A Not So Fullness of Being
Humans
Will never
Stop making
Up
False Gods.
God made it
This way.
And if the current
God ever
Were proven to
Not exist
Humans would
Create
Another one,
And if this
New God
Ever tried to
Show Herself
And walk the earth
Like Jesus
Did
Well, we’d kill
This new God
Too.
It’s like they said
In the
Bar down the
Hill from
Golgotha
The day after
Jesus
Was
Executed: “God sent
Jesus
Down to
See what
Earth was
Like;
And we gave him a taste of what
It’s like to be human.”
I Know Some Things
Melancholia
is not
in vogue,
nor am I
mentionable
unless I’ve
attempted to
hang myself
with a thread
of humanity
Personally,
I rather rip
a hole through
the cosmos
with my scorn,
so Pluto will
remember me
And please,
none of that
burning business
Besides,
what’s wrong
with a little dirt
in your face?
I like organic
“Pile it high,”
I’ll say
That way
my lonely friends
won’t come
digging
for my bones,
and Martians
can still
piss on me
Beside Yourself
If you could be beside yourself,
grab the ectoplasmic umbilical
and emerge as a space cadet
on the seat beside you,
appear as a stranger who sits
down, invades your space,
for whom you politely make space,
smile quickly and absorb
yourself in your phone,
a book, a tablet,
and pray the unknown
doesn’t speak to you,
then the realisation,
that all your hesitancy
movement, smile, absorption
has been sharply mirrored
by them and you ask yourself,
are they taking the piss,
are they the one who stabbed
your wife, raped your children,
set fire to your home and sat
on the wall outside to see it burn?
And see a cord between both of you,
and wonder if you touch it,
would it get their unwanted attention.
How could you cut it and have done
with this uncalled-for connection?
And wish you still had the knife.
Immortality
Wish to be a naked mole rat,
a penis with teeth,
live for 500 years,
hardly age, remain fit
healthy, robust heartbeat,
strong bones, sharp mind
high fertility, don’t feel pain,
elasticky skin makes me cancer-proof.
Wish to be a jellyfish,
sink to ocean floor,
fold in on myself,
regenerate back into a baby.
Rabbit’s Head Winter
Midwinter is a teenage lad, on
his haunches – dead rabbit head hill,
in one hand, penknife cold in other,
his breath icy gust
polishes dry skulls into mirrors,
he catches the blade on the bone
scrapes away fur,
gouges out orbital cavities
back to the bowls,
excavates hollows,
that ooze cherry red blood.
BEATMASTER DROOPEE’S TOP TEN
Beatmaster Droopee, real
name Sean, aged 27,
has his own 10, 12 mixing decks,
and headphones.
Says you need an ear
for rhythm.
Loves Gabba.
Single, he has a top ten list
of types of lasses, he wants to fuck.
Black,
Asian,
Disabled,
Milf,
Dwarf,
French,
Pensioner,
pigeon toed
unconscious,
dead.
Seven ticked so far.
His mate, Micky only has five.
Gives them marks out of ten.
Nicaragua 2007
The girl
in Nicaragua
was wearing
blue shorts and
a tee shirt
her face was
made up
like a Geisha
white powder
with thick
red lines
around her eyes
she pushed
a baby carriage
with a doll
in the seat
the people
from her
village said
it took 5
of them to
pry the dead
child from her
hands so they
gave her the doll
to try to
stop her tears
she was not
here for the
medical clinic
we had set up
in the village
she waited in
no line asked
for no help
just walked
among her
people talking
to the ghost
of her dead child
looking for answers
in everyone’s eyes.
The Comfort
that ship
was bigger
than our
hospital
back home
but on
this ocean
it was
a camel
in the
eye of
a needle
I never
really knew
how huge
the ocean
was until
one morning
a storm
pitched
the ship
so violently
that it
left us
feeling too
sick to
even walk
out to
the helicopter
that took
us into
El Salvador
and the
hospital we
set up there
three of
us puked
out the
back of
the truck
as a
flock of
angry black
buzzards
dropped from
the sky
biting each
other to
see who
got the
biggest
pieces.
take a bow
listening to madonna songs
of all things
which means that i’ve run out
of any and everything to do in this world
like last night how i told my wife
that life is boredom and that death didn’t scare me
which is one hell of a lie to tell
to the person you lay down with at night
and i wasn’t even on but one drink
a little too early for the dramatics of a sunday night
i wonder when i’ll stop this cold madness
stop inflicting such hurt
with little words, with little phrases of gloom
and the madonna keeps playing
as i walk past expired cars and grotesque homes
past old, bloated men playing golf
a song from twenty-two years ago comes on
that i remember bellowing through
the house of my ex-girlfriend
the night i came over to collect my shit
while another girl waited for me at a south side bar
such a low rent don juan i was
throwing my clothes, my books
the poetry manuscript that she hadn’t even read
into a big black garbage bag
all the ephemera of twenty-one months of wasted time
thinking how much better than her i’d been
how much better kept together i was in that final moment
as the ex kept pounding up the stairs
to replay the sappy madonna song
crying and crying and crying
as if it were the end of the world
instead of just getting rid of me
and it seems fitting that i should be subject to it now
still the source of someone’s pain
how discontent has followed me like some plague
i think maybe i should skip the little memory trip
shut the music off and listen
to the subway trains and the hustle of fruit stands
but there’s something soothing
in the song
in madonna’s voice
and the memories have given me
such a fine melancholia for this gray morning
not unlike being alone on the gray-green ocean
in the middle of a soft rain
and when madonna tells me to take a bow
i don’t even have to think
but spin and stop outside a closed down laundry
and dip low
almost to the crack concrete
enlightened like buddha
as if kissing the ground to be alive.
where the spirit shines
and my pride blocks out all the light
the cat howls
her death rattle in the morning
for two and a half hours
while i sculpt shitty fictions
and the sun boils outside
like a rotten egg
and now i have these kids
making a huge card for a politician
thanking him for whatever
we thank politicians for these days
and they are drawing
flags and moons and flowers and rockets
and more flags and smiley faces
writing god bless the u.s.a.
all over the thing
while i think about putting the cat down
and killing this novel for the third time
when out of nowhere
she shoves her cell phone in my face
and there is the politician looking back at me
smiling and magical and american
then she asks
her childlike smile as precious as a basket of puppies
why are you so ugly
when he’s so handsome?
and i have an answer for her somewhere
i swear i really do
somewhere deep down in me
where the spirit shines
and my pride blocks out all the light
and i’d say it
if only i could give myself
some cold, hard words
learn to speak the trifling language
of self-preservation
once again.
1)
I’m looking at you, George Sand
Patriarchy sucks.
QuasiFeminism– sucks.
But PANTS suck
the biggest one of all.
The irony of being equal
by dressing in clothes
with designated leg holes
is that now to fuck
I must get at least half-way naked.
The freedom of the bondage
we were told was a skirt
is that it just needs pushed up
over my hips, and I can express
my womanhood
without exposing any more
of my self than my ass.
So for my share of liberation
I will choose to go
pantsless, and fuck panties too-
1) because I hate that stupid word
and 2) ’cause I enjoy the breeze.
2)
Quandaric
I have
a shameful confession:
I watch
humiliation
porn just so I can feel
ENRAGED
at the degradation
of other
women. I’ve yet
to determine
whether it is my anger or
my shame
that is shared
between us that grips
my body and
freezes it
till I rub
the burning out.
More research
is needed.
