Poetry: Selections From George Gad Economou

Crazy Jim

 

he’d fight the meanest motherfuckers, tango

with Hell’s Angels—always remained nonchalant, even when

he staggered out of the dive all bloodied up, sometimes with

cracked ribs and broken bones.

 

his nose had a vicious 40^o angle, making him look more

grotesque than Noh theater masks.

 

he always smiled; sometimes,, he’d buy

beers for the barflies that didn’t care about him.

 

poor old Jim always had something important to say;

no one paid any attention to his drunken wisdom.

 

he’d flirt with every skirt that entered the dive—it got him

into bigger troubles, bloodier fights.

 

he didn’t care; he needed to get laid and not even the whores

would touch him. not for all the money in the world, some told him.

 

some claimed his prick was deformed; he broke it, they said, 

and could not afford to fix it.

 

perhaps, all the crazy stories about the old sod were

true. maybe, they were all false.

 

when he talked of his trips to Thailand,

we all pictured him 

chasing little boys terrified of the hideous creature. 

 

for years, he lived in a park. children avoided him,

women looked the other way. on some occasions, he’d

screech his lungs out at random pedestrians—maybe it was

his way to get back to the world.

 

one day, they found him frozen under the snow

after a weekend-long snowstorm.

 

no tears were ever shed; the stories about Crazy Jim continued

to circulate, becoming bigger and crazier. 

 

no one ever had to say a good thing about the sod.

 

only tales of

violence, sexual misconduct, and drunkardism.

 

he was a lush. a drunkard.

 

one of us.

 

and so Jim—his body cremated, his ashes scattered unmourned at some

unknown location—

 

turned into nothing but particles of dust. 

 

as for us? we kept drinking, barely noticing

our lost members and the new additions that maintain the balance.

In Every Lowball

 

every lowball poured and drained is

another search for the divine.

 

sublime emotions leap out of the fire-stirring liquor, 

bourbon, tequila, or gin, 

 

and words fail to capture the superlative sensations flowing

across the body.

 

every lowball contains answers to grand questions,

answers coffee or tea will never offer.

 

every lowball proffers candor, infuses the pen,

the swirling napkin.

waitresses look like stalking

lionesses that have spotted the weakest antelope.

 

every lowball turns the dive into the gods’ lounge,

Dionysus and Zeus trading flirting advice in the corner booth over

two dozen bottles of sublime wine.

 

getting in touch with the gods has been man’s purpose since

the first primates stood on two legs;

and every lowball

 

is a rung on the leviathan ladder leading to their penthouse.

Hiding from the Moon

 

night arrives again, time to

hide in a dive with the second

bottle of bourbon—the memories won’t 

be drowned and

smiling women fade into the everlasting mist. 

 

groups of youngsters roam the streets like dancing werewolves

seeking that singular grand place of unprecedented pleasure 

wherein to lose themselves for a night.

 

when the cries of the baby were heard from the next room,

I hid in the closet—the dead shouldn’t produce a sound. 

 

she attended to it while I remained locked inside 

with my old glass-pipe, dissipating again into

hollow dreams of what might have been.

 

driving down the highway with no license and high on acid, 

 

chased down by local and intergalactic police and later

we laughed it off—another hallucinatory nightmare, perhaps, 

 

or another crime for which I haven’t paid the price. 

 

it’s all right, I’ve lost count.

 

night comes, once more. 

no living souls, no rowdy crowds in the bar—only whisky-sipping bastards.

I order another round of bourbon and tequila

to make the night seem pleasanter—morning comes, 

and I kill hangover with a burning hammer.

Yet another sunrise

 

and nothing’s changed; 

 

staring at the world from my window, 

bourbon in hand, a joint in my lips, 

 

the thoughts run wild, going back to the Bar I once

peeked into and to the endless nights of suffering within

four dead walls haunted by whispering ghosts

of past, present, and future. 

 

the voices loud, demanding, accusing, 

 

I drink them all away, trying

to regain the magic of the dance, 

 

the keys refuse to move,

a blank page stares mockingly back at me;

 

the nightingale clears its throat,

no song’s produced, the crackling of the pipe

the only sound of the dawn.

 

the night guard bikes around the offices, checking for break ins

and vandalism, then, he leaves on his electronic, soundless bike, 

and I toast him, for

 

he has nothing left to live for, either. 

 

I drink to his health, and to my death, 

 

as the blue smoke rises, open window and smoking

rock, no one seems to care, no one understands

what’s the glass-pipe for 

and I think of Emily in her grave,

Christine in a foreign bed, 

the nameless strangers that once laid down on my bed 

hoping it’d mean something more than a night long affair, 

 

it never did,

the page my only true love, 

booze and drugs the real companions of a life spent in the mist 

 

escaping wolves and carnivorous sheep, 

while the bourbon washed it all away, the fears, the dreams,

the hopes and promises from a past buried deep under the scorching sand

of the desert of time and broken hearts. 

 

and she rises from the grave, coming to get me, 

time, once more, to drink Satan under the fucking table

and take over the realm we were once promised. 

 

the bottle is emptied, breaks on the floor, adding up

to the sea of glass I traverse every hangover afternoon. 

 

it’s fucking alright, 

 

I have another drink, another drag, 

I dip my paper in hash oil and the ganja is lit; 

 

edge’s taken off, I take a step closer

toward the Edge, 

 

once more too terrified to go over, to embrace

the darkness and the monsters lurking within. 

 

one more sunrise, one more day survived, 

medical wonder some will call it; 

I know the true answer:

 

Hell’ll be Paradise compared to reality.

 

 

 

 

 

George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science, currently works as a freelance writer, and has published three novels and two poetry collections, with the latest being his horror novel, The Lair of Sinful Angels, by Translucent Eyes Press. His words have also appeared in Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.