The Whole Wide World (1981-2013)

the whole wide world (1980-2013)
copyright © 2013 by big poppa e
book design by big poppa e
www.bigpoppae.com
all rights reserved. except as permitted under the u.s. copyright act of 1976, no
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of big poppa e or his official representatives.
any work contained within this publication may be freely performed in front of live
audiences without first obtaining permission from big poppa e. furthermore, video
and audio recordings of these works by anyone other than big poppa e can be
freely posted and distributed on the world wide web or by any other means as long
as no profit is generated. video and audio recordings of big poppa e performing
his own works, however, may not be reproduced or distributed without the prior
written permission of big poppa e. in plain english, it’s totally okay for you to read
anything in this book out loud any time you want without permission, and if you
record yourself doing the work, no worries, share it with anyone you like. but you
are not allowed to record big poppa e reading his work out loud, and you are not
allowed to share or sell videos or mp3s of big poppa e doing his work.
it’s not that big poppa e doesn’t… okay, you know what, this is me, big poppa e,
and i am talking directly to you. it’s not like i don’t want you to spread the word
on what i’m doing with my poetry, dig? it’s just that this is my whole life, see, this
is the only way for me to make a living, to pay my bills, to eat. so go ahead and
let someone borrow this book, but if they really like it a lot, tell them to buy their
own copy so i can keep eating. or, better yet, buy them a copy. that would rock.
otherwise, just send them to youtube where they can see me do my stuff for free.
i am so glad we talked. i feel much better already. as i type this, i am chilling in
front of my imac listening to some vintage frank sinatra. i am sitting at my sister’s
dining room table in wichita, kansas, and i’ve got all the ceiling fans circulating
the breeze streaming through the open windows. it’s such a beautiful day outside,
so bright blue and breezy. i just woke up from a nap on the couch not too long
ago, lolling in sunbeams with my kitties aretha and thelonious, and it was just
about perfect. when i woke up, i kicked back and looked up through the open
curtains on the window, up through the leaves of the trees in the front yard, just
chillaxed, smiling and eyeballing the bits of sky peeking through the branches,
listening to the wind. the only way it could’ve been better is if you had been there.
inspirations
this book was made specifically and only for the one, the only, the
amazing, the talented, the swanky tommy toliver, he of the bean pie
bow tie and tight figure slender as incense smoke. he is no follower
of fashion but a leader of all that is lovely and lyrical, sucking down
whiskeys and cokes while men in dresses belt diamonds are a girl’s
best friend and i will survive with troops of leather twinks vogueing
to the beat behind them. smell that smoke? that ain’t paris burning,
oh no, that’s anywhere tommy does his thang, whether it be milan,
paris, cannes, or amarillo.
this is a haiku for you, tommy:
when life is a drag,
grab your boa, hit the club,
and be fabulous!
commendations
big poppa e is, without hype or exaggeration, one of today’s best
creators of underground literature.
doug holland, editor
a reader’s guide to the underground press
exuberantly defiant.
the new york times
big poppa e steps to the mike … energy is cranked so high … drunk
on adrenaline … all bluster and bombast … the audience leaps
up, clapping hand, snapping fingers, and stomping feet … call it
revenge of the wussy boys.
the washington post
big poppa e is the leader of the new wussy boy movement ...
spreading not just through the esoteric realm of slam poets, but
edging across the globe.
the los angeles times
big poppa e is a guy who has turned one of his artistic personas,
wussy boy, into an icon for effeminate males.
ms. magazine
championed by a hip-hop poet and catching fire across north
america, a new male ideal has risen up and is demanding respect:
wussy boy.
the ottowa citizen (canada)
inspiring men from across the country.
the sydney morning herald (australia)
a spoken word maestro.
the san jose mercury news
wussy boys [are] a growing breed who never felt a part of the
testosterone-fuelled, hard-drinking concept of manhood. big poppa
e is their outspoken leader, a poet who has outed himself as a wuss
and discovered a nation of men joining his fight for wussy pride.
