Live Nude Poems

Blue Man, head in his lap, outside my hotel window, healing in the Denver sun. Oblivious, as life bores around him, he frequently scratches both arms. I don’t get his poison, I’m a whiskey drinker myself, but I get blown apart. Pouring morning coffee, I keep an eye out, making sure no one flips him for his sneakers, watch, or a few bucks. As a security officer, paranoia is my natural state, the dull cloak I wear. He’s zeroing out as I’m ironing a shirt. By the designer threads he’s wearing, I’m guessing it’s heroin. His spiral may have him on meth, but his face doesn’t look all that fucked up yet. When he lifts his head, he reminds me of a younger and ultra-slim Warren Oates. Three quarters of an hour pass and Slim finally traipses off, I assume to the room where I’ve seen him go a handful of times before. Soon after, I head to my gig off Inverness West. Guarding an empty office of universal grey and beige. The sun that peeled the toxins from...

Sandpiper I run along life's shore dodging the cold spray of those surfing the same waves of past slights, real and reimagined, until the storms transform into tsunamis These champion surfers are charged by the surge of drama, never growing weary, and I've become an accomplished long-distance runner, avoiding their heavy, wet sand in my shoes. David Cranmer is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Under the pen name Edward A. Grainger he created the Cash Laramie western series. He's a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.

The Inconsiderate On a dirt road threading out of Port-au-Prince A man discarded alongside the ditch By thugs, former Tonton Macoute, Laid flat with machete hacks Bits of bone and brain fan out from the wound    Blood seeping into the dry, dusty ground. Our squad arrives securing the scene, Interviewing witnesses and recording the crime Two MPs stoop by the corpse, and strike a pose A souvenir picture is snapped while nearby Cordoned off with onlookers, a woman cries. Étienne, our assigned interpreter, tells the GIs The weeping woman is mother to the deceased But they do not flinch—it is lost on them How they are treating her son’s remains Like the trophy hunters of some big game. Years on, these soldiers would be dead too, But that day in Haiti, it was going well for them. David Cranmer is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Five-Two: Crime Poet...