FRIENDS!
My god, where have I been? I’m not really sure. What about you—where’ve you been?
Here are your Vogon poems from November, and whoa… they are…yowza…the most experimental dadaist Vogons ever. Marklarian even. Orkian w/ a hint of Orwellian for sure. So finger snaps, jazz hands, or rap arms are appropriate.
P.S. There’s been a lot of talk about **VOICE** this year. Just letting you know that sometimes I have a bunch of deplorables shouting in my ear. I’m working on all my voices lately, & there seem to be a lot of them.
I’m sitting here in cognitive dissonance , as the world says good-bye to a loving legendary letter-writing family man & war criminal. I’m reminded of our duality, our duplicity & our doppelgangliness. Listen to lukewarm Jeb Bush eulogize…
…. & enjoy this Vogonry. I hope you’re all crafting your Octopus Review submissions!
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MONOSOMNIA
Because “she” was always alone
in her wakefulness
Because dogs are always on edge
the week after Halloween
She kept her bike locked to the moon
Because no one would call a red hearse
if her emergency broadcast flared
& what about him?
On the spectrum he’s V for violet
Purply mood
Robust bruise
Did she just change her pronouns in her sleep?
He’s exited like a werewolf
pedaling to a new moon,
More to mount,
tranquility
She’s been bit; he’s been bitter
They’re both fucked
1102:0400a
***********
The Continuity Game
WORST YEARS: 1988
1993
2003
2014
BEST YEARS: 1992
2008
2013
2016
HARDEST YEARS: 1989
1997
2007
2017
SOFTEST YEAR: Y2K
WEIRDEST YEAR: 2018
It’s been a weird fucking year
In my head
In my house
In the cosmos
Behind the rabbit hutch
And definitely definitely in the streets
I’ll let history decide
But this year could be the recipient
Of the broken rollercoaster statuette,
the masturbating Oscar
the retraumatized Emmy
Will we ever stop rewarding scripted behaviour?
What makes a year good?
Like a pet it purrs right from Jan 1
(I heard the low growls of ’88 starting in December)
Always a weaponized month, my obsession w/ December
became a fear of August
Over time
And as beautiful as it is, an absolute
loathing of April
Bored by May
Pissed in July — holding my chin above the bar
when do I let go?
Anytime. Just don’t drop the soap. The reason you’re
Homophobic
Is because you’ve wandered around in your own mind
Once or twice…
Don’t plagiarize me bro
& I promise not to taze your balls & sockets
You never told us how you feel about October [?]
I want him inside me
I want to have his bagful of individually wrapped sweets
I’m awkward around February (am I saying that right?)
and she mistakes it for hostility
1102:0450a
************
I’m expecting rain so I put all my seeds in the oven
I’m expecting November so I gravied the daisies
I’m expecting the worst so I carved a bird
I’m expecting miracles so I scrubbed the petri dishes
I’m expecting parole
But I won’t give thanks till it happens… 1102:0450a
************************************
[They wanted me to draw a blue wave, so I did, but when I
woke up I realized I used a green pen]
************************************
Welcome to this exact poem
About head contents dumped on a solid surface &
Still drowning in pre-ju(d)ices
Skeletons on the internet
parading
goose-walking
duck-turding
crystal-nachting
My internalized misogyny made me do it
Not because of hormones or chromosomes (nature)
But that big un-nurturing hand that yanked @ diapers &
Egged the house w/ my brand new skull
Mum plastered the cracks but I noticed
Brothers didn’t have them
They were allowed to be sad & still love themselves
Their sadness mattered
Mine made me a monster. When something so rancid
Is supposed to bring joy
That’s when you punch God in the face & call him
A nazi
1104:0525a (fall back!)
***********
I autumned so far back
My car wouldn’t reach so
I took a wagon drawn by house cats
all chasing the same yarn
His skull is now an omelette too
Dali’s melted frying pan striking it over & over
Your blue-blooded golden-blooded plaid-blooded
houndstooth blood
came pouring from yore pores
Your father’s perforations
Your mother’s papier mache
You’re brothers’ certainty that they’re crafted
Way better than you
1104:0525a
(FAVORITES
Song?
Food?
Color?
Book?
Cartoon character?
Movie script?
Time of the month?
Day of the year?
Year of your life?)
***********
POKE’HONTAS
No time for puzzles, love
Eat this opium & tell me the outcome
Of the election:
Blue blood spilled from a red heart?
Blue manifest blood destiny pumping
from sea to gulf to sea?
