dedicated to those
trained in self-sabotage
tripping around in darkness
lost in the art of
trying to find the light
it’s there
somewhere
if I find it first
I’ll leave it on
for you
©2024 JDCIV All rights reserved.
James Dennis Casey IV is a poet, artist, and founder/editor-in-chief of Cajun Mutt Press. His newest books are Bad Weed Never Dies and I Pledge Allegiance To The Flag.
“Hey man, you want your dick sucked?”
There’s no one around and even if there was,
they could care less cuz all men know what it’s like
to get their cocks sucked, hummed on like a harmonica.
Here’s a gloryhole just for you.
“I’ll suck you good, dude.”
Look into my eyes as I look up into yours,
as I massage your boyish meat.
Time to put the pen away and the tissue paper messages
and get down to some serious business.
He taps his foot.
I tap my feet in the new Reeboks.
“Stick it under the stall man.”
“Yeah, that’s it. You sure got a nice one.
Very suckable.” Cock crops out of a thatch of pubic hair.
I start to jack him off and if I lean in just so, bent down
on my knees, jeans and underwear off, legs sprouting from the other
side of the stall, I can put my mouth on it. And I do and it is good.
Let’s go somewhere else dude, I say.
Where is there to go? Goody’s I tell him.
Their bathrooms are famous for afternoon pleasures
of Homo hootchee-coo.
“Do you suck?”, I asked.
“No man, sorry, I don’t do that.”
He must be the straight-acting type.
Afraid he’s going to be infected with my fag cooties.
The kind of man with a wife at home who’s always too tired to
give him head like she used to when they were young.
Parked off onto some dark, dirt road with nothing but
the night to keep them company. She really loved giving you head.
You hadn’t been blown, or had a good jerk-off since gym class
when you showered with other boys: hot water raining down on their pubescent pricks.
They work up a good lather on those torsos.
When your girlfriend gave you head, it really hit the spot.
You almost came on the sweater
she borrowed from her mother.
I sat as naked as a jaybird on the toilet seat.
“I sure like to suck cock,” I said. I opened wide for him
like I was about to get my tonsils checked.
I shut my eyes and groaned like a fat slob of a man on a whore.
Could feel your prick expanding like a balloon in the very mouth I kiss my mama with.
He tugs on his balls every now and then.
He’s fidgety like they all are
when they’re having discreet sex in public toilets.
At this point, mall cops are the Anti-Christ.
Sure to go to jail and get charged with committing a lewd and lascivious act.
It will be my third offense of that.
Tallahassee Police officers call me by my first name.
Your wife would have to come bail you out.
Find out about your dirty little secret.
Or your shrink who you’re seeking to get help from.
“I want you to cum on my chest.”
And he does ever so gloriously.
All over me like the partition slut I am.
Use it as a spermy lube to get myself off.
He stands there wiping spit and
ejaculate off his prick.
He is nice and stays long enough to watch me shoot a big load.
And I do ever so heavenly into the tissue paper.
“See you around.”, he says. I don’t say a word.
I just want to wash off.
Get all this cum off my chest.
I want to rush home and watch an all-new episode of Sabrina: The Teenage Witch
while eating my fast food of greasy fries and spicy chicken sandwich
and forget this ever happened.
for Jarret
I’m careful not to get
hamburger grease on your poems.
A soggy tomato nearly drips
into the face of Ava Gardner.
Ketchup and mustard stains the lap of
George Romero’s eight-hundred dollar khaki’s.
I love the poem in reference
to your father, the fireman.
Why do torch songs radiate blue light?
I have seen you before.
I recognize the midnight curls,
the adorable face,
your lips are that of a movie star.
Pink, moist and for a wife
who waits for her husband with the movie star mouth
as she reads from the pages of Vanity Fair.
I love the way you speak pretty to her.
A man should never raise his voice to a woman.
He could wake up finding
himself being burned at the stake.
I love the poem about Frankenstein’s Jeans.
Stonewashed, sandblasted And plenty tough.
It reminds me of that favorite
shirt that won’t fit anymore.
Ghost Sandals
are the shoes that are no longer in style.
I’ve never been the type to follow trends.
I don’t cookie-cut myself out after
some airbrushed buffoon out of a GAP commercial.
Beneath this sensitive, gullible exterior
is a spiked-haired punk with pierced nipples
waiting to come out.
Has anyone ever told you you have great teeth?
You make Tom Cruise look like an ingrown toenail.
