FRIENDS!!!
I was so busy in October I didn’t think I’d written very much Vogon poetry, but damn it, I have. So set your attention spans to 11, and try to enjoy the flow of all these words (w/ no new art accompanying them).
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I lit the light yellow edges of this page & here’s what happened:
“Faith” was mistaken for “fetish”
I have $$$ but my vision is poor; my failing eyes’ mistakes
Describe the world perfectly
Today “tonic water” became “toxic waste”
Optical elusiveness; my body betrays
and I’m behind on Tarot sonnets (interpretive dance
Slowed by October’s dominoes,
Responding to my ring finger’s index of depleted phone #s)
You have the voice of a psichiatryst; I have the voice of a molotov cocktail
(& I don’t even drink)
This is not ketchup. I don’t do red foods. No meat. No tomatoes.
No roses on/off cake.
My stomach started to bleed onto my tongue (a radio tower)
My eyes frothed at the news & my heart
Lay still for the butcher (I didn’t report till 30 years later)
The ‘80s were very rapey. I lived there. There were no safe spaces.
We should stop laughing @ the wrong things
& clapping.
1007:0675p
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CHERNOBYLED
Nosebleed
Reaper/scythe
pierce Pence pincers
All these causes,
but only one hushed
mushrooming head
(pending special effect)
This permeates our living rooms
Our sinuses & urethras
Our nephrons & dendrites
This is a tapestry woven
By simultaneous cultures w/
No knowledge of one another
Yet look how strikingly similar their balks at reality!
You have the voice of a shaman; I have the voice of a teenage witch
Now which one of us
Does the world take,
Seriously?
1007:0700p
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10/7 = a significant date for my senses
Especially in years ending in ‘3’ — 1983 — 2003 — 2013 — a dream I can still remember — a lightbulb moment worthy of crushed sockets — love @ first sight accompanied by hands-free orgasm — Decorum is my least favorite word these days — call me when you speak telepath-ese
1007:0700p
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BINOPOLY
The game of Life is not to be played
As someone else
If you’re a top hat don’t pretend to be a thimble
If you’re a verse don’t pretend you’re a flame
Also…I saw your eldest daughter’s eyes & she now has doubts
About you
Does that matter,
as she approaches that age of non-consent?
An entitled white girl born
During the female empowerment boom
Watched as her dad masterminded its crash
If there are any rapey boys left in the world, they’ll
Torment her through HS & college
First with words & stones
Later w/ closets & phone cords (leftover in the walls’ original wiring
Duh!)
1008:0150a
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You never would’ve thought of that, would you?
I like pointing out things people never think of
Because their chemicals haven’t gone as rogue as mine
On their wet mustangs
My mind didn’t just wander it created new pathways &
Poured brand new concrete cocktails
down the throats of gagging neurons these artisan emotions
Responsible for the fastest wave of evolution
Humanitor has known so far
(Did I ask you already? Foreplay or floor pie?
Frat boy or sore girl?
Doll fin or fish dick?
I’m appalled by this & don’t even
know what it means. It means stars are fat, not dust.
Light is gooey, not pure. Sex is like small talk
turned to telepathy. No one does it anymore.
[And they cringe to read about it on microfilm
MAGA zine (article)S]
1008:0175a
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It’s blustery today, said Pooh
That’s the best thing about the goth tropics,
squealed Piglet
Hurricanes aren’t goth, they’re emo,
Rabbit boasted
It’s true, Owl concurred
Hurricanes haven’t been goth since 1987. They’re totally
Emo now
If hurricanes are emo
Then what is a tropical depression?
Asked the droning monotone at the back of the microphone
Your sarcasm isn’t appreciated Eeyore. Tropical depressions
have always been Goth and always will be, admonished the Kangaroo
because as the only female character in the 100 Acre Wood (aside from Xtopher Robin
,of course, )
it was definitely her job to admonish
The baby kangaroo started to cry (was he a girl too??)