Slimy green ocean to scorched desert fjords
This is americaca not skandinavivia,
not Canadia for Christ’s sake
bacon notwithstanding
Prone to waking
Every hour gasping for breath
Or full of piss, then losing time-stamped consciousness
For what seems like a fortnight
But is only a moment,
A power surge in an otherwise analog bed
1105:0250a
************
Let’s recall all the brave things we dd in 2015 —
braking from reality in ’14 was atrocious, but
Reigniting in ’15 was like doing a year-long chin up —
We opened fire in a doorless heart
Went under ghost sheets & walked w/ the enemy
Removed our blindfolds, which like plaster casts
Had grown limp & moldy
I spoke from unlit corners of the cave & no one listened
Those words still linger there like candles
You can box or open flame
But always remember how brave your
Reddish-brown
Blood in its medicated (Klonopin)state… the abrupt pivot
that only happens on a pillow
& lets morning into the house like a vampire
Needing to use the phone in this day & age?
Wanting sugar for what?
To poison our tunafish pie?
Bravest by far was our interview
On the MRA podcast
Ready to be shamed for our moments
Of visibility (after years
of walking through walls)
We only felt stupid once, and not for
being born in separate bodies
This wouldn’t have happened in any other year
And you took what you wanted & made of it
What we never said; now I’m worried
We’ll get stomped again
Boundaries drawn like blueprints,
adoreless
1105:0275a
***********
Here’s where the story ends:
Where? Somewhere in England?
Somewhere on the radio.
A tube-shaped you
Waving to your oversize fan-base
Your jumpsuit’s not orange, it’s gangrene
Cock a teal mushroom
Slumped in gov’t issued undies…
This is no prophesy, it’a a blustery daymare
The lynching of a tyrant in the Hundred Acre phonebooth
A 2D judgment day w/ no sigil
Of 3denominational JudeoXtianVoodoo gods
Through the cracks in a sidewalk
In Harlem a mushroom grows
A dysfunctional eruption between dictators
Making the sirens cry
1116:0300a
***********
SAUSAGEWORKERS UNION
What are my feelings about this?
My fingertips hate you
Abrasive (pontiff
bishop
counsel)
My inner ear hasn’t stopped pinging
Since you drove away that proverbial Sunday
In your perverse van
Unlike my tear ducts which are sealed w/ secrets
Evidence of your trip to the hard software store
Was everywhere
Webs between finger & thumb dry rotted
Palms like shredded hamster bedding
But we never saw you again —
the dust storm swallowed your crumbs w/out milk
Our hung-out tongues could only taste
Cold window panes
From that Sabbath
Our best suits emptied after the rapture
Who knew they’d come for us?
The sartorial nips & tucks of the devil
Were everywhere…
1116:0325a
*********
In Florida you wake
w/ things in your bed
Biting things/pinching things
Inhuman licks & coital stings
On 11/13 it was a worm
In my sleep stupor I thought it was
a strip of plastic
broken off a hanger, then I felt its
Living exoskeleton protest
Minute segments daintily crafted
by some Swiss insect-maker
(a god between mountains) and
Speaking of god —
I knew this bit of matter was too perfect
to be a doll/
action figure
It smelled of burnt ginseng
Not the electronic hum of a warm home
but a stoke of the sulfuric sun
a Hadean bouquet aged into this vessel
Drying the spongy bone
of the inner nose
That’s no plastic forged in domestic Dow dyes
Then where did it come from?
How did it land on my pillow?
A Qtip inquiry yields
Not one iota of wax & this is suspicious
For what ate through it
to get to my room?
What dimension or dream attic
disgorged it?
True, it took till noon before I accepted,
Conceded
to the long FL odds that it was
Indeed a worm,
an earthly worm
w/ an underworldly stink
And not an implant from Ozma, or some
more unsavory place in my cortex
1116:0350a
***********
Death Cab For Cutie evokes
a Thanksgiving memory
from when I still liked food
From when I still thought highly of people &
wished to become one
When I’d sit by the phone in the kitchen & watch
my family watching football in the living room
Wishing they’d see me on the sidelines & say
something like “Did you enjoy the candied yams?”
Or “who peeled your eyes like onions & left
those fibrous teardrops?”
Or “why do you have so many
Belly buttons?”
“How many hours a week do you dream??!”
Who’s on fifth, sixth
drink of Vodka mashed potato waste? Gravy yard?
Football thrown back to the ’70s
lands in the cranberry’s decubitus
Full jelly jacket
On a hunch not asking
Who else could’ve lived in
My attic/ghetto/shadow/leotard?
Who could’ve peeled the potatoes
Like eyes looking back on Thanksgivings
past; seated at the little table
Dreading the savory brown notes
of conversation emanating
from the grown up table:
Why do blinds black?
Why do creams crop?
Who do amputees think they are?
