Tag Archives: Lohrey

Not a True Believer

Posted on by under Poetry

A poem by David Lohrey

America is the only country in the world that doesn’t
maintain public toilets. Enclosed spaces invite indecency.
Even the homeless get horny. They defecate in the open
like monkeys in Delhi. The streets reek. Men and women strut
around like pigeons. Their depravity has gone viral.

Nobody objects to the Bushes (and their billions);
it is Nancy and her lust for fine China that draws rebuke.
We fear hunger. We can smell fear. Most would prefer
war to lust. Charles Manson was more highly regarded
than Timothy Leary.

You can’t blame a man like Obama who wants to be rich. What’s
50 million dollars between friends? After eight years in the White
House he is bidding for his own basketball team. Greed is not
unseemly. But we don’t like that man in the White House
who eats McDonald’s.

Whitman called for a poetry of exaltation. Brecht: a poetry of thought.
We got a poetry of despair, written by alcoholics and the lonely.
We’ve embraced the William Gaddis school of gigantism, like
Soviet architecture and aerial photographs of four-leaf clover
interchanges. Like elephant turds, they are impressive.

Construction has been funded, but nothing’s been set aside. 3000 public
schools were built in the 1930s, but there’s no money for upkeep.
Students tear pages from school books to wipe their asses. The pipes
on the 3 rd floor are plugged with Dante. The girls’ bathroom is
flooding. The Principal’s answer is to tell the students to stop reading.

Kirwood McMann head custodian at PS109 preaches every Sunday morning
at the Magnolia Street Church of Christ. He recites the oracles of woe as he
unloads 43 rolls of toilet paper from the trunk of his 7-year-old Cadillac Sedan
de Ville. When I complained to him about my filthy classroom, he looked
up and said, “Why you gotta say “filthy” when “dirty” will do?”

Rev. McMann tries many times to explain to me the ways of the world. “The
people,” he preaches, “have forgotten how to do right. This country is filled
with wealth taken by theft and violence. Sundays are too long. People can’t wait
to get back to cheating the helpless. And you say your floor is filthy. It is you,
you sir, who is filthy!”

David Lohrey’s plays have been produced in Switzerland, Croatia, and Lithuania. His poetry can be found in Otoliths (AUS), The Drunken Llama (US), Tuck Magazine (UK), Expanded Field Journal (Netherlands), and Dodging the Rain (Ireland). His fiction can be read online at Terror House, Storgy Magazine, and Literally Stories. David’s collection of poetry, MACHIAVELLI’S BACKYARD, was published by Sudden Denouement Publishers (Houston, 2017). He lives in Tokyo.

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Grievances for Descamisados

Posted on by under Poetry

A poem by David Lohrey

I, too, am a passéiste. a passéiste am I, a believer in a Golden time.
There’s been no birth but I am suffering from post-partum depression.
Something’s been taken away. I do not have my eye on the next best thing.

I’m proud but not of myself. I’m not even proud to be an American.
So much has been done, although, nothing by me.
We’ll abolish all private property except our house.

I am a sampler of the exquisite, a witness, perhaps some would say an intruder.
I remain grateful. The tea is fine. I don’t care for much of the company.
My fantasy is to live in a Faulkner novel.

I have found a nice quiet table here at the club. If I am left alone, I will thrive.
I want to get me an emotional support peacock and move into Flannery
O’Connor’s old house. One does still hear dreadful stories.

Perhaps it can be said, I regret everything, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling nostalgic.
Yes, it was all a mistake. Every humiliation and those very few triumphs. The greatest
birthday present I ever got was a potted tomato plant. It cost $.79.

I treasure every smile; there have been few. Look where we are. We’ve become brawlers,
like skinny guys at ball games, those nasty, boney thugs with tattoos, the kind who
like to start fights. Who takes advice from a poet?

This is finally who we are, in steel-tipped boots, drunks with shriveled dicks. People who save
up to go to Rome and end up in the local jail for pissing on the statues. I saw my first film
by Truffaut in the Mission; got my first piece of ass on Craig’s list.

