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]