Shouldn’t we croon the playbook
In the language of the winning team?
1122:0200a
***********
MUSKY TOES
No one ever asked
What are you thankful for?
I would’ve had to think of something
Other than all the things
I was terrified of (pre 9/11)
Fiery bosses & car crashes
Being canceled by muscle
or cuffed to Marshall stacks
Or pinned to the sidewalk by actual flakes of snow,
not the hyper-sensate nerves
of your mama’s spine
Or striving for acceptance
from people who’d never accept me
(who let me live like a spider in the corner
because I ate the mosquitoes)
1122:0200a
***********
But really.
What are you thankful for?
Needles (needs)
Trapezoids (traps)
The Full Beaver Moon of Nov ’18
says I’m liberated from karmic probation
1122:0225a
***********
SONGBIRD HUMBUG
The titmouse, the wrench
The fin
The finite
The finale
This is just the beGINning
Tunapig. Sharks w/ a porpoise &
Left hook &
Left field &
Where’d THAT come from? The
bazaar in Zanzibar
The wetware store
The barbarian bathtub, shored, left
The way we were, from here to chicanery
Yore
Hurricane will
Ride me
Bareback
Saddle shoe puddle boat
Your gun. Your paddle. Your masochistic kitchen.
More
Important leaves
Not paid to stay afloat
But to drink bourbon @ the bottom of the ocean
1125:0275a
**********
JONNIF KENTITY
A mural of moral fibers — tapt tapestry
Of blood & other palette cleansers —
There’s no story here —
Move along in your golfcart limousine
There’s no body here
So no story no art. no memory by next week
Take dictation: where does one go
To live out one’s undue pardon? Peru in 1949
Where to in 2022?
Highest arab sky scraping oil drilling elevator tower
Your skinny poignant syringe legs
Splayed on the screen
Cartoonish but not masculine
compared to her 26” bicep
(less python, more boa) compared to my
Oaken fatness
Compared to my waning libido
moon booty shiv business, closed
Larynx reconnected to lungs
Bellowing as
Occipital bone ouches the paintjob
Stomach contents
convert to chasm
Devoid of truth,
the world fact checks its sadism
& snopes its emotions
There is only one story here.
1125:0300a
**********
ARTBLOOD PAINTMOON
Illuminated the whole neighborhood
Just for 3 seconds
But I was able to memorize
Your larynx & biceps & analyze
Their entropy
Glorifying the horrors of homosexuality! Instead of hiding
them in church vestries & dorms
Vaults of baby wafers, suckled wines through rose-colored
Bottlenecks/
Cervical wormholes—
Are we giving birth to galaxies at home
Using midwives to fuck the patriarchy out of the next
Aeon?
I can finally breathe again (after 20 years;
I should’ve known it would take that long) but
All this oxygen is making me strange
1125:0300a
***********
JOY READ
Night stand Marxist
Twisted phone cord — 70s style —
around chubby finger tips
When I was a tender young maiden
I read Marx & cringed at all we had
in common
I recognized my zebra pattern
That of sinner heathen scum
For thinking these very same things
of you
I understood w/ matchstruck clarity
what the bible says; shadow puppets
quacking
cave code
Turducken mishandled by Xtians
like funds trusted to lions (bulls/bucks)
Like judgment day to clowns
(bitches/does)
1127:0250a
***********
PROMO
Stifling my own brand
of hedonist Opus Dei marxism —
yes the flagellations are divine—
in favor of citizen reporter
Spying from inside — no eye contact,
no nervous tapping clavicle or
tablet, no outlet,
dead Lois Lane.
1127:0250a
***********
POOTENANNY
I feel another Singing War would boost
our economy
I sing to overthrow the dominant
Sound structure of the world
We are filthy singers. We could all
just think this card stock into a diorama
If we sit super straight & circling the
world’s tiniest oars w/ opposing
digital tips
Sing that you’re hungry for silence
Be more like Marx than Jesus
Stone the leper don’t soap him
Fight the lion & lose
Look what’s left of the colosseum
Like a blood bank bombed
We are the tubes in the lab testing moods &
We’ve been hit by an earthquack (sic. I’m sure we meant -quake)
1127:0275a
***********
FLASHBACK to What I Remember About MARX —
Upon fact checking the pie chart
of my life
I see 23% of my time was spent vomiting & only
21% waiting @ traffic lights
I have more in common w/ your household
Celebrity
Than your average candid-
ate for office
Marx hated women “Between shit & piss we’re born” He hated that
humans spent so much time
eating & shitting
[yet still
Like I hate how we spend so much time talking &
saying nothing
wanting to fuck]
We pretend to be from One Source, instead of
individually rapt suckers
1127:0300a
