Category: POEMS

Poets love rainy days. With simile and metaphor
they will indicate that the Earth Mother is commiserating
with a bleak mood they are suffering through
or
weeping (as poets weep) for humanity.

Poets…if you did not realize previously…are insanely deluded.

Someday…I am hoping that they will realize
rain is rain and dammit!
tulips need rain. I think it
more likely that the poets will
just disappoint me…they are good
at disappointing people.

Quit writing poetry now!
Surrender your pens,
send them to your
favorite Third World
nation. The children there
have no writing utensils for
school. Worldwide literacy
is more important than
your shitty poetry.

Quit now!
Send your still sealed bond reams,
unfilled filler paper, sketchbooks
spiral bound notebooks and any other
clean paper in your home
to the local recycling station. The
world needs toilet paper and
dinner napkins.

Quit now!
And use the pages of your
Thesaurus to mask off the
windowpanes. It’s cheaper
than curtains.

Quit now!
Your dictionary would work
well in your new career as a
serial arsonist. Just think about it…
you can call yourself the Dictionary Torch
and leave erudite, cliche
riddles for the cops,
“I am neither here nor there,
but everywhere. Fat chance you’ll
catch me o’ denizens of donut shoppes!”

Quit now!
Send your desk to the Army Corps
of Engineers. They can sink it with
the old subway cars for use as an
artificial reef. Artificial reefs attract
loads of fish and are great for recreational
fishermen!

Quit now!
Use your hands for something useful
like playfully spanking your own ass,
planting petunias
or helping the Amish raise a barn.
Please…anything that keeps your fingers
busy and away from your keyboard.

Quit now!
It’s official, you’ve given rise to a horrifying
culture of need and unjustified praise.
Kiss my ass please, I’ll be sure to kiss yours.
Nice poem…I need a psychiatrist…wanna fuck?

Quit now!
Use your computer for something useful
like downloading porn, hacking governmental web sites,
importing S&M leather gear from England or Germany
or balancing your checkbook to save yourself those
annoying overdraft charges.

Quit now!
Take the volumes of poetry you’ve bought
that have lead you down this false path and
donate them to the local skinheads so they might
practice their book burning skills in the woods down
by the river.

Quit now!
The following will soon be classified as felonies:
murdering the English language,
maudlin whining poesies,
linking together cliche trains and calling them poetry,
Choo! Choo!
Use of phrases similar to
the following shall result in sentences of death by
fire ant mounds:
O’ woe…my indigo soul suffers in utter darkness.
I am a poet and I bleed…utter darkness.

Quit now!
Your dreams are illusions of smog and dysfunction.
Please buy some new ones at your local discount department store.
They have clothing patterns, perhaps you could become a fashion designer.

Tingling
scrotum
tightening
as if
the Gods
had grabbed
me by the balls
and in
gravely voice
of Hell’s Angel
asked,
“You ready
to ride
fat boy?”

1.
When you move and live in the
spaces between large bodies
your stress, your casualty,
your breakdown, your disfigurement,
your death
will be accepted
as necessary
as expectation
as collateral damage
as the breaking of eggs
for an omelette.

2.
Afterward, the agents of large bodies will
sweep your scattered bits onto shovels
into dustbins,
splash your blood from the concrete
with hot water and ammonia,
reface the pocked limestone,
apply fresh paint,
plant flowers.

The magic of broom, bucket, brush and trowel
will make it appear as though nothing
untoward had ever occurred here.

Look…flowers.

3.
Every massacre does not find itself on
television, magazine, newspaper, media Broadways.
In fact, most play on the interstitial stages
between large bodies.
They close to a chorus of crickets
and settle into a tortured, anonymous future.

4.
I wanted to spin these threads of ugliness
into a fine and redemptive silk.

Instead, I discovered the impotence of my magic
when applied to cauldrons of lead.

Indeed, I am more alchemist than scientist.
My art is dead. Indifferent empiricism and
cruel numbers survive and blossom.

Look…flowers.

5.
Beliefs are hollow wooden horses.
Beliefs are viral.
Beliefs are pedophiles with candy.
Beliefs are gangrene and cancer.
Beliefs are sedation and murder sold as cure.
Beliefs are hatred parading as conviction.
Beliefs are trained in the art of vanishing.
Beliefs are taught to re-deploy on cue.
Beliefs are stalking you now.

6.
The paint,
the sidewalks,
the stone will shine.
Flowers will bloom.

As if
nothing untoward
had ever
happened here.

Look…flowers.

Beware…
anything you
say,
do
or
gesture
may be used
in a future
instance of
poetic
inspiration
and
I make no
guarantees
as
to
the
positive
or
negative
word
picture
I
will
paint
or
the
consequences
personal
or
professional
thereof.

Now…
please say
or do
something stupid,
my inspiration
fails me.

SMACK!
Is the sound skulls make when they hit cement.

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Is the sound a two year old makes an instant after
smacking his skull on cement, having fallen from
the shopping cart while his father wasn’t paying
attention.

STUPID!
Is the sound the father makes after roughly scooping
the child from the floor, “See what happens…when you
don’t listen? You deserve what you got!”

WOAH!
Is the sound I make after watching this
drama unfold in front of me.

WOAH!
No wonder kids are fucked up!

WOAH!
No wonder people are fucked up!

WOAH!
I really don’t want to be that dude in 40 years
when his 42 year old son files him away in a
nursing home, “See what happens…
You deserve what you got!”

