Sunday, December 30, 2018

December VOGON Dossier

FRIENDS,

How’ve you been? I’ve been trapped in that staticky void between Xmas & NewYear, and I love it. I’ve been loving everyone’s posts about how transformative 2018 has been. For real. I was saying on my radio show last night that 2017 & 2018 are like the same year rolled into one long ovuloid orbit-ball of transcendence.

It’s hard to believe the scared, shivering, cedar-soaked hamster who was cruelly flung from its liberal exercise wheel in early ’17 has become the chill & enlightened (yet tough & flexible) mystic who blogs before you today.

I hope you enjoy the last of 2018’s Vogon poems. They’re pretty “dim” compared to say October’s batch, but that’s all I had left in me. Maybe I’ll try it all over again next year. I really am going to try to write more stuff, much like the stuff most people post so eloquently & succinctly on facebook, but which I need this whole Blog Empire to say…


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



HERE,

Please hold this secret for me

          Mum, 
a purveyor of sausage and
                       I, a pescatarian,

Slipped through her oily fingers
               
                       A petrol blob reduced
          To just water.            Just steam.
                              Just ice.

Hold this secret til it becomes a gavel
                  
                    Smashing the tabletops 
                      of a fragile dynasty

                                             Where is this sentence going?

It took the short cut to the urban ledge

                        Still holding your shortwave secrets

That pound of feathers weighing more than the planet itself &


[you said it was MY body that lied. You accused my body of knowing how to lie &
You’re lucky I’ve decided to] LET IT GO

1201:0275a

**********



I can no longer use the word ‘forever’

now that I know what time looks like. Maybe to-ever
                                                              or by-ever
                                                             or from-ever

But never for,  ever.

I have no more questions of the Bushes (though I can see
he has just died)

I had what they called a ‘lit sky’ [??? that’s it, I guess ???]

The master gland’s no lightbulb,
             but a good old fashioned match tip,
                   bursting w/ tears when struck

I have not survived 2018. It has survived me & my garage-brand
                             nazi punches (+ their first responders)
                           
I was a dimmer switch & dominoes flickered
                    having clouds delivered
                      like pizzas from the sun

                (Yum!!)

1201:0300a

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

I reprised a lot of roles this year —
             ones I thought written off or cancelled—

Rewound all the way to their pilot episodes:
            Episode 1 in which “Valentine” falls
               from the womb & gets the gift
                              of amnesia

Frantically fast forwarding through all those
                   mundane situations & emotions

Not handily crafted by pyromaniacs & Harvard grads
                            w/ scripted getaways

Fast, fast through the violent flames
Crash in your own garage
Where you’ll eventually hang
                         a pituitary gland hemorrhaging
                                             hormones
        that signal a foxhole
                       must be dug in your living room

Your feet are reptilian (to match your instincts)

You must bravely walk across cold tile w/out calling 

For help
                   someone to drive you from kitchen to bathroom

Oops, you’ve fallen
                 & can’t get back on your opposable toes

1201:0325a

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

My tongue is a rose petal hanging w/ kitten fangs
Like innocence has no bite, Please, when
       it’s gone so soon
I raise my hands in hallelujah & shoot fireworks
                                                  from my wrists

Xraying neighborhood homes w/ my flames—
                   furniture-grey bones, a dropped curtain of skin
                              A sinkful of koi

Lots of unidentified crying 
                   coming from the corners (& deltas)

Each dust cell remembers differently
                   Elephant parts making a whole you
                     who doesn’t have to pack its trunk
                        & move into the diamond mine [?]

1208:0150a



***********

THE URINALIST

Walk w/ me
Wear my shoes
Wear my piss-stained shoes
Wear my piss-stained skin
Wear my olive drab dreamcoat
Wear my knock off moccasins
Wear my dormant serape

Walk a mile in my uterus
Get kicked in my gonads
Eat my crow
Dry heave my cock
This glorious body w/ xray eyes

Was left to die in a garage
To swelter like an oilcan on a rack of shellac

To reanimate in Autumn
A tinman flailing like a shovel
Disturbing the bag you hung to manage your anger

Punch my tongue
Staple my nailbeds to the end of this verse &
Il’ll try to drag my knuckles to your grave & say
“*%#$$^^**!!”

