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]