It’s a bench.
And it’s for old men.
Count of Six
I’ll give you till the count of six.
One.
Now run!
Two.
Go screw!
Three.
Let me be!
Four.
There’s the door!
Five.
While I’m still alive!
Six.
Please stay, I love you.
The Commercial
Coupons! Sales! Deals!
Bargains! Free stuff! Steals!
Buy five marked up, get one half price!
Buy two of one thing and get one thing twice!
Earn customer points when you shop at our store!
Redeem customer points to shop here some more!
And we love America! Hip hip hooray!
Every product made right in the US of A.
So come meet our great big American family.*
And be welcomed with a great big American laugh!
Homonyms
Homonyms aren’t fare.
It’s awful. It’s tragic.
I say I’m pulling out my hare
and they think I’m talking magic.
Lou
Lou followed his dreams. Lou followed those things into studios and boxing rings,
into clown schools and swimming pools, into plucking little fiddle strings.
Lou followed his dreams. Now he’s dirt-poor.
He doesn’t have a pillow or bed anymore.
So three cheers for Lou, the follower who followed his dreams all the way to the floor!
Fuck
Ah, fuck.
The Light
When I die, I hope I don’t see a bright light.
Those give me headaches.
After a long life, I don’t want to stare into the sun.
I want a calm blackness—
the same shade that coats the back of my eyelids.
Cat Lady
Buried beneath a pile of cats,
in a purring igloo,
is the crazy fucking cat lady.
Who’d have guessed?
Using You
I worry that
I’m using you,
my love,
my light,
my back-scratcher,
my cooking dickglove,
my sapient baby-maker,
my emotional treadmill,
my long-legged suggestion box,
my immaculate tissue dispenser.
I worry that
I’m using you.
Classic me.
…
I’m a nihilist.
A complete
and perfect
nihilist.
Life has no meaning. No point.
Happiness is a chemical coincidence and nothing else (still “else” though nothing to begin with).
Value is a vast vault of black, a black that dictates lack.
Oh, and that accidental rhyme just then meant nothing.
Why are you color-coding things?
WHY?!
What’s the point, fascist?
For more, check out my blog.
Armadilla
Armadilla! Armadilla!
On a pilla! On a pilla!
And a giant chinchillo!
And a bigger gorillo!
My Barber Is Bald
My barber is bald, my trainer is fat, my sponsor is drunken and lazy.
My optometrist is as blind as a bat and my shrink is batshit crazy.
When you look at who is helping me, you’ll know the reason why
I’ve remained a bald, fat, drunken, lazy, blind, and crazy guy.
Different
Although there’s many different brains, with different stories, different names, different isn’t safe like same,
so same makes most take safer aim.
Who needs those same old, same old fakes?
Today, that same old, lame mold breaks.
I’m me! I’m me! Meet me and see
what a difference difference makes!
Three Little Words
If you were perfect,
I’d tattoo this on my chest.
If you were beautiful,
I’d carve this into a tree trunk.
If you were nice,
I’d write this in a letter.
But you’re none of those—
The Martian
One of them Martians came round the house last night.
Talking in code or some shit.
Weird fucking things they are.
He rambled for a good ten minutes.
Didn’t listen. Kept staring at his brain
through that tacky glass head of his.
I could see his thoughts form. I could see
them scramble around like ants on hot pavement.
Dumb and flightless, that’s what they are.
He eventually left. Haven’t thought of him since.
Xia Cobolt
I don’t want to die.
It keeps me up at night.
Because I know that when I die, whenever that will be, I’ll probably wake up in some futuristic shopping mall, having just spent two space dollars and a mere fifteen space minutes living “my life” by means of one of the future’s virtual reality massage chairs. Then I’ll get up and watch the long line of people circle through, living “my life” then getting back in line.
And I’ll remember who I am again.
I’m Xia Cobolt, a twelve-year-old Pan-Asian Euroamerican girl.
