MAY (Your Day Be) VOGON

FRIENDS—

I hope you’re all doing well. Please forgive me if these Vogons are even vogoner than usual. They only reflect how unbelievable & discordant the world itself has become. 

You’ll be happy to know that I’m not in the throes of an existential crisis this year, so I don’t have any Summer Series planned. I do want to return to more serious essay-like pieces here— I keep wanting to do that but time & energy are not as abundant as they once were. I will try harder this summer to address some more concrete topics. Ie, i keep feeling like I should be writing more about the “trans experience” but I’m not sure what to say about it, or who even wants to hear about it. I know the “Successful Trans Narrative” is old news & people are hungry for the more shadowy & unsuccessful tidbits that go w/ all human narratives, even the ones about magical self transformative butterfly journeys!! 

So yeah, I’ll try to say some important adult-like things in the near future.

ALSO—Submissions are open for Octo Review #5. So far I’m ahead in art submissions & need more poetry, which is the exact opposite of how it usually is. I hope you all understand why I am expressly inviting more work from women, POC, LGBT… please don’t label me a “Lit Bro” or a “SJW”. I’m a Gen Xer & too old to be either one of those things. Thank you. (I’m just a person who loves poetry, art & equality for all)

****************VOGON************************************

How many scientists perish in plane crashes?

(I refuse anymore insect dialect on this topic!)

Start the elevator, Faustian underling

My rival must be equal or he’s no rival at all

This word has thorns

It’s resonating—a snake’s tongue

Soft sibilant & sexual

Alliterative afterburn—

   he’ll get his facts straight

    Or he’ll get knee-capped in

        Concourse A

0504:0875p

******

Copy Cat

Ditto Dog

Ersatz Emu

Forged Ferret

Ghostwritten Goldfish

Hijacked Hippo

Imitation Ibex

Jingoistic Jellyfish

Knock-off Kangaroo

Raise your hand if you remember Richard Scarry

If you wet your pants on the playground

If you dyed your hair “A Thousand Deaths” [Clairol #122]

All the people in Scarry’s stories were animals

I always wondered why I didn’t see warthogs

Shopping at the grocery store

Or orange tabbies driving cars

I probably wet my pants on the playground 100x

But I know I didn’t poop on the slide

Like Kevin (one of the Kindergarten twins)

That playground had monkey bars 

In the shape of a rocket ship

What bright equipment bores through your trauma!

(I only used Clairol #121 “Black”)

0504:0900p

*******

You were a bankrupt millionaire hotel mogul on 9/11

Maybe you’re not so far off the 34th Street masonry

I glimpsed as time lifted its veil that summer

Dynamite, I said

Looking at my cat’s legs

So faraway from their first 7 lives

I didn’t know she was sprinting for the Rainbow Bridge

& you hadn’t yet mounted the escalator

At the b0tt0m of the puffy Cheet0 bag

0504:0900p

********

Yo, gabapentin & porn don’t invite

The bright characters

Folded in Aramaic yoga poses

The arabesque origami

You sent to the moon

Sits folded on Salome’s desk

She gave you a headless grandchild

You didn’t know you wanted

Conveniently skipping that generation

You watched on the playground

                            from afar…

W/ binoculars

   & unclean thoughts

A world you can’t pause

   On its reel to reel meditation

Innocence & how to break it like wind wave bone code

I’m in an analog trance

Over (y)our clone, all (y)our motherless

Sequels,

Or what is rebooted for the sake of boo’s?

What ruins are we rebuilding

W/ no specs for a fireplace?

0507:1000p

**********

    I

a) raised

b) sat at

c) lowered

   the bar

Remember a couple years ago

When being an introvert was cool —

just for a moment— but long enough

For a bunch of extroverts I knew

To jump on the bandwagon

It doesn’t work the other way though

I can’t just claim to be an extrovert & not 

Drink myself silly trying to prove it

Mmmm… silliness…

***

Not the usual

Lo-fi park pigeon warble

But a soft, high coo

***

Rhapsodizing

Your mating rituals

In such heteroprogressive detail

At the expense

of the gay orgy option

I would’ve chosen

Above all of thee

Signed,

the Media©

Symbolically

0512:1200n

***********

ROSEANNE IN SPACE!!!

Having a tough time communicating

The truth is V Putin reads this blog

(only on radio & in this blog do I feel like an actual person)

The spy had to take a leak

If these poems sound like they were

Written by DT

It’s because he’s a dictator

I’m taking dictation w/ shaky wrists

Putting prayer back in the news

The Media has picked the slow lane

So it doesn’t miss its exit

Making changes to appeal to a broader audience

I don’t like a broad audience. Nor do I care

For a narrow one.

I’m looking for a deep audience, a bright

One.

*phosphene eye drops*

Green tea from now on  

Brain saturation leaves

I am an autotonsorialist

& even an autodentite

& surely an autodidact

Just not a girl named Autumn O’Beale

0512:1200n

***********

His Brain Left A Suicide Note Of Its Own

I give zero wild fuckberries

About your pyroclastic side hustle

Just dance w/ me

Put some Xymox on the phonograph’s

Rotary saddle & ride the disco darkness

Gentle pre laser gallop

Speaks to me in the unicursal language

Body to body w/out microbe swap

Minus the skin slip

[open bed sore from our efforts]

Since you became

A paranoid clairvoyant

I no longer hear your telepathic bluestreaks

But I can still see them

Forming in your frontal sky

Sea smoke thick into the nation’s heart

Mystical fog swirls—the ocean raising its hand

To take an implosive leak

Continental shelves—paperless,

Voiceless, lifeless — bend to chevrons

Of a lost war

        Nature’s ruling

Big suicide canvas, shoreline performance

     Emotional exhibitionism

My biggest weakness? Is expecting you to read

My mind.