The hurricane blew in
Wearing orange & blk pinstripes & a lisp
1012:0275a
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Hello my new double-wide stream-of-consciousness diary. Let’s time travel:
10-17-98: This Was A Strange Time
Not a fun time to remember
I found the love of my life & we went on a cross country road trip
[But that sounds SO fun! (it was)]
Picnicking for hours in Griffith Park, the strobe of dying leaves
across the tables,
we conceived of Fine Spirits, a show about dead & living
Commingling like ashes across the astral divide (television)
Bodyless voice, appropriating ghost culture
Black or middle eastern angels providing narration,
These dialects rejected by Hollywood
LOVE LAUGHTER LEAFLIGHT DANCES — it’s good to remember,
Right? Our serious visit to Forest Lawn mowed down
By dozens of other star morticians? Our letters home from Lothlorian,
Broad Ripple, Boulder,
Moab (where I refrained from the cliffs) Zion (where
someone’s big depression caused a flood)
even Vegass, the gutterful of glitter. And noise. The noise of
I am no one.
We left early & sent a week’s worth of letters from Hollywood instead.
“Didn’t you guys fight the whole time?” your work buddies asked. “Me & my wife
would’ve fought non-stop.”
It made me want to drive back to Utah & spit in the canyon (again)
To know we were expected to hate each other as “man” & “woman”
That most other people did… and called it love anyway…
That was the narrative, the dialect Hollywood would never reject
No, we didn’t fight. I fought my own grotesque sadness
at the edge of each canyon, in the moist throat of the forest,
Yes even in Vegas,
Where being no one cured nothing
I sat at the edge
Hating the woman, pushing her into
The spider web
The river whose clay footprint (de)formed her
I held her down till she manned up
Till she rode the virtual rollercoaster & still
Sat at the buffet
We were photogenic
Which means we took our film to the drugstore after the
Whole trip was over &
Waited 24 hours to see if we did all the things
We thought we did
And here’s the part that’s hard to remember —
We came home to a haunted house,
Spiking gender dysphoria,
An abominable snow-colored pack animal
Biting back at my “authority”
I went back to real unscripted death — messy, sloppy bodies
That reminded me of me
I was in love which meant sex, but I didn’t want
To be the female half
So I wrote & wrote & played in the blood of others
& snapped at the fireman’s funeral because I saw how his
Shotgun blast ended in a silent jaw
& nothing else, unless of course Heaven is Las Vegas
& there’s always cremation
The dog wouldn’t let me in. I spoke the cat’s english. I lacked
play. I lacked.
The dog was jealous. The dog was entitled. The dog was white, yes
I applied for a credit card & ordered as many coats as I could
To cover up my sloppy body. He still didn’t like me.
I made him explain why he loved the things he loved
We enrolled the dog in school yet somehow I was the student
& I learned how to be tendon, not bone
He explained it to the best of his ability & I still couldn’t understand
I returned to scripted, unconvincing death
I knew the boom was coming, and all it lacked
Would one day be its strength
Oct 17, 1998. A Sadderday I don’t like to remember.
I would tell the angry little embalmer to look into her crystal scalpel
At the future she wrote & wrote & edited & rewrote & edited & sent
To the tailor, the tinker, the agent, the thief
Look at the familiar stranger who will come to inhabit your mirror
When you go under the needle
Master the art of hedonism & then fall from its perilous High
For months, & months & months… look how your love stuck by your side
You are still on that road trip
You bought a tour bus, then upgraded to a spaceship
But your vessel still lurches forward
Look out the window of your forehead
& see the galaxies grazing like cows
(The end of ’98 was one of the hardest times of my life & I
don’t often think about it. But you can’t change
the 20-Year Time Travel Game. I’m stuck there for the next few
months will I be able fix the past?
A nosebleed view of the valley
An inner landscape w/out a leash)
1017:0725a
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I finally reached the Star
By ascending the ruins of every Tower I ever was
The elevators tipped like sarcophagi
Add up the miles
Skyline’s missing tooths & the bony steeple,
The holy stripper pole, the concrete anther
Draw no flies, or upright corpses
The radio tower’s battered metal hide
Will be the bannister,
Hold on
There’s vertigo in these cards
Have I counted all the minor towers, the leaners, the arches
The non-manmade sculptures?
I’ve reached the mezzanine of space!