And I’m a fugitive.
Father Time
Father Time is fucking Mother Nature.
He’s fucking her good. And he’s lasting a long time.
She’s loving the shit out of it.
He’s doing that thing that makes girls’ heads spin.
She’s been spinning for years!
I heard that one day, in the future, he’s gonna fuck her right into the sun.
He’s done it to chicks before.
Playground
The big bugs buzz and putter about the playground.
They’re trying to have fun—to enjoy themselves—but it’s impossible.
Because the playground is made for tiny people, not big bugs.
Bee Guys
Three bee guys were scared for their lives.
They broke out of their hives,
then broke out in hives.
They screamed, “We miss our honeycomb home!”
and three wives from the hive screamed, “Honey, come home!”
Hold the Cheese
I’ll have a cheeseburger.
Hold the cheese.
Hold it in your hand until it melts—
until it bears the shape of that voluptuous palm of yours.
Then put it on my burger.
This Hour
I need to make this hour last,
so attach a beach to the top of my hourglass.
Time Blows
Life is an open book.
Time is an oscillating fan.
I’ve had to learn to skim-read because
before I can read more than a few paragraphs,
that fucking airhead comes circling back,
blowing pages like a medieval prostitute.
The cool air feels nice, though.
Sometimes, when my head aches,
I let my eyes relax
and I enjoy the breeze as the words blur.
My Stamen
We pollinated all night long and when the sunlight came, my lover was gone.
Secret Ingredient
You said your secret ingredient
was a pinch of love.
And that may be true.
But I taste cinnamon.
And I hate cinnamon more than I love.
Confession
“No one understands me”
it slipped out in
a timid whisper
&nb
sp; as she combed her beard.
Feels
It feels good to love an angel.
It feels better to fuck an angel
with her wings pinned back
like a recently archived butterfly.
The Fall
Mid-October,
with leaves spilled
like colored pencil shavings—
the streets dicing our town
into neat, unfair portions—
and me, eatin’ that pussy.
Touch Me Back
“Touch me back,”
you said, like a pirate talking to a masseuse.
“Right away, Captain,”
I replied, forgetting that you couldn’t hear
that connection that I made in my head.
Life
Life, man.
Life is a river.
It twists and turns and has fish.
Life is hope. Hope is love.
So transitively, love is a river, too.
Pretty neat, huh?
Imagination
They say adults have no imagination. Not true.
Just instead of dinosaurs and spaceships, they imagine
silence and the new babysitter bent over the coffee table.
TreeHouseTree
I went out to play on Christmas Day
and thought, “Hey, wait a minute!
My tree has a house in it!
And my house has a tree in it!”
Above and Below
You little perfect thing, you.
At once, I stand in awe and condescend,
my puppy, my goddess.
One and Another
When one meets another,
he or she must treat him or her kindly.
If a third were to enter,
he or she must be swiftly executed to avoid confusion.
Got it?
Senator
Senator, what bright eyes you have!
The better to light paths with.
Senator, what a sharp tongue you have!
The better to cut the fat with.
Senator, what broad shoulders you have!
The better to carry you with.
Wait, why is your chest beeping?
God bless America!
Boston Poem
The Boston people pass the time
by making all their stories rhyme.
Like, “Yesterday, me and my ma
watched the Sox game at the bar.”
Sharks
You’re afraid of sharks?
Really?
They don’t even have bones!
They have cartilage.
Are you afraid of ears too?
Our Father
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,
hollow be thy promises
and shallow be thy shame.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
On a scale from one to ten, our Lord is totally eleven.
Give us this day our daily bread, toasted close to dawn,
and forgive us our trespasses as we shoot those who trespass on our lawn, and lead us not into temptation, such as pot or porno,
but deliver us from evil (if not delivery, then DiGiorno).
Sasquatch
The Sasquatch squats, flowers in hand, on an old stump by the riverbed.
