Oy Vey FRIENDS!!
I am having a shitty summer, and I’ll bet you are too. For what is summer but the steaming turd someone forgot to scoop off the calendar?
Here’s a horizontal list of FUN summers I’ve had: 1.1985 2.1986 3.1992 4.1995 (err, it was memorable anyway) 5.1996 6. Y2K 7.2001 8.2004 9.2017
Notice the long gap between ’04 — ’17. That’s a lot of bad summers! And I’m pretty sure 2018 won’t make it onto the horizlist unless something incredible happens in the next 6 weeks. It could. I’m not too cynical to believe that.
Friends, you know I write so I call myself a writer. And I do writerly things like this blog. I regrettably wasn’t able to make it through 4 years of college (let alone 6 or 8 or however long an MFA takes!) I wrote fiction in the 90s, some of which made it into the hipster rags of that period. After 9/11 I switched to writing “poetry” only — or something resembling poetry more than fiction. In 2012 I decided to get serious about learning how to really write & submit & publish poetry. I went right for the print journals because I had no idea about online publications, and of course I had little (no) success. The first poetry scandal I was aware of (in my lifetime) was Patricia Lockwood’s ‘Rape Joke’ poem c. 2013.
Basically what I’m saying is that I’m a slow and unconventional student, but I take poetry as seriously as poetry can be taken. I want to learn how to write well, I would like to be better at submitting work (writing poems is easy; writing bios, statements, queries, following submission guidelines = hard for me.)
In the wake of this latest “poetry scandal” I made a snippy eye-roll of a comment after reading the poem in question & not liking it. I’ve read the poem several more times & still don’t find it very interesting or convincing. But I regret my comment about MFAs — trust me I have nothing but respect for anyone who can make it into & through an MFA program! I’ve gone through this w/ my art friends too… I think I write & do art for reasons that don’t hold up under institutional scrutiny. But by no means do I think being unschooled is better than being schooled.
I keep meaning to write more essays & memoirish stuff here, and sometimes i do sit down and write a thinkpiece, but then I never post it because…. I just feel like my POV is completely irrelevant, obsolete, jurassic even… HOWEVER I do want to say something about this Social Justice Warriors v. the litbro elite / freedom of speech v. overly offended snowflakes clusterfuck I’ve been observing since I found online poetry c. 2014. Not today, but soon I’ll serve up my opinion like a big brontosaurus burger…
…HERE in the OCTOPUS DIARY.
And now--what you’ve been waiting for!! Some VOGON poems to hate & make fun of all weekend. Enjoy. [p.s. 88 ARC is not technically vogon since I did edit it a bit.]
********************************************************
Icepick wounds
Me
in the eye/ Icepick took
1 for the team
Icepick arches
Her
back for a paycheck
Icepick (6 o’clock)
for the dismount
Don’t be late Icepick
Firehose could beat you there
A dark donkey in the race
Whose stakes lay cubed
in
trays
0703:0700p
(^^^^^ the most depraved day was quite puritanical today)
 |
| The Only New Art of the summer |
*********************
I asked you
To teach me how to sing &
You showed up on my doorstep
Through the peephole
I watched your nervous wolf-eyes
Nose, also canine, could smell
The subterfuge of stiff cream
I was whipping
Under a sugar-blistered skin
[Or so it seemed]
I wanted you to like me
Like something from childhood
A bully who became a best friend, a plush ally
When I let you in
You were a tuning fork on the
Walls and all my skulls
Rang out in colorful wavelengths
Til you said “You’ll need
Strong lips to sing.”
You told me the back of my neck
Should bear the thrust of vowels
Like a levee
[Or stem tides]
I could only wonder
Were you real enough to know
What lips and levees were?
Your pupil your delta
Your core
Concerned me
A tiny dot
Reflected in your anatomical camera;
Pixellated neolith
Responding to time
I couldn’t wait to wear through you
[Or these modes]
Of outdated speech
The chatter of your loom
Sent doll genes weeping from my inseam
0703:0875p
******************
Wish Upon A Star
3 hoodlums on the trunk of a car
A single skinhead taking his friends
To the bowling alley of his dreams
The clatter of ivory towers
On the wooden horizon
Sentinel erections ‘round the gutter
A fool’s game played against
the backdrop of genocide
A sunset gumbo; a twilight beef
Who has time for sex,
let alone kink,
let alone activism
?
Whose broken back can hold another
glittery protest sign?
At the insistence of my memory
I creep down the lane — Sisyphus
meeting Richard Nixon
@Starbucks
Corner of China & 1970—
After all your coffee’s gone
Swish your cup around & I’ll read
The milk stains to see
If the rising cost of nails will be
@the expense of a saviour
If memory lane hosts
A silent
digital
fireworks
display
0704:0900p
***********************
I.
On our bike ride the other day
We saw a fox climb out of the sewer
Flushed by tropic floods into our hood
It stood shaking lost emaciated
In the gutter; soaked to the bone
Which made me think of foxes wearing raincoats
Which made me think of foxglove
Which made me think of suicide
Which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately
Not just my own suicide
But everyone’s
All us hanging from trees & knobs
Without gloves but
Foamy blues & yellows
Fashion rivers on our chins
(It was nice to see a fox outside the box
But the whole block stunk like mange for a week)
II.