Time to spit into the smoldering lobby
1021:0300a
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Since white people are only allowed to write about
Their shitty jobs,
Their love lifes™ (good or bad)
Their cats, kids & plants
And what they watch on TV…
…I’ve decided to write erotic, yet speculative
Fiction for old used up children who were once turned on
By instinct as raw as an oyster
They’re the ones who invented fun
After millennia of hard work & industry
Booming mad (not great) men
And whim (men)
w/ Gen X genes sparse
In the pool, on the streets & sheets,
Appropriating the rainbow & feminizing (ruining)
“Fun” for everyone
Tools of the Unsupervised Age — the latchkey alcoholics
Liquid Bronze Age, Silver label. no wonder we crave opioids
These bodies carry pain like different vessels
Some are suitcases on the carousel, some are voluntary
Voodoo dolls attacked by sandspurs & porcupine quills
Gen X, you took it too far, the underachievement (what
an underbite on reality)
You studied & ranted,
Raved & recovered… or never
Strayed @ all. Peer pressured into
Pentecostal rebellion against lax, loud, liberal
Parents who bombed bigtime
What was that Boom?? I didn’t hear anything.
Boom, divorce.
Denial, bang
Dumb ring
Tone (boom) deaf
1021:0325a
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Since I’m only 72% white,
I will write this beige sonnet
In the voice of a sparrow-mouse
In the voice of a yoga instructor
Breathless voice of 1968
Airplane voice, indoor voice
Jazz voice
I’ll write in 72% non-white voice, I’ll write in anyone’s foreign accent@@
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because I can’t afford empathy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What were we saying? Oh yeah: stand tall & speak
Like a windmill
Strong circular arguments
Retweet after me I am the weather machine
1021:0350a
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Sometimes (mornings mostly)
I imagine I’m a rotting pear tree
A sticky sap that curdles the skin
From the reversed fruit (pears, cherries, lemons)
Squoze on the platter to soften the stink
A rotting pear tree in the morning & an
Atrophied slot machine by 3:17
Post-meridien pear-shaped
That’s an insult in England. The whole thing’s gone
Pear-shaped
When it rains human blood, or rocks turn to
Ammunition
It’s not a happy assessment
My brother threw a pear at me, so I never ate one
Ever. He plucked it from the fancy basket at
The 4 star hotel our grandma stored us in & fastballed it
At my face
It was one of those bright green ones — Granny Smith
equivalency
Not the speckled yellow variety, or the brown mushy kind
I used to watch kids pull from their lunch pails & eat anyway…
The kryptonite pear smacked the side of my nose &
an inkjet of red squirted from my optic nerve
Later I learned
I owned a pear-shaped organ that would bleed for the rest of my life
I wanted it to be green, ripe for picking & throwing away
But I knew it was probably the color of that dog
Rotting behind the baseball field
After the maggots slurped the technicolor sweetmeats
A gravy that once was red
I knew pear-shaped women were undesirable & I should
Keep myself carrot-shaped,
Or celery-shaped
By eating those things & worshipping
Redrawn boundaries
A mushrooming
At the head of the pin & no one
Calls the holocaust on its fungoid physique
On Xmas 2016 a decadent dessert set before me
Tiny pears floating in sweet cream & oh how my mouth watered
& my nose didn’t bleed, so I stuck my spoon in…
And barely survived 2017.
1023:0900p
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You’re allowed to make mistakes
But you have to fix them before the egg timer tweets
There’s more food in your belly
Than you agreed to swallow
Why does everyone suddenly love Apollo, jeez?
You better thank Dionysus
On your gratitude list that nothing about you is
Food, or fruit
You’re all hardware & engine parts
You’re no friend of the maggots
You have no idea what it’s like to need a band-aid
1023:0900p (wow, that’s Vogon^^^)
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There’s blood in the chlorine,
but how can you tell?
The body surfing the deep end whispered
blue lines (not streaks)
Actual typeset death dates
Investigate
Get your Mueller elbows off the table
Spaghetti arms are not allowed
Use your noodle when
Paddling from concrete shoreline
to rusted shelf-life
Today I reached my top shelf
The one where answers are easily @ hand
Not digital canned goods
Stacked like answers in a pyramid
Bunkered greens & I
Stop armchair advocating
From this marginal sideline bleacher
Sports anthem cleaned before the can opener
Both kneel, gadget-like
They’ve been scraped off like sparkly scabs
Both genuflect before the mop
& aisle 9 is declared Hot Zone 3
1028:0350a
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I’m scheduled to fall in love today & I
can’t wait!