london daily express (uk)
big poppa e is pound for pound the funniest poet in slam.
austin chronicle (tx)
a hell of a performer, running on boundless energy and near-perfect
comic timing.
oc weekly (orange country, ca)
one of the leaders in the hottest thing to hit poetry since beat poet
allen ginsberg’s “howl.”
the daily oklahoman (okc, ok)
big poppa e’s words are so eloquent, so modern, so witty, funny,
honest, angry, legitimate, motivating, sensual, wrenching, wise,
naive … just so very, very right on. he’s amazing.
the colorado springs independent
big poppa e is like a tongue-twisting napoleon of open-aired
emotion, sexual libido and in-your-face self-consciousness — a
suburban Woody Allen hopped up at the mall.
the chico news & review (chico, ca)
bpe’s writing is over-the-top, taking simple circumstances to an
extreme. but for all the humor, an inconsolable sense of longing
runs just below the surface of every poem, and it is this melancholic
subtext that hits home. great reading for people who think they hate
poetry (and for those who already know they like it.)
the san francisco bay guardian
check out san francisco poetry slam team member big poppa e’s
poem “crushworthy.” so f-ing sweet, i cried.
the san francisco bay guardian
fantastic reading, the kind of stuff that inspires you to do your own
personalzine … he transforms his experiences into poetic stories
that capture the magic and mystery.
factsheet 5 (san francisco)
some of the most engrossing personal writing i’ve ever read!
absolutely engrossing!
amusing yourself to death (santa barbara)
a sharp sense of humor and great eye for the details and absurdities
of young life today … he’s a natural-born storyteller who takes
everyday events and elevates them to near-mythic, side-splitting
proportions.
next magazine (los angeles)
big poppa e has a wonderful, charming writing style.
zine world (san francisco)
this guy could write a story about absolutely nothing and make it
funny. when i grow up, i want to be big poppa e.
psycho moto zine (new york city)
a seasoned performance poet who regularly fries the minds of
audiences with hard-hitting, humorous poems … a caffeine
injection of couch psychology, maybe even a beer bong of espresso.
chico news & review (chico, ca)
full of power and humor … funny, thought-provoking and sharp
… chico’s own poetry slam god … he could make an obituary
come to life, he’s so powerful.
the synthesis (chico, ca)
this guy’s got talent … one of my favorite zine writers.
happy not stupid (reno, nv)
cool, finger-popping, caffeine-sipping, goatee-sporting riffs.
the liberty press (wichita, ks)
his written work is well done, and his flair for writing makes it very
interesting to read. he has a very good capacity of expression that
provides the reader and listener with an excellent understanding of
his concepts and positions. he may have to watch for attempting to
consume too much time in therapy group: he likes being the center
of attention, and this may be related to a control issue that he
needs to address.
big poppa e’s therapist (chico, ca)
definitions
poem
a literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression
of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.
rant
a wild, incoherent, emotional articulation.
screed
a long discourse or harangue, typically one regarded as tedious.
diatribe
a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism.
ephemera
transitory written or printed matter not intended to be retained or
preserved. the word derives from the greek, meaning things lasting
no more than a day.
a damn
what big poppa e doesn't give about definitions.
quotations
i may be a geek,
but i’m a geek with a purpose.
jim thirlwell
he’s a writer and a ranger
and a young boy bearing arms.
rush
stupidly beautifoolish true, you.
frente!
i’m empty and aching,
and i don’t know why.
simon and garfunkel
i’d go the whole wide world just to find her.
wreckless eric
i used to wear my heart on my sleeve,
but it made my wrist too bloody.
big poppa e
dedications
my parents richard and sandi and my sister sabrina
thanks for your support and love, for taking me in when i had nowhere else to
go, for supporting my dreams with gas cards, cell phones, plane tickets, cars,
insurance, and all the rest. there’s no way i can pay you back. this book is yours.