[just Vogon thoughtlessness]

1208:0150a

***********

THE JOURNEY LIST

Did you pack your Brooks Brothers
                              Kevlar pantsuit?

The fishing pole, the mouse traps,
                            the bug repellent,
                            the fox terrier
                            the dox hund
                           the wicker spaniel?

The cover up: where are the verbs?
They dressed up adjectives & sent them through
                                   the same portal
                                
                                    Retract clause

How are they sleeping tonite behind horizontal bars?
      W/out linens they gunpoint the exact moment
                 the key witness lay,
                       after lying.

Low lain eggs
          produced in a casket
                laden w/ flora

Office 
         party-claws

Paws
              laid
                          slain

Close lid.

1208:0175a

ee cummings  the duke of handsomeness


**********

What shall the meek?

Inherit the whole big onion w/ their passive voice?

Swim in the force field (limbo)

Until their day on the Heavenly Uncle’s docket

Judgment Time! 

Goodie, goodie
Hooray, hooray

I shall pass the muster
Of my merciless peers

Then get whacked by the one & only god(parent)

How have I not sweetened w/ meekness
Over time 

Torched to a fragile crisp? Too much salt
in the treasure maps of the brain, too firm for the
Crack of a spoon

There’s a sizzling light, and kryptonite
from the buried chest
                       detonates…


What shall the meek?  Find the mantel in their anatomy
                       — it must be in the skull—
                   and place upon it the spirit
                        fermented in wisdom &
                    drunk from the casket up

1209:04259

***********

Can you breathe w/ your left lung 
                               flapping by itself?
             Now the right
                     Left
                         Right
                    Left

Inhale the cigar smoke of
           Your infancy   left/right/left

Smoke rings signaling a coup 
     My grandmother’s letting me know
         She’s due for parole
            (reincarnation)
Her angry rabbit soul loves
             dismantling the world w/ its teeth

She passed that love onto me

I never became a doctor,
                      or a grandmother
                    or a dolphin interpreter

Or any other noun w/ lungs
Blowholed up in limbo
An amputation from the holy source

I look into my G-ma’s sterile eyes (she’s an
Angel now. Her eyes yank babies & grown ups from a womb of light)

Her halo like forceps
              horseshoe magnets
                 taunting mercury…
A train whistle ringtones her home….

              Soft octopus non-skull
             Numbed after birth

Abducted by a nurse
     whose angel costume came w/ sad, sad human eyes

1209:0425



**********

ALEXIT

America first
   Italy first (hi guys! how’s it going?)
     Philippines first
       Bolivia first
          Belarus first
Every country before all others

I declare my garage the center of the universe

I declare this pencil God
(don’t say pencil
don’t say guh…
don’t say airpuhl….
don’t say nay………)

One thing that made this summer so magically shitty:
I stood alone in the center of the universe
Selling my no longer useful soul

All visitors, all strangers,
     electro-magnified,
Were pulsing light

Pumped like seahorses past my wetwares

It was so American to share

My time w/ others —
                     
                      a thing I rarely do—

Never voluntarily, always under duress
      do I even agree to notice thy
               (selves & stuff)

I was done sweltering; I was done pruning June
                      from my grief hoard
   When a slow stranger surveyed my wares

Disappearing toward me, Bourdain’s ghost

    I wanted to hide behind Pearl the mannequin

before he fondled my garage knob & uttered
the witchy incantation
“I’m going to be thy neighbor”

1210:0350a

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

The scream I stifled
Could’ve ended the careers
Of every writer, cinematographer,
              best boy & key grip
To work in the American Horror industry

I was triggered. I was stomped.
i was horrified in my american blood-sweat & plasmatic sadness

I was going to be a neighbor again &
                           there was no choice