Brad Pitt is getting facelifts
just to keep up.
If you weren’t married, I’d let you spit on me,
but only if you promised to draw back, mix it
with some snot and let me have it.
I mean really have it.
is the woman who fries the chicken too hard.
For years she couldn’t make spaghetti.
Schools of noodles are clumped together
in the rice strainer.
the mashed potatoes carry
lumps as large as brain tumors.
She’s always moving things around.
nothing ever stays in its place,
have to go to the end of the kitchen
for a spoon, fork, and finger cookies.
Betty tells me stories of how I used
to pull things off tables as a baby.
She told me about the time she left me for a minute
in a room with a hot iron to keep me company
and how I pulled that iron on my
baby soft thigh.
She said it took the skin right off and they
had to rush me to the hospital.
That iron was angry,
so was the crock pot of stew
I pulled down upon the same leg.
I was seven.
I remember at age eight arriving
at Mulla’s house from the second grade,
sweating and hungry.
Karen was supposed to baby-sit.
She said she would be right back,
told me not to touch anything,
anything except for the stove
with black spiraling tops that
burned my hand leaving blisters
the color of taupe,
blisters fat with pus and burn.
Betty yells at Karen on the porch
in front of ferns hanging brightly
and plants potted: earthbound.
My hand soaks in a salad bowl of water over night.
There was nothing else she could do.
Betty wasn’t the kind of woman who sat out
cookies and milk.
She never kissed my boo-boos better
or chased away monsters.
She had her own monsters to deal with.
hey um
hey man
i dont mean to bother you but
but you have a um
you have a chip on your shoulder
you see it
can you see it
its right here
its right there
see it there
see it right there
i think thats what it is
it is
its a chip
man you got a chip on your shoulder
its big too, man
it’s huge too, man
you got a big huge chip on your shoulder
it’s so big
it’s so big it’s big ole
it looks old
from the looks of it
from the way it looks
it looks like it’s been there for a while
its a big ole chip
and it’s on your shoulder, man
listen, man
will you listen to me
do you see it
i see it
it’s there
it’s here
damn dude
damn man
damn man, dude, that chip is big, man
get it off
you better get it off
do something
you better do something
something is what you better do
it looks serious
im serious you better do something
cuz it looks serious
cant you just knock it off
im not touching it
im not knocking it off
get someone else to knock it off
it looks painful
does it hurt
the chip on your shoulder does it hurt
it’s big
it’s about the size of a potato chip
bigger than a chocolate chip
i dont know chocolate chips like this
a chip on your shoulder huger than a chocolate chip
dude get that checked out, man
it looks infected
it looks hectic & infected
heck, I just wanted you to know
just wanted to let you know in case you didnt know
that you have a potato chip-sized chip on your shoulder
that is huger than any chocolate chip that I have ever seen
I looked for you when boys called me a fag in junior high.
I needed you when Ira Miller poured milk in my face.
I searched for you at age 12 when I discovered the wonders
of masturbation in Aunt Tillie’s bedroom,
in front of her black and white Zenith TV.
I wanted us to play with my sister’s dolls together.
Where were you when I was walking in my aunt’s high-heeled shoes?
We could have broke into my mama’s make-up bag, smearing lipstick on our
mouths.
I want to tell you about the first time I swallowed semen.
His name was George.
I searched for you on a filthy mattress in some dude’s window-tinted van.
Where were you when Jack kissed me in a game of Truth or Dare,
when Nick stood me up at the movies and never opened my love letters?
I needed your shoulder to cry on.
I searched for you in Dennis’ one-bedroom apartment as he licked my ears,
suckled my boner and rubbed my hands with lotion after it all.
I thought you came back reincarnated as his smoke-gray cat.
I searched for you in the reflection of Ben’s windshield, in Robert’s ocean-blue
eyes.
I searched for you in the underwear of frat boys,
in the medicine cabinet mirror of John’s apartment
before he left me for a redhead from Boston.
Is that you Allen, darling, in the produce section
squeezing apples as ripe as my nipples?
Wish I were there when you read your poetry
on the steps of Florida State University,
when Reagan wouldn’t say the word AIDS in public,
when you shot poetic loads in his Republican scalp.
I search for you in smoke-filled coffee houses,
in every man’s apartment I have ever been in.
I search for you in the tearooms of Columbia University,
the teacher’s lounge of Brooklyn College.
I search for you in the lobbies of bus stops,
in the personals section of gay porn magazines.
