2012
06.29
The sun streams accent the pseudo-poop smears
and my eyes get restless
navigate perfect hardwood floors to the eyes of suited black men
their tongues wrestling a Nigerian accent
one complains his check bounced
each painting perched as deity
but i cannot unthink fingerpainting
the men discuss current remedies for finance
enjoying the sound of voices in the vacuum
they are paid to patrol
i fish into my pocket’s depth
grasp the only sheet of paper
and rescue it from a dusty purgatory
“Gesture swipes…erasures…awkward drawing…crude cartoon”
all the adjectives and nouns placed upon him like a crown
i can only picture a mad man
restless and impotent
swiping drawings in hopes to erasure a flaccid dick
but the pseudo-writer in me
hopes that the words used in description
are not for real but faux-real
I hope the artistic language is like gypsies speaking a cant in front of
tourists
and that performance is the creation
and the con is the selling
and those Nigerian men and this “artist” who illustrates the “unfinished
dialogue between binary oppositions”
are all just talking about cashing checks.
2012
06.25
better dead than Red
when you’re unemployed
every day is Saturday
as I watch a spider crawl up the wall
and think about killing it
I surf the ‘Net all day
mostly porn
I play chess sometimes
I take pills for my heart and
diabetes
they make me dizzy
one time I fell and banged my head
off the refrigerator door
but there’s nothing in there
I have to worry about breaking
nothing to watch on TV
but Jon Stewart
and that Jeremy Wade guy
and his monster fish.
2012
06.19
The woman in the yard
wished me a good mornin’
without the g.
I ran past all the big houses on the golf course
and all the women that looked young
until you got up close.
Ninety odd thousand lived here
in this retirement city of sorts.
The people who had made their money
and now all they had to do
was do nothing
and count trees and days
and wait.
2012
06.13
I know this guy, Louie. Said he’d hook me up.
So I tell my boss, Take a long walk . . .
but I forget how the rest of that saying goes;
so I take a long walk across the warehouse
to my locker, grab my thermos, mirror, dirty pictures,
all while this fat security guy eyeballs me
like it’s fucking Fort Knox, his gold tooth,
gleaming like the ring on the prodigal son,
but I ain’t crawling back.
I know this guy, Louie. Said he’d hook me up
on one of his garbage trucks.
Shit, the smell, especially in summer, he says,
you sure you want to do this?
Like, I got no choice. I done cut the cord
long enough to hang myself.
You Judas! my boss yells
at me when I pick up my last check.
Asks where I’m working, like he gives an ape’s shit.
But I know this guy, Louie. Said he’d hook me up
maybe in the fall when business picks up
and laughs at the joke, but I don’t get it.
The sour lady at the unemployment office stares
like she don’t give a pint of fox piss
because I quit my job and I’m not entitled
to jack shit.
She asks me what kind of job I’m looking for.
One that pays the bills, I say.
Like the one you had? she asks, scratching
her arm, her psoriasis red and raw.
To make it official, she scribbles on paper,
asks me if I have any prospects,
like I’m a geezer panning for gold.
I tell her I know this guy, Louie,
said if I ain’t found nothing in a month
or two, to give him a call
around December,
said he’d toss me a bone
while his regulars celebrate the holidays.
Merry Christmas.
2012
06.10
Is there a spell for weight loss?/ Lose your weight online/ mail it away and later/ see it on the enlarged penis/ of the jock you eHarmonied/ 4 pounds of flesh, four/ I could store that for you/ take it greasy and flammable/ keep it in my/ cellar/
In Greenland Inuits eat birds fermented for years/ cal. unknown/ in buried bags of
seal carcass/the gaps sealed with its own fat/
Please/ please seal my cracks with your fat/ so that my gases bloat me like the seal/
In Alaska the Inupiat eat muktuk/ 133 cal. per oz./ to make it easy we say it tastes
like arrowhead biscuits/ but really the whale does not need tons of pounds of fat
/ fat to keep it buoyant/ fat to keep its heart from human reach/
No one eats the whale heart/ but oh/ take my heart/ place it beside the muktuk and know/ the one that sprouts little auk birds will prosper/ Can you/ with me/ imagine/ now/ the birds if they lived?/ In a flurry beneath the ground/ sealed in the carcass of an unknown thing/ Would it be like a mouth full of moths?/
And the whale without its fat/ really imagine/ That’s where the world birthed sharks/ That is why these sharks smell blood/ but truly seek blubber/ tubs/ cushion for pushin’/
What a phrase/ could I push your cushion?/ Never ending, longing to rebound but instead continuing forever into the meat from a million animals/ the ovaries of a million plants/ the gasps of a million mouths/ always pushing/ forever being buried/