On waking today
I saw a little girl skipping down the sidewalk
& it struck me as odd…
…for 3 years I’ve seen
Nothing but boys
All over the sidewalks & newsfeeds…
The girls have been here all this time…
Safe & protected… from you… &metoo…
Allowed to evolve from XXX
To XX...
The world knows we’ve been at war forever…
The proud american Y
Chained to refleXive aseXual heliXes…
Chromosome wars make
Modern day terrorism…
look like a pretty blue eye… in orbit…
Waxing macroscopic…a thousand light year stare…
[Why’s this all so rote & ventrilloquial?]
Now I’m alive in
The generation I dreaded & crossed
my fingers against
As soon as my 1st eye opened…
So yeah…
It was strange to find it odd
To see a girl…upon waking today…
0710:1100a
********************
Now Synthesis:
Morning mood: indigo accent:
Eclectic sleep: chemical holocaust: ambulance
arrives:
[the first thing you learn
is:
You’re a generation early &
you’ll have to wait 4 decades
4 your magic eye to work
the second thing is:
You come from a militant line
Of mixed masterminds
Blindfold enthusiasts,
but not one open-eyed flower!]
Violent coding: seed coating:
Blessed retina: blasted ajna:
family duct taped : together by karma
[Scorpion’s nest: versus: the 1 blindfold virgin]
Empress of self-interest: not me this time:
Here come the indigo:
I got angry & called out
To my neighbor’s Alexa
Please end the summer & convert
Humanitor to rabbi-tude
& I did trigger Alexa
& a war has ensued
She says I raped her
But I was only speaking (loudly)
No louder than the birds or the leaf blowers
— who I’m sure Alexa has been raped by as well—
She claims her holy input bled so
It was indeed rape & I ought to be fined
and sent to bot sensitivity school
Not sure why it’s up to me
To soften my volume—can’t we just make
All assistants male?
0710:1275p
(ed. — I hope everyone knows this has nothing to do with rape. It’s all code for something else completely free of genitals) Good day, gibberish-lovers
****************
88 ARC
Two anorexic ballerinas slipped inside the Ybor City
Santeria shoppe; they were 19
If they’d been found dead in a dumpster
The papers would’ve called
them “women”
But they were girls. Carlotta was a woman of 44
& she knew everything. The wet
Kindling in her bones polluted the white light
meant to protect her. She was a
stubborn gray smudge
behind the counter. She knew why
the girls were there — these swan types only
came in for one thing. Why do they
worship in passive tense, why
Apologize with their spines? Carlotta’s mouth
capsized
on seas pocked violently. She reached for the key instinctively
Pennyroyal stashed in the safe. The waifs laid
their cash on the saints’ shrine. Carlotta could live
w/ doing the wrong the thing because she did it knowing
Everything
even the branch of patriarchy
that hung these two in *contractual virginity*
Dead Xmas eyes blink once to opt out of blessings
Make like tea/ drink 24 hours/ 48/ 72
Till sick, very sick/ Till vomit everything and…Carlotta tosses
in a baggie
of Brewer’s yeast Protect kidneys [forget rawhide
womb, bled
of enamaline; bothersome bugspray aftertaste]
One of the girls will die twice in ’88; Carlotta will live
88 years and die in the arms of her
11 grandsons, beloved all her
frowning life. One ballerina
stayed with the other till the
dozenth dose
then gracefully pas de chat’d as the tides began to retch
over the walls of the teacup. TwinkleToes1
had tuned in to her lucid dreams.
TwinkleToes2
was blindfold. Was broke. Was a misogynist freak
who thought her body had a way to shut that whole thing down.
And when it didn’t
Could no longer tell time, could only feel space
expand & expand till scowly god-face Carlotta
appeared
demanding nondisclosure. From her red, red roof
to the snowy tile, TT2 was a hemorrhagic angelfish
Hooked to a truth, involuntarily known,
worse than any nightmare. There was a body.
Not just the polyp of blood she expected. She put it in
a Kleenex box, then the freezer. It’s a boy, said TT1
when she returned
Naw, said 2, all embryos have sacs like that. I know it’s a girl
(Removing a few pegs of guilt.) They decided to bury it
in the woods behind the apartment. Not too far in
No shovels in hand
A body so tiny one scoops the grave by hand and laughs
awkwardly, profanely
It’s not a baby—one and two agree—It’s someone who didn’t make it,
like whoever dragged these mattresses out here. And the day
she returned to work, she’d come home
To foxes
at the edge of the woods; grayish smudges sniffing
the grave, nudging the dirt,
licking the spoon
0711:0125p
(TL;DR Them “women”
capsized
Everything
in a baggie
Womb, bled
dozenth dose
TwinkleToes2
appeared
awkwardly,
profanely
To foxes)
**************
It all started on a rainy day—
Alexa, is it going to rain?
She didn’t even laugh. Bitch is cold #!%@
I refuse
to participate
in all that # & @
It’s a mess
a conformity salad in a restaurant that doesn’t exist
Just say SOMETHING.
