Doug Draime

Poem For A Lost Uncle

by Doug Draime

I see you with your

counterfeit smile and

dead eyes, pushing death

like a sweet potato

with your nose. You have

picked a profitable lifestyle

and the world praises your progress.

I read about you in the

newspapers and watch you on tv.

You tell jokes like George Carlin

and you dance like Tommy Tone .

Other men and women murder

for you and more sign up to pull the triggers

every day. Your whores have snapshots

of everyone you’ve had killed.

Your wife is hooked on Chevas Regal

and high powered vibrators, and your darling

young son has sex with

fat old men smoking cigars. Uncle Sam, I’m

sorry to say, you have become one

degenerate motherfucker!

Dreaming Picasso

by Doug Draime

I ran down the alley

running from the cops.

I was so drunk I forget

for what.

I ducked into the back

room of a bar,

in the Bronx or

Brooklyn.

(who knows which, I was

drunk and dreaming).

But Picasso was

already in there, shit-faced

himself, hiding from

Dora Maar.

I quickly held my finger up to my lips,

because I knew

he’d start rattling on loudly

about her atrocities.

He smiled, though, and

got quiet for a moment,

but he couldn’t take not getting it out at all,

and he started mumbling

things

I couldn’t hear in

rapid fire Spanish,

his luminescent black

eyes big as mud pies

I Didn’t Fuck Virginia Woolf

Doug Draime

I had a dream I

slept with Virginia Woolf,

but I couldn’t keep

my erection.

She didn’t help matters

any, just laying

there reading the

London Times. So, we

decided to

go to sleep.

And in the middle

of the

night

I had a wet dream

about Henry Miller’s

second wife,

June. I was embarrassed

because I woke

Virginia, but she was

gentle and

empathic,

asking me to describe

in vivid detail

June’s voluptuous body

and nasty

mind.

Clara Bow’s Panties

Doug Draime

He kept them for

40 years in

an antique

oak chest,

that his dead mother

had used for fine lace

handkerchiefs and

embroidered napkins. Clara

Bow’s yellow silk panties

graced the bottom.

Once or twice a month

he would take them out,

holding them

over his face,

inhaling and smelling deeply.

And memories of being

a movie extra, as

a kid, would come back

like a flood:

when he was nine and looking up her dress

between her tanned and plump thighs,

the inspiration of his

first erection.

Sex And Love And Aging

for Carol

Doug Draime

This hard-on

is not love.

It is a

hard-on!

I have been

fortunate

enough

to know love.

No doubt, blessed

enough

to make it to

my 60s,

and still have

your love

But after we have sex,

my cock

shrinks

rapidly

into something

barely

resembling its

one-eyed,

purple-headed,

former glorious

self

Though, my love,

for you . . .

o, my love

for you,

enlarges

increases expands

it often even

ejaculates

in delight, yet

it is never

spent, never

exhausted

And it soars, it is

pure spirit

Doug Draime has been a presence in the 'underground' and small press since the late 1960's. He was part of the notorious Los Angeles poetry scene of the latter 20th Century. Most recent collection, (with Misti Rainwater-Lites,) is "Next Exit: Three" (Kendra Steiner Editions) and forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press , "Dancing On The Skids". His poems, short stories and plays continue to appear in a wide range of publications worldwide. He currently lives in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountians in southern Oregon.