These poems were taken from the book
"Evil Spirits And Their Secretaries",
by David West (a.k.a. David Westerhold,)
Zeitgeist press, 1989.

If you know how to get in touch with the author
please drop me a line: eduardoochs@gmail.com.  I was
never able to find anything about him on the
net, or to get any other of his books (and I
would like to.)

Hey (2002/2007; I'll explain everything someday):
  http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/West.htm
  http://angg.twu.net/contact.html



   For Jane Wherever She Is
   ========================

Jane was the queen of the hayride,
kissed the quarterback
and caught his baby

like a flu, a badly thrown bouquet
she didn't need.  She stole a car,
split, and five cities later

was still running.  Pain taught her
to survive but being pretty
didn't hurt, and then it did.

LA brought out the blade
in Jane.  She was no angel.
She was a dangerous woman.

She carried one small town
and three abortions in her belly
and at forty, she carried

them well.  But some nights, late,
she lost her cool.  She crawled
into bed and felt wicked.

She'd call me up, we'd laugh
about the Baptists and the Elks
but they were real to us.

We felt the old hometown
rectitude crawling up our backs
like spiders.  One day she was gone.

Haven't seen her since.
She may be orbiting
a thorazine ward

she may be in prison or feeding
worms, but some friends like Jane
go all the way around the sun

and I see them on the corner
many years later looking meaner
and more beautiful than ever

wearing a million more miles
and I'd say:  "Holy Shit
you're still alive?"





  The Unhappy Association of Werewolves
  Makes a Statement to the Terror Industry
  ========================================

At Night, we do our hunting.
Home is everywhere we've pissed.
Our name is fang, and who we love
is not your business.  Then we sleep.

We dream we're in an office -- it's man eat
dog out there.  Our hides are worth money
and traps are cheap.  We are required
to be undyingly civil on the phone.

We dream our fangs are not there when
we need them.  You can tell we're losing
when we start to look bored, when anger
learns patience, and we wake up.

We face the mirror and see horror
as familiar as a razor.  We're losing fur
our fangs retract -- then we're naked
at the mercy of the rush hour.  We're not

good humans turned into wolves by a curse;
the movies have it all backward.  At night
you call it howling but we sing because
we're free.  By the day we get paid to be dogs.




  Sixteen
  =======

At sixteen I was a mutant.  My parents
were alarmed.  I could be beaten, I got hurt
but my faith had super powers.  I believed
in comic books, Cochise, and Baudelaire.

I wasn't the scholar Mom ordered from Sears,
not Dylan, not Che, not a hero with a sling --
I wanted to be an Apache.  I knew who I was
by who I wouldn't be, and if I could have looked

in a crystal ball and see myself now,
I would have screamed.  Through endless
meetings, and too many mistakes, through
the cold white light of conviction,

I've travelled night-years to the altar
where I burned my youth, and now I want it
all back.  All the smoke.  All the fire.
Every lousy job.  My enthusiasms, delusions,

communism, and my cigarette lighter.
Fork 'em over.  Where's the teenage banshee
with acne, backed in the corner?  Who put
the screws on that kid?  What happened to me?

I want a new god.  I want it perfect this time:
unscarred, incandescent, and sixteen.