Dylan Thomas Walks Into A Bar...

Fuck poetry,
with its phantom diseases,
its word ghosts curling
like fog around buildings,
wisps of exhaled smoke
---shadow hucksters
shifting colors, doing backflips,
somersaults.

A youthful tattoo no longer
desired he's lost
at sea. Dropping anchor
he devours baby starfish,
drunk on moonlight and sea brine.

He collects scraps
of paper, thought fragments,
he stitches together
with fine thread and needle,

Aware that pain lacks imagination,
that art suffers fools gladly,
the barfly messiah, already 39 years old,
finishes his whiskey.


tattletalebraille
          
the sermon was long today
the salmon wrung wreaths
the salesman blew meter maids
      i blew the north wind south
and now you're in trouble
with me with     and with      and with
   do
   you
   care
about
me
more
  than
    the
mailman                         a postcard sent



Ah-Choo
 
chess
drinking beer
fucking
(jerking off
if you don't
have a woman or a man)
these are the things in life
that matter
not working or talking
or wiping your ass
with the daily news
when you run out 
of toilet paper
not mothers or fathers
or neighbors
or college
or church or community
or the laws of relativity
or fashion, well maybe fashion,
but not cunt or cock
or piss or shit
or the words ballsack,
creamcorn, knobgobbler,
fudgepacker, rainmaker, gravedigger,
middlefinger, medicated,
inflated, and pasta



 juxtaposederotica 
 
in the end    it was the beer that got me
    the silence
                        came later
and later still      
                   your voice
your ass moved me beyond tears with its ample flesh
and puckered darkness
 
your vagina was a dream beyond dream beyond dream
 
starlit tits & pale ale     my muse
i cum in fits of poetry and salt               a blur
                                                          in your
                                                          eyes



corpus didactic
 
the coffeehouses
with its chessplayers
and hipster intellectuals
are all the same
and soon become unbearable
and boring
 
the girls sit there
smoking cloves
looking angelic
showing flesh,
all sex and sin they are
 
the men sit there
showing sensitive
pinkies pointed to heaven
cocks pointed to hell
then go home and jerk off
wondering why they never get any
 
just once i'd like to see one
of them slap
their girl in the face
pound their chest
a gesture to real men
 
don't get me wrong
I'm not a real man either
but sometimes my soul
hurts from too much thinking
and vulnerability ouch
ouch

---

     Christopher Robbins is a 30 year old poet living in Atlantic City where he works in a casino as a slot attendant. If you see him, please tip him. His favorite flavor of ice cream is meatloaf. He spends his free time trying to find out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.

other publishings or soon to be published in Zygote in my Coffee, onthebus, Subterranean Quarterly, Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, and the Muse Apprentice Guild