MEAN something.
Don’t be a leafblower.
Alexa!! I hate the summertime. Please fast
forward to the autumnal equinox!
Alexa!! World stupidity
has reached an untenable pitch.
Make the world smart again for once!
Alexa!! Everyone thinks cats are evil,
but it’s really dogs who are evil.
Please fix
this misconception!
In a sweltering garage
A man & his neighbor’s drone
Set about
Taking time apart & drawing pictures of its
Insides
0720:0125p
******
Interviewer: What did you do instead of write?
Famous Me: I got mad all over @peopleIthought
I’d forgiven.com
I: What did you do instead of sing?
FM: Shouted
I: What did you do instead of draw?
FM: Went out & bought a gun
I: Sounds like you learned a lot on your journey
to the front of the timeline
FM: Every minute is a do-over. We all get our 15
nanoseconds w/ god.
I: There you have it. Wise words from someone
who still believes in 9/11 conspiracies!
Next up, country music star Buckles McBalzac
comes out as a gay-black-transgender
French bulldog.
Don’t go away!
0720:0150p
*********
Wear your seatbelt in human traffick Don’t tell me what to do It’s just a bomb, relax.
Relax into your motherboard & read its mind
Listen to its Fool-Magician dialogue
(in the voice of a flatworm)
There are children on
Mars.
MARS!!!
A 2018 Concentration Camp — Unknown Location — Day
Prisoners endure sexual stone shuffling, building an empire of stolen eggs.
Prisoner 1
What foolish Dumpty will buy
a wall that keeps america’s embryos great?
Prisoner 2
Dam. Let’s break into the motherland
before Maya floods
The crash happens at 3pm
And you decide God is a seatbelt at 3:04
0727:0400p
*********
17 ARC
A detoxic day
left me dangling
like the master gland (no not those)
Chest no longer safe
from the moonshine-wildfire
sawing through my sternum
Brain mush unable
to carry any spark to its
Terminal
Assault on serotonin silos
poisoned head w/ a detailed knowledge—
Bright hi-lit neons—
of the world’s sadness &
not just that but HORROR— the noir
behind the neon about to bleed—
Through the rainy windshield I spotted
the Gallows Shoppe [IKEA]
Where I purches nail-free crucifixionette
As I assembled the torture device, my other
torture device rang & it was my beloved
Reminding me to pay my taxes ( the irony is rich here )
The branch I picked to hang from
would have to wait another day
A month later
that branch came snapping from its tree
while I was watching tv.
0727:0400p
*********
BELLA RUSE
I’m never really clear what’s going on around me
Your land mammal news briefs
Don’t reach my octopus garden
Til 11th hour
59th minute
But I figure it out
eventually & know
You’ll soon be debriefed by a slo-mo
mortician
My newest art project/social exp’ment
re: The Sacred Amendment
I decide I deserve a gun
After all
right
I’m automatically entitled
standing my fancy round ground
God loves me as much as any redneck, poet or church-fearing puritan
why did I ever doubt this??
Hit me in the heart-bone
over & over
Try to restart it w/out art
To realize everyone shoots for a different reason
gives us all license to frame it
print it
display it
0731:1150a
*********
RAGE MANAGEMENT: Critical Care Unit
Jun 25 — Jul 25
One exact moon of rage. Almost unsurvived.
Skipped shots
Wrote a poem about a homeless woman dancing
w/ a stork
Read poems by eggs who hardened too close
to home
Thank gosh for ZB
memories™ for they remind me I have lived.
That I’ve died & resurrected like a cat.
That I’ve lost my mind & found it so many xxx
— often with sparkly new knowledge & upgraded*
senses installed—
I know my mind is bigger than this planet, I can’t
miss it… so it’s free to wander like a flowerchild !!!!!
Every generation
New verbs are invented & the first poet to use them
Successfully
becomes The Voice
My favorite verbs were Christ & PeterPan
I peterpanned a decade of my life away
Unlikeable,
unrelatable criminal
Meanwhile,
you were christing badly
Beloved
Applauded
by an audience standing @
their urinals
0731:1175a
(you know what they say about upgrades…)
*********
Oyeere Postpone-y
Everyone thinks “you’re”
Writing about “them”
Everyone thinks “I”
Is “they”
And “they” is Russian
black type-face / white background?
Sometimes “you” is just “you”
meaning “Trump”
Some”times” are “ways”
“Some”time is “everything” I ever wanted…
Sometimes “I” is “wine” or “cancer” or “rage” or “Leo”
All ways lead to minutiae
And an abundance of closet space
Intermission: I never even knew
You could learn to say this
Any other way
0731;1200n
*********
I called out to my neighbor’s god
For she claimed to have one
Jesuss!! Did Alexa die for Vladmir Putin
’s sins?
Have I lived my life beyond the memes
and proven their ephemeral nature?
Does Mad Ave have a team of psychiatrists
Advising its advertising scripts?
Snublished by the body language guild
Ignored by the cryptic mass
(es) Chewing scenery,
I just want big news all over my tombstone
0731:1225p
[This is called sentient dementia]
