The Romantic


Count Dracula was going along just fine
when out of nowhere it started.
At first the women were sympathetic
but soon they began to get irritable.

There was already all that other stuff to deal with,
the late nights, the lack of any visible support,
the strange black attire, the horrible accent,
and now he would try to bite them and nothing,

not even a flicker, not even a tingle.
"How can bone go soft?" one virgin said
and finished herself off.
Dracula tried to stop it from happening;

he quit brushing his teeth in the mornings,
which he had always excited him,
ceased flossing in the afternoon,
stopped picking his teeth after dinner,

but he still couldn't get a fanger.
After a month, the women stopped calling,
and their windows were locked from the inside.
If a guy like him wasn't going to produce,

they might as well find something stable,
maybe someone in accounting.



The Swag


Then there was the "swag" guy.
I remember him well.  He was always going on
about the swag, and what the swag was
doing to us, and how we were blind to the swag.

Nobody had any idea what the swag was,
and I asked around (which I usually don't do)
but Tom Miller didn't know, nor Ian,
and not even Jimmy Nil knew who or what

the swag was.  The swag guy
was an old man, white receding hair,
which he covered with a colorful beanie,
and he would wag his finger at us

and warn us the swag was everywhere,
perverting our government, defiling
our young girls, driving up the price
of our marijuana, controlling

every tawdry aspect of our lives.  To this day,
I don't know what the swag is.
But some paranoid nights, I fear he was right
and the swag really is everywhere,

a ghost whispering through the shadows,
a formless demon turning knobs and dials and switches,
making things go
the awful direction things often go,

or worse, he was wrong
and it doesn't exist at all.



My girlfriend's editor


My girlfriend's editor lives in Chicago, where
    I've always wanted to live, went to schools
    I could not get into, has had jobs
    I could never get, avoids the bums
    who always get a buck from me

My girlfriend's editor uses words I don't understand,
    speaks languages I don't know,
    has traveled places I won't ever visit,
    writes poems that make no sense to me

I have never met my girlfriend's editor,
    I've never seen a picture of him,
    he's never written me a letter,
    when I pick up the phone there is silence,
    when someone knocks on the door
    I don't bother answering,
    I know it's just him playing around

My girlfriend tells me she's learned a lot
    from her editor, she says he's a genius,
    she says I should give him the benefit
    of the doubt, she says
    I should try to be more trusting;
    my girlfriend's editor,
    all his poems end with a feminine rhyme

My girlfriend's editor is bipolar or schizophrenic
    or some kind of crazy, he takes medications
    I can't pronounce, he smiles at cats knowingly,
    someday he'll jump off the Sears Tower
    and land on his feet,
    he'll be hailed as Sylvia Plath's penis

My girlfriend's editor disappears for weeks
     and she worries about him, she worries
     he's had another episode,
     she waits by the phone for someone to call
     while I sit and watch her pace

My girlfriend's editor calls and says he just got out,
     he's better now, but a week later
     he disappears again and my girlfriend
     calls his mother who says he's back in,
     two days later he's out again

My girlfriend's editor says in the hospital he had a vision,
    he doesn't like my kind of poetry,
    he says it's too cut and dried,
    nothing personal, he says,
     it's just not his cup of tea,
    he wonders what my girlfriend sees in me

My girlfriend's editor realized I don't treat her right
     and he doesn't think I'll ever make it,
     he knows my type,
     a week later I receive a form rejection
     that isn't signed
     but is post marked Chicago,
     "sorry," it says, "this doesn't fit our vision"

Later that night when my girlfriend and I make love,
     I see his images and conceits,
     hear his albas and his codas,
     feel him wedging between our couplet
     his busy red editor's pen,
     not content with us until we're perfect,
     until we do it his way


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