We have become a disgrace. The story begins with our lovely heroes waving and passing out
Hershey bars to children. Next thing you know, we are urinating on corpses.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Who’s afraid of red, white, and blue?

We’ve become boxers who bite our opponents. We’ve become women who want to be raped.
We’ve become men who piss themselves. Heavens to Murgatroyd, that’s about it. This
is our common tale of woe. Some thrive in the present, others not.

We’ve become the kind of people children aren’t allowed to play with. We’re degenerates. Yes,
I know a good thing when I see it. I live in the past. I do not look ahead.
Tomorrow might prove an improvement, sure, why not? It’s today I can’t stand.

David Lohrey’s plays have been produced in Switzerland, Croatia, and Lithuania. His poetry can be found in Otoliths (AUS), The Drunken Llama (US), Tuck Magazine (UK), Expanded Field Journal (Netherlands), and Dodging the Rain (Ireland). His fiction can be read online at Terror House, Storgy Magazine, and Literally Stories. David’s collection of poetry, MACHIAVELLI’S BACKYARD, was published by Sudden Denouement Publishers (Houston, 2017). He lives in Tokyo.

Misfits

Posted on by under Poetry

A poem by David Lohrey

Say hello, Guido.
Why the hell not?
Even he deserves a kind word.
Even Guido rates a greeting.
Hello, Guido. Calm the fuck down.

This Guido is an American icon.
He’s my uncle. He’s my father.
I have a brother named Guido, too.
Here’s the thing: Guido’s a thug.
Guido spends his days thinking up bad things to do.

Do you know what’s going on?
Security guards stealing from banks.
Clerks forgetting to ring customers up.
Bartenders giving away drinks.
Police robbing and raping working women.
Presidents selling arms to terrorists.

Say hello to Guido, who breaks necks
for a living. His talent is stabbing people
in the back and twisting the knife.
He just bought a house on West Clover Drive.
His son wants a tricycle for his birthday.

If you don’t know who Guido is,
I’d say you are a lucky man.
You can wear the magic jacket and
distribute coffee beans from your car.
You can sleep at night with your sister.
You can step up to the mic.

You’ll say be nice because Guido is gay.
You’ll say remember that Guido is mentally ill.
You’ll say Guido deserves a second chance.
Some will say Guido is a hero.
I say Guido should be whipped.
Take Guido to the square and tie him up.

Guido and his gang wreck havoc
everywhere they go. They don’t
deserve a second chance. Crime
is not a misunderstanding. Guido is not
your friend. He is not your brother nor your sister.

Loyalty is out of order. Stay away.
Lunatics don’t deserve mercy. Save it
for the less fortunate: you and me, just
little ants trying to make a living.
We don’t deserve to be stepped on.
Monsters do.

David Lohrey is from Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from U.C., Berkeley. His poetry can be found in Otoliths, Stony Thursday Anthology, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, and Boxcar Poetry Review. Some of his recent poems have appeared in the U.S. publications Poetry Circle, FRiGG, Obsidian, and Apogee Journal. His fiction can be read in Crack the Spine, Dodging the Rain, and The Broke Bohemian. His book, The Other Is Oneself, a study of 20th century literature, was published last year in Germany. David’s first collection of poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, was released in August by Sudden Denouement Publishers. David lives in Tokyo.

Mr. and Mrs. Adam and Eve

Posted on by under Poetry

A poem by David Lohrey

Illegals are to be called the undocumented.
Changing names does wonders.
His bastard is a love-child.
Why not move right into the fantasy?

Changing names does wonders.
Drop the love-child off at the orphanage.
Why not move right in?
We won’t call them criminals; we’ll call them underprivileged.

Drop the love-child off at the orphanage.
Plaster over all our bruises; cover our cracks.
We won’t call them criminals; we’ll call them underprivileged.
Talking filth can sound pretty if you bang a tambourine.

Plaster over our bruises; cover our tracks.
One can issue a death sentence while playing the piano.
Talking filth can sound pretty if you bang a tambourine.
We had that with the Germans: musical exterminations.

