John Dorsey currently resides in Toledo OH. His work has recently appeared in Underground Voices, Mystery Island Magazine, The James River Poetry Review, fearless, Poesy Magazine, Spent Meat, and the Dublin Quarterly. He is the author of ‘Little Boy Beat: Selected Poems’ published by Paladin M & E, Inc. in 2004. His collection ‘The Price of Sunshine’ co-authored with Iris Berry will be released in the near future by Feel Free Press.

'My Heart Smelt of Rotting Flesh'

***

'I Like Hotels'

***

John Dorsey - Writer, Poet and Producer

***

3 Poems on Underground Voices

***

Review of 'Enemy' by John Sweet

***

3 poems on Webspawner

***

AMBIENT NATION: THE NEW VIETNAM
by John Dorsey

richard lives across the hall
and while most people chatter on endlessly
about how the state of union
is killing them he told
me once that his father
was murdered in his sleep
for a quarter of dank how his mother
was basically a crackwhore doing the whole
go go dancer thing watching erections
grind themselves silly into the skeleton
of her suburban dollhouse in
some small michigan town
before he was even whispered
as a morning after thought some
sweet nothing that's why to him
lucid dreams had always felt
like the killing fields

sometimes i watch him clean
piss out of the shower
on our floor and feel bad
that i suffer from depression
once he told me that he didn't
believe in suicide that hemingway
was just some fuckin' pussy afraid
to take the bull by
the horns to dance with
his shadow on the
other side telling me
if he was going to buy a gun then well
hell he might as well
start shooting people at random
this after calling me his
best friend saying that his heart produced
ambient music to feel whole but that the record
just kept skipping during the good parts
how the voices in his head were like
a wayward echo in the grand canyon
that had always made him think of that episode of
"the brady bunch" which left him
wishing mike and carol had raised him
as their own because he certainly would've
fucked greg either way

but you know i believe in order
and i've wondered more
than once if i'm on some
secret hit list kinda like a
screwed up version of the
billboard charts where he puts
one clean bullet between my eyes
in a mask that makes him look
like dick clark who i'm told is
the oldest teenager alive
and i think to myself
fuck the state of the union
who can think about the price
of oil when you're thinking
about what your life is worth

and how i knew this guy in philadelphia
who won 4 million bucks in the lottery
that went right back to selling weed

he told me once that sometimes when
you dance in the shadows
the ghosts talk back giving clues
to the date your death even if you
still claim to be breathing

just maybe that cat
had the right idea
cuz lately i've been thinking
yeah papa the sun also rises
for now and i'll give you
my two cents as long
as you pinky swear not to place them over
my eyes because i heard
on the radio that it's supposed
to be sunny out
later in the week

© John Dorsey
Reproduced with permission

---

Your first name:	Your URL:
Use the box below to leave messages for John. Begin message: For John Dorsey