my best friend zara
i have written my strongest work while i’ve known you, and so much would never
have existed without your warm presence in my life. you are my favourite person
in the whole wide world, and i don’t know what i’d do without you. you constantly
amaze and delight me. live forever, and name your first son andrew bird for me.
my cats aretha and thelonious
you two little familiars have been the most stable force in my life for 15 years, and
i love you both so much. thanks for being mah bebes and sleeping with me.
my creative lovelies annie la ganga and bill cotter
i cherish both of you. thank you for giving me those pre-stamped postcards and
demanding i fill them with adventures from the road. your relationship inspires
me, and i hope annie is not still mad about me kicking her butt at the ’99 nats.
rebecca robinson
thanks for your friendship, warmth, hospitality, humour, and companionship. tell
petey and owl bait i said hi. and stop texting me about BH. that’s gross.
mike henry
my captain, slam master, coach, friend, confidante in times of trouble, champion.
thank you so much for your friendship and support over the years, for your tough
love, for your example. i miss you, and i miss courage, too. he was a good cat.
matthew john conley
the best tour partner i’ve ever had and certainly the most talented.
lennon simpson
ignore what i wrote about matthew. it’s all you. i’ll stomp you at catan any time.
marc kelly smith
you gave me focus, purpose, community. i can never thank you enough. your life
changed mine forever, you crotchety old bastard. keep pulling the next one up.
jim thirlwell
thank you for 30 years of amazing music and inspiration. i am so glad you made the
conscious decision to survive the ’90s, and i can’t wait for what happens next.
introductions
this is it.
this is everything.
at least, it’s everything i want you to see. some stuff was left out, stuff
either not good enough to warrant inclusion or not wretched enough
to provoke mocking laughter and jeers of derision. i narrowed down
this collection to poems, spoken word pieces, short stories, and
the few tiny plays i’ve written. i left out all the newspaper columns,
essays, and journal entries i’ve penned along the way as those will
be featured in a collection of their own in the near future, and i plan
on compiling all my tour diaries shortly after that.
basically, though, this is all my poetry and fiction, from the very first
haiku i wrote in the 8th grade to the newest performance poem i just
finished this past summer. i combined most of my greatest hits and
greatest misses collections, added everything in my latest chapbook
pretty girls make me sad, and threw in a bunch of stuff that had
been gathering dust on my hard drive or one of my online blogs or
in some box in my parents’ garage in wichita, kansas.
you might notice anachronistic tidbits in several poems — such as a
reference to an 80-gig ipod in a poem written in 1996 — and that’s
because i’ve tweaked the poems to reflect how i perform them in
front of live audiences. that process has been like looking over the
shoulder of my younger self and kibitzing, which has been fun.
to be perfectly honest, some of the stuff in this omnibus collection
really sucks, and i’m not trying to act like i’m all humble, either,
because some of it is truly odious. in fact, the first 30 pages or so
kicking off this book are so very bad i crack up every time i read
them, and i do actually read them during live shows all the time.
they’re hilariously bad, like, you can’t fake that kind of bad. if you
purposely try to write poetry that bad, it just doesn’t have the same
deliciously execrable essence of shitty poetry written by some feckless
poetaster utterly devoid of talent who stubbornly believes they are
brilliant despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary. i find that
brandishing a fake english accent while reading the worst of these
poems aloud is inevitable and, in fact, absolutely necessary to drive
home how truly bad they really are. it is also best to dress completely
in black and have at least one facial piercing, like a spike protruding
from your lower lip, and you should wear hot topic bondage pants
and a marilyn manson t-shirt. and guyliner. definitely guyliner. and
you should scream every word so loudly your throat bleeds, because
otherwise, really, what’s the point? delicious!
i have to think most poets contemplating a career-spanning
collection like this would eagerly discard their oldest and shittiest
work, focusing instead on what they consider their very best verse
and prose, but i didn’t want that for this book. i wanted to show
where it all began, show how terrible i was when i first started, show
that i eventually got a little better with each crap poem i wrote.