She’s not coming. He knows that by now, but he stays put—tracing circles in the dirt with his big toe.
Overhead, the birds sing their condolences.
A fox passes and offers a bite of dead squirrel.
The monster politely declines.
As the sun tucks itself behind the horizon, his eyes close, his chin meets his chest, and the flowers slip from his grasp.
Socrates
Deep in the bowels of Athens,
Socrates is having the squirts—
his body, like the aqueducts,
giving way to a long, watery movement—
hunched head to hands and elbows to knees.
Thinking pretty hard now ain’t ya, buddy?
Yeah, I bet you are.
Light Up
She could light up a room with her smile.
And she could really light one up with her flamethrower.
They
“Well, man, you know what they say.”
No, I don’t. I don’t know what they say.
I don’t even know who they are.
Who is this they?
They seem pretty smug.
They seem to think they know shit.
Fuck them.
Timmy
and played all day in the quicksand box.
Scarf
I wear a scarf
to keep my words warm.
So you will smile when
they smack you in the face.
Preposition
This is a fine form to make a prepositional proposition in.
The proposition is this: prepositions are fine to end a sentence with.
Judge Jesus
I said, “You can’t judge me.
Only Jesus can!”
He said, “Well I can ’cause
I’m a judge and
’cause you just killed a man.”
Fireflies
Hey, fireflies! Fly higher, guys!
Fly high above this place.
Till a sky rise is a wire’s size.
Then fly off into space.
I catch stupid bugs in jars
but you’re not bugs you’re baby stars!
Land of Really Fucked Thoughts
I come from the Land of Really Fucked Thoughts, where babies are bound by umbilical knots,
where dead horses pile on dandruff-stuffed cots, where burn-victim monkeys drink blood-and-pus shots.
I come from the Land of That Just Ain’t Right, where young boys like fisting their hamsters at night, where boxers use AIDS-ridden needles to fight, where an Alzheimer’s orgy’s a regular sight.
I don’t want to stay but I know I can’t leave it.
I needed to tell you but please don’t reread it.
I hope this sounds silly and you can’t conceive it, because you’re here the second you believe it.
Bombs
The first bomb dropped unheard,
unlike the loudly dropped second and third;
then the final bomb dropped from the sky to the ground
and the last-seen bomb made the last-heard sound.
The Seaward
“You’re a cunt,”
I said to the cunt.
“Well, you’re a cunt, too!”
replied the cunt to the other cunt,
apparently.
And far away, fresh moss continued
to fill in our initials.
Rollersnakes
duh, duh, duh, duh,
duh, duh, duh, duh,
DUM! DUM!
ROLLERSNAKES!
duh, duh, duh, duh,
duh, duh, duh, duh,
DUM! DUM!
ROLLERSNAKES!
Silly
I love being silly, don’t you?
Boing, boing, boing. Poo!
Be silly when you’re giddy!
Be silly when you’re tired!
If your job is superserious,
be silly till you’re fired!
Perfect
I love you just the way you are
but you don’t see you like I do.
You shouldn’t try so hard to be perfect.
Trust me, perfect should try to be you.
Mmmmmm
I like that thing you do with your tongue.
What do you call it?
Speaking?
Yeah, I dig it.
She Waits
She waits. How beautifully she waits.
How impossibly lovely she is with a thing so passive.
With what
weight she waits, making her bus or boyfriend (or whatever she waits for) seem like a first brunch with Christ.
She waits regally, in perfect contrast to the drooling buffoon describing her.
Put You in My Pocket
Could I crush you, young lady,
and put you in my pocket?
You would fold beautifully, like
fifty-dollar-bill beautifully, not
origami-swan beautifully.
We could unwind by the
glass lakes of romance or tangle by the
dank wetlands of perversion—
as long as we’re together.
All Clear
I pood and wiped,
the wipe was clean,
’twas the closest to happy
I’ve ever been.
The Biker Gang