You’re hired! You’re fired!

You’re pardoned! You’re free!

My greatest asset? 

I was always a female prince

Now I’m finally a male queen

Lovely. You’re hired.

You’re salaried.

You’re valued way above your potential,

And above the potential of the

Page of Pentacles who answers our phones

The job’s so simple

Even a Gen Xer could do it!

I’m sorry, Gen-what?

What? Oh, I must’ve been dreaming

But your skin looks thicker

Like your demeanor, your uncensored pie-hole

I quit.

I wasn’t born to feel good & I’m handling that better than ever

But how I wish it wasn’t so. I’m the kind

Of sponge that sops the tears

Of your overexertion,

       your distilled spirit,

           your inhaled prayers

Leaking onion-size tears, whole organs

Expelled by this sadness

Have your sham-wow handy

            your desiccants

                your trocar

When old people brag re: their grandchildren

What they’re really saying is

“Our children still talk to us. We didn’t fuck

Them up so much they refused our lineage. You?”

As with all things that frighten &

Confuse me

I like to take a direct approach—is that a hearse

In front of the WH??

      What all over my nerves?

           Mustard?

              Ash?

        Tiger scratches?

It stings like grid confetti

     hacked bits of civility

        beheaded honey bee

0512:1200n

***********

The Federal Anthem

Place your right hand

Over your bulging aorta

You’re a vision in pinstripes & stents

Will you whistle if I say France?

The Day After (propaganda)

The Morning After (pills)

Reagan Girls w/ hipbones & hair to the moon

Dead dry sex scrape

I heard everyone has a right brain

Over their heart

The right brain in each & every skull =

Heaven’s secret locale

the strung out Xmas lights of

Impermanence

       Mortal flickers of empathy

           On tunnel walls

Long graffiti speeches: oratory bombs

Lipstick the shade of a shoe print

I apply to be a spy

But who will hire me?

Russia knows how much I know about

America.

But I’m not the neighbor next door.

I’m not that girl anymore.

0518:0900p

*********

You said a beautiful word & I forgot

To hear it

Sabbatical, you called it

But the work was crippling

A happy fracture v. a bee’s wing wrung out like a washcloth

0518:0925p

(obligatory bee shout out!)

***********

Cooties

From Hot Zone 4

Set free on the city bus

Uber lice

Or ebola porter

Carrying the bomb that once

Vandalized the moon from here

0518:0925p

******

QUSS WORDS

All quandaries

  Qualify you to quote

     the Queen of Cups

Who calls from quarts

   Of quinine

& questions everything

W/in a quatrain of her last quokka

0518:0925p

********

A song that sounds like a cheap little trinket

Or a lisping elephant

Creeps on round black feet 

Into the egg-shaped office

Agenda neutral

Disgraced congressman Wiener

Dick-pics his way to the podium

“I want to take your guns, he says

“And also your phones.”

The head of household carries the one

You duplicitous little troll!

Now I know you’re Kuh-guh-baya

(pronounced “cagey bee”)

No, it isn’t a leap year

But leap we will through hoops

Not covered by mood insurance

At no cost to the

Homo nurse

0522:0950p

***********

But what is the rest?  58. 13. 69. 70

(year?  lottery?)

Mastectomy. Barometer.

Masonry degree.

Mr. Hysterical, radiation burns w/ inhaled glass

Particulate

He went nutso from the pain

A low threshold — to bear boredom

w/ majestic plumage!

0522:0950p

“Isn’t the plumage beautiful?”

“And I’ll smash your face for you, Yarblockos!”

***********

Once Upon A Laminated Continuum

I envisioned the Texas bbq

Where war criminals chained to their grills

Served the tired, wretched, poor & hungry

It hasn’t happened yet

But I still envision it (so it could)

What trope will twist through neo Judgment Day?

I see suicides.

A Trumptown massacree.

With radiant McNuggets, tweeteth the canary

Nevermore

[It’s audacious to hope

   We’ll get funding

     For the picture]

0530:1125a

**********

Knowledge means nothing

It used to be currency

But it’s everywhere now

We’re all fish searching

For that one perfect water molecule

It’s me looking for myself in the camera, taking

A photo of myself looking in the mirror

The new polyangular Narcissus

A pudding skin at evolution’s banquet

Dig in, asexual aphrodites

0530:1125a

[rain, rabbits, Russian spies

  R words are swords tomorrow

         Reversed

           Parked

        What an arc]

***************

Do angels have assholes?

I know they don’t have belly buttons

They’ve nowhere to put their gaze

So they live (as electricity) to serve

Don’t throw lunchables at Planned Parenthood &

Call it love

That little embryo

Spooled around an unbent halo

From fontanel to anal cave

Says

“Don’t profane my golden spine

With these stainless pincers

Close your lips

i don’t want to gather lint”

0531:1050a