One can issue a death sentence while playing the piano.
Your killer needn’t be called a criminal.
We had that with the Germans.
We’ll call him a liberator, an emancipator, or an engineer.

Your killer needn’t be called a criminal.
I like to spit on my hand and shake.
We’ll call him a liberator, an emancipator, or an engineer.
Others like lawyers; they prefer fancy language.

I like to spit on my hand and shake.
Why can’t the government pay our bills?
Others like lawyers; they prefer fancy words.
Send someone over to clean up my yard.

Why can’t the government pay our bills?
Take the profits away from the Waltons.
Send someone over to clean up my yard.
Give us a charge account at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Take the profits away from the Waltons.
The rich can pay for it.
Give us a charge account at Saks Fifth Avenue.
What’s the deficit got to do with it?

The rich can pay for it.
We give up.
What’s the deficit got to do with it?
Call it anything you want.

We give up.
Take away the burden of daily life.
Call it anything you want.
Take us back to Eden. We give up.

David Lohrey is from Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from U.C., Berkeley. His poetry can be found in Otoliths, Stony Thursday Anthology, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, and Boxcar Poetry Review. Some of his recent poems have appeared in the U.S. publications Poetry Circle, FRiGG, Obsidian, and Apogee Journal. His fiction can be read in Crack the Spine, Dodging the Rain, and The Broke Bohemian. His book, The Other Is Oneself, a study of 20th century literature, was published last year in Germany. David’s first collection of poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, was released in August by Sudden Denouement Publishers. David lives in Tokyo.

Bluff City

Posted on by under Poetry

A poem by David Lohrey

An idle tree wants cutting down.
If we apply the rules of thermo-
dynamics, growing radishes in one’s
back yard makes no sense. Let
it be raspberries on prickly bushes,
not dirty little roots in the ground.

This is a treatise on good sense.
Like Swift’s argument in favor of eating
children, mine is a defense of watching
too much TV. Let’s distribute footballs
to the redskins; let’s send the whites back
to Europe.

I once knew a fat chick named
Trish whose boyfriend knocked all
my teeth out. My braces held them
in place as the blood ran out of my mouth.
Even at 16, young men in the South
fight over women’s breasts; only in my
day, we called them tits.

Peaches bruise easily in the heat.
I wouldn’t leave the pool gate open
at mid-summer. The neighbors might
walk in on an afternoon orgy. One
forfeits one’s right to privacy when
one makes oneself available.
I wouldn’t advise working for a company
that withholds anything, least of all
one’s lunch money.

Pecan pie is overrated, like a lot of
Southern dishes. Half of sales go
to tourists who haven’t a clue.
They’d buy a bottle of molasses
with a ribbon tied around its neck.
Hell, they’d go down on a dick painted
red. Most tourists are out and out liars,
like first-time home buyers and
presidential candidates.

The squealing never stops.
There’s a lot of commotion.

Our President’s been caught with his pants
down; our priests have stopped smoking.
My best friend built a yurt with a marble floor
and a padded cell for throwing tantrums.
The transformation is now complete.
The destroyers are triumphant; the victims,
silent; and the observers, transfixed. Is it
time for advancement or retreat?
I’d say, where are the people of color?
That’s always the question; or that’s the always
question.

Rose bushes will snag. They’ll catch if you don’t
watch it. It’s not just your stockings that’ll run.
Roses draw blood. I’d get to work, and while
you’re at it, prune the damned bird of paradise.
After that, you can head for the basement.
When all the work is done, you can lay your
head down in the oven.

Different strokes for different folks;
we are all part of this tale.
For reasons that cannot be easily
explained, the author is distraught.

David Lohrey is from Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from U.C., Berkeley. His poetry can be found in Otoliths, Stony Thursday Anthology, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, and Boxcar Poetry Review. Some of his recent poems have appeared in the U.S. publications Poetry Circle, FRiGG, Obsidian, and Apogee Journal. His fiction can be read in Crack the Spine, Dodging the Rain, and The Broke Bohemian. His book, The Other Is Oneself, a study of 20th century literature, was published last year in Germany. David’s first collection of poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, was released in August by Sudden Denouement Publishers. David lives in Tokyo.