It’s been 2 decades since I fell &
what a parachute!
Less wind, more string
I fell from this cloud & that…
A series of insubstantial tree branches
Broke my skin (including the one I was hung from
before taxes)
As I grew tired of reading re: WWIII
The currents decided it was time for an upgrade
We need new war stories they said
The old ones have been memorized,
or memorialized, or spat upon,
or grass-stained
Green-blooded football jodhpurs
transported back to loincloth times
It’s lovely Eve, apricot Eve,
lollipop Eve
But first, your shots
But first, the waiting room
But first, the infection
But first, the sharing of water, apple, vapor, or humor
But first a fundraiser (for upgrades that are
Real?)
But FIRST!!! an issue of maximum impact
A square page extracted from a hobbit hole
But first,
Head first
Broken noose
Catheter stuck in the thigh
1028:0400a (eeek)
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October blisters
Polar bear mimosa
On water risen higher than noon
High rise winter residence
No longer vacation from summer
NOW is a season
THEN is a sentence
I found your words leftover
At brunchtime on the table
Guilty sentences, bitemarks,
Crusts of sourdough
Let’s iceberg,
honeydew, & powdered sugar
blintz
Your are not the only one to hear this drowned voice
w/ ice water ears,
frozen corn is all for thanksgiving & isn’t
it enough??
Giant bear skull in aisle 6, dug out
of ice caps & placed on
Santa’s sleigh
(alien) (UFO)
1028:0400a
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OCT INSOMNIA
You’re all eyes
Even in your sleep you’re seeing
Who are you? Who cares?
I’ll call you rabbit ears
Today we carved pumpkins together
My insomnia & I
Somehow ‘I’ is the wrong pronoun
But I’m sure it was me
In the afternoon shadows
W/ my brand new old-age pains
Will my hands ever not hurt again?
Who are they hurting?
Who cares. I’ll call you
& tell you my back is broken like a phone
Though it’s impolite
I stare at my jackal interns all night
Staring, pointing
@ the deformities I carved for them
Deformities I was willing
To love about them
One is angry (of course)
One has been in a terrible accident
It wasn’t me! I was asleep
And dreaming of pop culture informants
1031:0375a
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CHASE
On Monday 10/29 there was a road rage incident
And it wasn’t mine
I was the traffic cone ace
In the shotgun chamber, unmoved by fire,
While windmills tilted, then fell, the flickering lawns,
Uncrossed arms,
The secondary greens & oranges muddied
A tertiary sunset
Know your wheel, if you’re colorblind
& still want to be a great painter,
look both ways, machinery w/ wings (hold onto that)
Remember your turn signal, do not
Flinch in your direction, use emergency
Flashers virtuously
Worship at the gas pumps of suburbia
Hold up your phone like you’re calling the cops
Here come the bait
Decapitated under hoods
Still holding the cigarettes of last century
Like scythes, while baring illegal plates
Your cousins in the caravan
W/ blistered feet
And here we are in a hurry to get home
Away from people like you
1031:0400a
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Jared, please
Stage fright becomes you
Enhances your guilt
Will you forge/stage
A gaslit/floodlit
Intervention, child
Adopted/neglected
Proxy of orange loins
The enemy’s lions
Won’t gobble all the bent crosses
Don’t wanna spook the henhouse
(Here I am telling Jared Kushner what to wear again
But the nazis are coming
The whistles are chirping like chainsaws
Like apple-cutters
Like every tool in the shed)
1031:0400a
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Happy Samhain
From my insomnia to yours
I’m forever on watch
Over the rezoned pumpkin patch
Fabled reconstruction site
Of the ripped up constitution
Scaffolds, barricades; facelift, footprint;
Reboot rabbit’s foot
Soundtrack from the 1920s
Speak easy
Or forever rely on keyboard
Courage
You love law & order till they try to wrest
Your cocktail
Of pheromones,
your tax return/psych eval
Cuff your metacarpals
to the bench
The world is running out of phone #s
Please don’t ever call me again
1031:0450a
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