I search for you in piss porcelain urinals of shopping malls.
Check for signs of Jewish ejaculate in the rings of gloryholes.
I search for you through the concrete jungle of America.
Thought I heard your voice in the voices of guys who would ask,
“Hey man, you gotta big dick? Can I see your dick?”
I’ll read Kaddish for a hand job Allen.
You appear in my dreams, butt-naked and sweaty beneath my covers
wearing one of my strawberry-flavored condoms. Your Beatnik lips circle my
erection.
As Collin Haley mounted me in a multiplex movie theater,
I wanted you to be there to watch
and fondle your crotch in the row across from us.
As I look up into the face of the guy in Tom Brown Park,
his dick stuffed in my mouth like a turkey drumstick, I wanted it to be you.
I want you to be a part of my nutritious breakfast.
I want you in my bedroom naked under the covers
wearing one of my strawberry-flavored condoms. And in the morning,
Let’s talk about poetry over coffee and English muffins.
Let’s get naked and smoke pot on the hardwood floors of my apartment.
Let’s go whistle at the boys on Christopher Street.
Tell me what’s the best time for you and I will be there.
©2023 Shane Allison All rights reserved.
Shane Allison has been writing poetry since the age of fifteen when he would hide off in the library writing sappy love poems about high school crushes. He has gone on to publish poems in a plethora of lit mags and anthologies. He has pinned two novels You’re the One I Want and Harm Done both published by Simon & Schuster. His latest poetry collection, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass is out from Dumpster Fire Press. You will usually find him hiding off in a corner at a nearby Barnes & Noble composing poems about hot, stroller-pushing DILFS.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ4F7DW9
The poems in this collection put you in the middle of an internal boxing match between the author and his thoughts. The lines are jabs and uppercuts to the mind. You feel every punch thrown as you go through this book, and they hit hard. Each ring of the bell brings in a new contender, as Ian fights 15 rounds with life itself. Going toe to toe with darkness and light.
—JDCIV Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Cajun Mutt Press, author of Bad Weed Never Dies
“Ian Mullins renders the brutality of being. Like Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, William S. Burroughs before him, Mullins chronicles bleakly the human condition. His self crucifixion, lowered sights with little to no expectation, does not lead to a personal resurrection or salvation. Yet in the darkness a radiance is revealed in lines like, “remembering how you love cloudless nights, when even the stars glow cold.” The Fear of Falling Backwards is a journey through darkness. The brilliant poems of Ian Mullins are worth the toll for the road.”
—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate, author of Adventures of Brain Man
“The poems in Ian Mullins’ book take us to dark places where he pulls off a masterful balancing act between mystery and joy, and futility and impending doom. There are fighting words between these pages and some fine writing too.”
—Mark Berriman, author of Holding the Door for Barbarians
All CMP Titles:
https://cajunmuttpress.com/2021/06/08/cajun-mutt-press-bibliography/
It’s a day early, but Vital Decay by Timothy Dodd has officially been published!! I thought today was the 16th; Buk’s birthday! I was wrong. That’s why I put the files in final review yesterday. Then I realized I was a day off. Oh well, things always happen for a reason. I’m sure there’s some hidden one behind why things went the way they did with this book. It’ll probably reveal itself later. Or, maybe not. Maybe we will never know. Yet it’s available all the same.
Brother Dodd will have author copies soon! Get in touch with him if you’d like a signed book. Here’s the Amazon link. If y’all do grab a copy, leave a review! Word of mouth is important. People want to know what they’re about to read. Please spread the word by sharing this post if you can’t afford to buy one right now. That helps as well.
Also, I’ve had a few readers from outside of the US contact me to say they’re having a hard time finding our books on their country’s Amazon site. If you go to the book category and type in the ASIN, they usually pop right up!
Vital Decay ASIN:
B0CFCVDK9J
I have a copy on the way as well. Pics will be posted when it gets here.
Love Y’all, Write On,
JDCIV
🤟💀📚
“Timothy Dodd writes with the energy and frenzy of a man being chased by assassins, hell hounds, the police. His words race across busy highways. They jump from tall buildings but land on their feet. They vanish into dead-end alleys as though a door opened in one wall then closed behind him. The poems in this book are vivid descriptions of scenes mixed with meditations on life-meanings and interplays between the sacred and profane. Dodd stares into the abyss and doesn’t blink. Vital Decay is a marvelous collection and a wild ride. Strap yourself down for this one.”
