put the bong away.
you’ve smoked a lot all ready,
you’re clearing the stem, now,
and in five seconds I’m
taking that shit away from you.
see how linear that is?”

“I didn’t say humans
don’t move along the timeline
in a linear fashion.
I’m just saying
time itself ain’t linear”

“what the hell does that
have to do with Gordon Lightfoot?”

“everything…
it’s got everything to do
with Gordon Lightfoot…
even though we see things in the
order of appearance in which
these events occur,
everything has all ready taken place
spread out across the timeline”

“Edmund Fitzgerald, Omaha, hello?”

“ok, so who’s to say
that because Gordon Lightfoot wrote
the song about the wreck
of the Edmund Fitzgerald,
he didn’t in actuality cause
the ship to sink earlier on
in the timeline?”

“that’s the dumbest thing
I have ever heard”

“that’s because you only hear
half of what I say.
you see, if time is a street
that stretches out forever,
shouldn’t cause and effect
be able to drive it
in either direction?”

Malinda took a couch cushion
and placed it over her head
not quite cutting off oxygen
“I just wanna listen to music”

“I’m not stopping you,
all I’m saying is
Gordon Lightfoot sunk
the Edmund Fitzgerald.
you can believe it or not,
doesn’t matter, but I wouldn’t
even rule out the theory
that my need to explain
the true concept of time to
a woman of your beauty
didn’t compel Gordon Lightfoot
to write the song
I could use as an example
thus dooming the twenty eight souls
aboard the vessel to a watery grave”

“oh, so now it’s my fault?”

“you or Gordon Lightfoot…”

“well how about the Mexican
who grew the marijuana you smoked
while thinking this shit up?”

“he ain’t off the hook, either”


the lifeless eyes of Sonny Liston

they say I was born dead
so I kept to the undertakers in the dark
they say I had a killer’s hands
and murder in my heart
so I ran with the wolves of the world

all the monsters got a piece of me
the puppet masters with
their opiate eyes and silk purse strings
marionetted their percentages

raised in defeat, baptized with the lash
I became champion of the knuckle society
where the new master’s whips caressed
and the scars blossomed internally

when the suits came for their due
with gangster mouths and accountant minds
they brought with them a new golden boy,
an Olympian with eyes twisted toward Mecca

but you don’t send an insect
to exile the serpent from the garden
not without promises and percentages
to sweeten the seduction of the dive

old enough to come to the table
old enough to go to the fields
what I learned at my father’s heel plowing
another man’s field for a chump’s stake

I learned the moments at the table
never balances the eternity in the fields
and animals like me never live
long enough to see the man’s percentages


support system in times of sadness

I knew Sharon would be upset
having had an appointment
with the vet this morning
to put down her sheltie, Nike
a constant companion
for the last fourteen years

I knocked on her apartment door
with my libido geared toward
a bout of hot mourning sex

only to hear Nike pattering
into the foyer as Sharon
answered the door

goddam, I sighed
Sharon, never one to tolerate
sex with me
while in her right mind,
eyeballed me suspiciously

“just in the neighborhood,”
I muttered nervously
suddenly aware of the
Irish whiskey reek wafting from me
“I thought you were
gonna have Nike put down?”

her slender hand petted
Nike’s crown as the dog
wheezed and chortled
“he was so responsive
this morning, I couldn’t”

“yeah,” I commiserated,
“my hair never looks better
than right before I go
have it get cut”

we stood there
Sharon, Nike and I
forming a Bermuda Triangle
or sorts that sucked
the common sense
right out of the air

“well, maybe tomorrow
will be his day,” I shrugged
“catch you around soon”

in the hallway, I tried
to remember who it was
had the sister sick with cancer
Becca, maybe?