Roe v. Wade
        (they must’ve been neighbors)
didn’t cover this unplanned unwanted miracle

I wept for my boundaries

Once more the world bisects my
                          obese aura,
              my ivory safe space
Once again the geese are honking
The nazis are humming
The sky is crawling…

1210:0375a



***********

THE ROOF IS FALLING (Like Literally Caving In)

So there’s hovering

Bzzzing           crafting

Building like a bee (quietly)

He’s no bruise on the ear
No browning of silence

His mouth never shouts under a mustache cloud

He threw chains around the limb

I should’ve hung from & hung

A swing instead

He reads alone where everyone can see

(That’s some moxie!)

Everyone else pretending to be

BUSY      mowing watering performing cosmetic surgery on trees

He puffs his chest & gazes on his field of fucks,
                     So fertile

Mine. Mine. Mine. An airplane roars above. Mine.
He watches it — if he could he’d pin it 
To the sky & watch it squirm

The dirt is here
The bulldozer’s been fed
The urinal sits in the yard like a big blue poodle

1210:0400a

[I’m the one you gossip about because it’s easy.  & I’m never there to stoppit.
So enjoyit.
This replacement neighbor-bulb
Best be incandescent or
Alexit]

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

LAMBERT

Lambert was an angry little
                                   chihuahua
who could make the animal kingdom
(including the greater apes) flinch

The mightiest of all — his (or her) wrath
         inflated each rib, a parenthesis
                  of power
   about to exhale all over a toy planet

Lambert smashed a Viking vase,
           broke heavy Vogon furniture
        tore oaken doors off hinges w/ 
            micro-mandibles

         His/her garage-rage said
Use your own abdomen as punching bag

           Breed too small
      Dynamite wearing a sweater
  & sticking its tongue out at all the babies
          in their mobile thrones

1223:0350a


Happy Anniversary & New year


**********

Fuck! I always look at the clock
At just the wrong moment
Right when it’s getting undressed (11:11)
Or picking its nose (3:32)

My 39th guardian angel resigned this year
I’m hard on angels & their barbie doll crotches

I go low on the tree of life
It’s like being aborted
Over & over & feels more right
Than being born

But it finally had to happen — the AI voice,
                                          the mosquito feedback
Both auctioning off souls
In a post mortem/ pre natal stock exchange
          
              [A sequence of alien numbers I don’t recognize]
          they’re not here on my keyboard so I can’t shove
                their jagged shapes into your rounded eyeholes

accommodating as they are,
      see you in 2510

Sharing the womb w/ her intelligence
She told you everything you’d need to know to be human
Everything you couldn’t process about angelhood

& yet it all made sense to me

1223:0400a

Fascist free, gluten free New Year    No argument here
                 No phosphene words
                    or annelid spies

How to hibernate & lose friends:    No longer woke—I want
                                my blankie!!!
Do Not Disturb.
Next wake up call is death.

1223:0400a

**********

INCANTATION

Family treason    Long, long branches
           Big wooden octopus
              suckers, nooses

Romantic White House balcony
     where a family of bats twist
                                 in the wind

Pituitary beehive much louder
Than gossamer mosquitones
              Subversion of message in 
                           pop-up locations,
Stuttering, unfocused
           Just breathe
      with all the tiny little lungs
        you have hidden all over 
                 your body

The blowholes of courage,
             the flippers of resistance
A pinball incantation
       for the Rupikowski generation

1223:0400a

********** 


At 49 3/4 I’ve been drafted 
into the 30-year time travel game. Such fun — 

Sketch of 2 Made-Up Chinese (or Japanese, but definitely NOT Korean) Characters
                                   Do They Actually Mean Something?

Let’s say they mean ‘neighbor’ and ‘ghost’


                                 1988   v.    2018
                    A hallway         v.       a driveway
                          hospital      v.      home
                        bordering     v.     bordering
                                on                   on
                                    hysteria  joy

They made me remove my earrings
(when did I ever wear earrings?)

                      v.