—Ace Boggess, author of The Prisoners and Escape Envy
“Timothy Dodd plays with words, to play with readers’ perception and reception, not unlike Gregory Corso, but at times his observations are also acerbic, not unlike Charles Bukowski. His overall concept of the people populating his poetry as full-blown characters — not mere extensions of himself, the poet — is a semi-biographical approach that reminds somewhat of Edgar Lee Masters. To combine elements of such poets as these in one voice, and then to have a unique voice in the midst of such influences is no mean feat.
VITAL DECAY will push you, as much as pull you along. Some poems lean towards prose, while others are highly imagistic, and some concrete, while others near a blend of magic-realism. This explains lines such as “Like a Halloween mask / she arrived at pavement…”
Dodd namechecks Denton Welch, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Ronnie James Dio, and you can see their shadows looming over some poems. There is little distinction between high culture and low culture in the inspiration and the references in many of his poems, and in so doing this poet’s voice is less encumbered by the cultural bias and classism, that makes the street poet and the academic poet most easily recognizable, quantifiable, and readily fitted for a label – anything from Camus to Marvel Comics shows up in Dodd’s poems. These approaches encourage a certain unpredictability, that in turn opens one up to being caught off guard, one’s cynicism challenged, coerced into an openness of possibility: one never knows what the next poem will bring.”
—David Alec Knight, author of LEPER MOSH (Cajun Mutt Press, 2022), recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award For Poetry, 2021.
I thought Tuesday was the 16th for some reason!! So, I’ve already submitted the files for final review today. That means Vital Decay by Timothy Dodd will be published on the 15th instead of the 16th! It should be available on Amazon by tomorrow sometime. I’ll share the link when it goes live, but I’d prefer y’all to get copies directly from him. If possible. He’ll have author copies in a few weeks.
Reworked the cover a bit as well. It looks way better! The blue was just too void. It needed something. I’ll have a copy to post pics of soon. I’m ordering one tomorrow from the sales page. They ship quicker that way. KDP takes forever to ship out author copies because they’re print-on-demand and not a priority.
I also had to call in a favor from one of the old dogs. He pulled out the big guns and helped me out with an ISBN. Huge thanks, brother. You know who you are. Don’t want to name names and have people trying to hit you up and ask for stuff. I truly appreciate the help. I owe you one.
Keep your eyes peeled! I’ll post more about it tomorrow, and have a copy soon. Y’all keep kicking ass out there.
Write On,
JDCIV
🤟💀📚
“Timothy Dodd writes with the energy and frenzy of a man being chased by assassins, hell hounds, the police. His words race across busy highways. They jump from tall buildings but land on their feet. They vanish into dead-end alleys as though a door opened in one wall then closed behind him. The poems in this book are vivid descriptions of scenes mixed with meditations on life-meanings and interplays between the sacred and profane. Dodd stares into the abyss and doesn’t blink. Vital Decay is a marvelous collection and a wild ride. Strap yourself down for this one.”
—Ace Boggess, author of The Prisoners and Escape Envy
“Timothy Dodd plays with words, to play with readers’ perception and reception, not unlike Gregory Corso, but at times his observations are also acerbic, not unlike Charles Bukowski. His overall concept of the people populating his poetry as full-blown characters — not mere extensions of himself, the poet — is a semi-biographical approach that reminds somewhat of Edgar Lee Masters. To combine elements of such poets as these in one voice, and then to have a unique voice in the midst of such influences is no mean feat.
VITAL DECAY will push you, as much as pull you along. Some poems lean towards prose, while others are highly imagistic, and some concrete, while others near a blend of magic-realism. This explains lines such as “Like a Halloween mask / she arrived at pavement…”
Dodd namechecks Denton Welch, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Ronnie James Dio, and you can see their shadows looming over some poems. There is little distinction between high culture and low culture in the inspiration and the references in many of his poems, and in so doing this poet’s voice is less encumbered by the cultural bias and classism, that makes the street poet and the academic poet most easily recognizable, quantifiable, and readily fitted for a label – anything from Camus to Marvel Comics shows up in Dodd’s poems. These approaches encourage a certain unpredictability, that in turn opens one up to being caught off guard, one’s cynicism challenged, coerced into an openness of possibility: one never knows what the next poem will bring.”
—David Alec Knight, author of LEPER MOSH (Cajun Mutt Press, 2022), recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award For Poetry, 2021.