My God! The pepperoni is everywhere here at the
grocery store. Of course, it’s in the cured, prepared meat
aisle with the bacon, the hot dogs, the Polska kielbasa made
from turkey. But now it’s in the beverage aisle because everyone
knows you should have a pound or two of pepperoni while
you toss back that 12 pack. It’s also in the chi-chi delicatessen section
with the Calamata olives, roasted red pepper hummus, feta cheese and
cured Soprassata salami. It’s in the snack aisle with the tortilla, potato
and corn chips, the cheese dip and salsa because it ain’t a snack
tray without pepperoni. It also sits alone at the foot of the dairy
section on the way toward the check out, just in case you have
missed the other four opportunities to pick up a bag, because you
were not paying attention. You were on your cell phone, right?

The times must be tough in the spicy beef and pork salami business if
they have to blanket the store with pepperoni displays.

The times must be tough if they cannot generate adequate sales from
one pepperoni display.

The times must be tough if they are cross merchandising it with every
freaking product that has a thin, spurious red thread connecting it to
pepperoni.

If they could find a way, I wager there would have been a pepperoni display
set up in front of the cold medicine, you might be sick, take your medicine but
remember feed a cold, starve a fever, have some pepperoni, it’ll make you feel
better. God bless the Jews and their chicken soup, but we got pepperoni baby!

Maybe next they will stack it with the baby food. Hey…of course your baby
isn’t ready, but there is nothing stopping you from having a hunk of pepperoni
while you feed the little one mashed peas and strained peaches and someday you
will be able to eat pepperoni together like family.

Maybe they can sell it down the feminine hygiene
aisle. Oh hell, even as a devout merchant of
bad taste, I cannot go there.

The times must be tough, but…given the widening of America, I am thinking it is not
tough times in the pepperoni business. My guess is that the pepperoni business is
booming and booming hard and that five displays of pepperoni merely make it five times
more difficult to say, no I do not need pepperoni this week. Few mortals can continually shrug
off the entreaties of displays placed in the aisle so you nearly trip over them while you
reach for a six pack of beer. You know pepperoni goes good on pizza. You know it is
perfect with cheese on crackers while a sporting event plays on television. You know
pepperoni meets the challenge when the other 15 types of snack food in your cupboard
will not do the trick right before you go to bed. Let’s face it a lot of people are not
saying no to the displays.

And it is funny, because everyone lines to inform you how you should be eating
healthier foods, but then you walk the grocery aisles and are confronted by five pepperoni
displays. If they really wanted you to eat healthier, they would put up five broccoli displays
instead of five pepperoni displays, but that’s one horse no one will wager on.

The truth is that no one wants you to eat healthy or be healthy. They want you to
eat a package of pepperoni each and every day. They want you to go to the doctor so
that they can get their stethoscopes on you, needles in you, blood pressure cuff around your
left arm and sell you pills to control all the problems your pepperoni habit has created. T
hey want you to be large and ill, so they can sell you the cure, a diet book, group meetings,
obesity support therapies, exercise videos, workout clothes, Omar the Tentmaker’s line of oversized fashions,
wide load signs and visits to the psychiatrist to delve the real reasons behind your obesity
because five displays of pepperoni surely have nothing to do with the
making of your sick, fat self.

Not for nothing, but five pepperoni displays in one store is like the brewing companies
telling you to drink responsibly. You know that is a lie. What they are really saying is
drink as much as you want, we will make more. Drink all you like, so long as it doesn’t
cause you to lose your job which might cause you to lose your ability to buy more
beer. Don’t drink and drive because if you kill someone, you will not be buying beer for
awhile and sadly the person you killed will never buy our beer again, not to mention the bad
press as the weeping family blames our beer business for their loss, so be sure you lay
in two thirty packs each and every night so you don’t run out and have to get behind the
wheel.

In fact, nobody wants you to be healthy. The doctors own pepperoni and beer stock. The
beer magnates own pharmaceutical stocks and the pepperoni guy he owns everything beer,
pills, taco chip, cured olive, cheese and sour cream stocks and since I made mention of
it, he has his PR firm working on an angle so they can put a pepperoni display in the feminine hygiene aisle.
In the name of good taste, I would not go there, but they see potential. Six
displays, coming your way fatty. Oh yeah!

Dogs walk down the
front stairs,
the little brown one
gingerly on new
surgery hip.

I see across the street
a rabbit on neighbor’s
front lawn.

I hear the sound of a
leaking tire?

Refocusing I see an
old woman
behind the
door screen
attempting
unsuccessfully
to scare away the
rabbit with
hissing lips,
fearsome
creature that
rabbits are.

She has been
watching too much
Monty Python.

Luckily,
I have the money
to make the monthly
payments
for my roof
my walls
my new vinyl
replacement windows
the doorbell
the broken front porch
windows
the back door that
sticks closed
my weed lawn
the heat
the water
the necessary lines of
communication
the poor choice
credit card debt.

Oddly, I refuse to
pay these people
on time,
somehow,
it’s worth
$29 a month
to tell them their
Due Dates mean
less than nothing to me.

I am, forever, the misdirected
rebel with odd causes.

Here’s to hoping
this odd mood
passes
like
joy
or
bad
burrito
gas.

I feel like
a prickly
five year
old,
with
NO!
ready
upon my lips.

I leave the TV
and several
lights on
throughout
the house,
I pay the power
bill so fuck it.

I itch within
my skin.

I left the dog
out all night
in a fit of
utterly careless
mindlessness.

I BBQed a
seven pound
pork roast,
spent over
five hours
doing so,
“Who the hell
is going to eat all of
this meat?”

Nothing
interests me.

I play
RL Burnside
continually from
midnight
until
7AM,
awake
or
sleeping.

I refuse to
wash dishes.

Ordinarily, I easily discover
simple humor and poetry
in similar tangles of chaotic inaction.

I am finding
nothing
vaguely
humorous
or
poetic
here.

For the 74th time
tonight,
RL moans,
“Wish I was in
heaven sittin’ down…”

Amen,
brother.