I was dragging boxes of my life back up the drive…


               They treated me like a child
            (who was also a hardened criminal)

                                    v.

      He looked at me like a red-blooded male looks at
                                  a salad


I was allowed one phone call & I cried & cried because
I picked the wrong person who said all the wrong words

                                    v.

                        “Are you alone?”

                        

My throat still clogged w/ sodium hydroxide
So they gave me something to sleep. Something that made
                              my eyes roll back & my shoulder blades
                                                  lift from the bed

                            v.

“Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain committed suicide this a.m.”


                     Nov 8, 1988    v.    Jun 8, 2018


George H.W. Bush elected 41th POTUS!!!

                           v.

George & Barbara Bush experience the afterlife
          like a pair of flying squirrels


                           Gender Dysphoria in a federal dystopia

                                                       v.


                       A sternum struck by lightning in a fascist state



Pee in the cup. This is my blood.
Vein inhales a silver wafer

                v.

Bluest house. This is my plot.
I’ll clean it up. I’ll be a dick.

                                   Peeing    v.   pissing
                                       (it’s a contest)

I’ve never been so far from my self. Where did I go & who is
Her(e) with me now? This isn’t the outcome I expected. Next time
I’ll use a gun

                                            v.

I’ve never been so close to myself. I’m nestled like an action
Figure. And people break me open with their eyes to find
The proof I’m lying

                                 I was abducted from my place in the universe
                                           Put on the women’s wing; given 
                                                  a female roommate

                                                                v.

                                                      He never called
                                                   Me her or she or ma’am
                                               But he regarded me as less than


I was scared to know her. The jagged cut on her upper arm wrestled
                            with my sexuality

                                       v.

He was trying to intimidate me. By towering. By reaching for the eaves.
By becoming an X in my eyes.



But I did get to know her.  She wasn’t sure WHY she was there, WHY
she was 24 & still couldn’t pull it together

v.

He didn’t care about knowing me. He cared about me knowing he was 
god. Seeing it. Meeking.


                  She was in such pain. I could see it was even bigger than mine,
                         and still she put her arms around me

                                                  v.

                A peon. A bug. A nobody w/ broken bunny ears.


      I was eligible to vote that year!
But I didn’t know how to vote. And there was no one
           to vote for anyway

                     v.

I have no choice in this matter


                            Next night a 14-yr-old boy was admitted
                Kicking, grunting. An animal defying the straitjacket
                 A monster head-butt shattering shatterproof glass         v.

                                      That night I said good-bye to an era of peace
                              A knot formed in my gut & squeezed all summer


I got to know my fellow captives as friends. As scary as their veils,
                                                                                         their cries,
                          I heard in their stares I was the scariest

                                                      v.

                      Bourdain’s ghost walking up my drive…


The Scream                                  v.                     The Vitruvian Man


                    72 hours later the gates swung wide & I loped
                        into the light like a spayed raccoon

                                                     v.

                        It’s a masculine day in the neighborhood
                      (cue Mr. Rogerhammerstein’s theme song)

1229:0825a

[I’ve been so mentally patient (for
                                             the last
                                               five

                                              years) but I’ve finally installed the new Aeon]

1 comment:

  1. I applaud your supreme Vogoness and quiver in resilient disunderstanding of aggrieved meaning. I am needful of caution when reading, hearing breathing these Vogon Tunes as they rifle across my cerebral cortex. It is so hard to evolve when you are digesting the remnants of your life bicycling through the neighborhood of ones life. If my mind were a gizzard these poems would be the gravel that help breakdown the crap I must consume to survive.

    As I chew on 2018, on all the vestal bites, my mind chokes on the little bits stuck in my teeth of conciseness. Picking them clean I become aware of what life means, but quickly forget as I try to remember what I was eating to begin with. Enlightenment can be so confusing until you learn to forget everything.

    Thanks for all of the great mind floss from 2018 Vin. Looking forward to what 2019 brings. I'm sure we will hear about is here at the Octopus Diary!

    ReplyDelete