no one just sits down at a piece of blank paper one day and writes
howl. i am sure ginsberg dropped a huge pile of malodorous poesy
before scrawling i saw the most brilliant minds of my generation in
his journal, and i am sure howl would never have been written had
he not shat every crappy line leading up to it.
the point is, you shouldn’t be embarrassed by your early work, and
you should never discard it no matter how cringe-worthy it might be.
regardless of how you come to think of your first poems, don’t forget
you totally believed in them when you first wrote them — you sat up
from your notebook at one point and said, yes, that’s exactly how
i feel — and i think it’s important to honour them, even if they now
make you giggle and roll your eyes at how very dreadful they are.
as i’ve put this collection together, it’s been interesting to watch my
style progress through time, to note how events and people in my
life influenced my subject matter, to follow themes that have infused
my work throughout the entire timeline. if i had to pick my biggest
inspirations for poetry, it’s clear they would be girls and fear of
death. yup, that comprises pretty much 85% of my work, and the
rest was probably written to either impress a girl into liking me or to
avoid thinking about death or because my cats kick so much ass.
i have no idea what to call the stuff i write. most of it is not really
poetry, not really, although poetry is definitely an element. a lot of
it is pretty close to stand-up comedy, especially when i perform it
live, but it’s denser and more structured than a comedy routine;
they’re more like comedic monologues. some of it is just straight up
storytelling, or what used to be called spoken word in the ’90s. i don’t
really know what to call what i do, but i know it’s created specifically
to be performed on a stage in front of a live audience, so it’s written
with an economy of language to ensure a direct connection to people
who will likely have one chance to hear the piece and be impacted
by it or not. it makes demands on the listener, demands they open
themselves up emotionally to a complete stranger.
my shit isn't meant to stand toe-to-toe with page poems, and if you
try to compare it to page poetry, you're missing the point. whenever
someone claims my stuff doesn’t work on the page, i think neither
does star wars. you might enjoy the screenplay for star wars, but you
have not truly experienced it until you see it on the big screen with a
packed house and bad ass surround sound speakers. the same goes
for my writing. i hope you can enjoy it on the page, which is why i
put so much work into this book, but you really haven’t experienced
my words until you have heard me breathe life into them on a stage
while you sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a room full of thinking smelling
feeling warm-blooded people. it’s not a lesser art than page poetry,
it’s just a different form of art that has different rules.
i don’t write poetry to impress other poets, i write poetry to express
myself to the 99.8% of the people in the room who know nothing
about poetry and just want to be moved emotionally, to be inspired,
to be roused, to feel… something…
i am of two minds about this book.
on one hand, it’s going to be amazing to actually hold it in my hand,
to heft it, to know i wrote every word on every one of its pages, and
how cool is that, you know? look at this! i wrote this! all of it!
on the other hand, the works in this book cover a time spanning
about 25 years, plus that very first haiku from 8th grade, and i kinda
feel like this is it? i would have to say a good 30 percent of this
collection comprises the most god-awful poems i’ve ever written,
and the only reason i’ve included them is so we can all get a good
laugh at how nauseating they are. of the remaining pieces, i would
say a good 30 percent is not much better than the really bad stuff.
i could easily whittle down all of the pieces in this collection to just,
oh, 60 that i genuinely really like and would perform on a regular
basis. 60 poems and short stories in 25 years that don’t make me
cringe? that doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me.
i still have a lot of work to do.
and you do, too. no one else is going to document your life for you.
if you don’t, there will be no record of your existence, no footprint
left on the surface of this planet. write it all down. it’s important.
writing and performing have been the focus of my life ever since i
stepped on a stage at my very first open mic in matches coffeehouse
in my shitty hometown back in january of 1992, and this will probably
remain so for the rest of my life. for better or worse, you hold in your
hands everything that is important to me, that has defined me, that
has given me purpose, that has made my life worth living.
this is my whole wide world, and it means everything to me.
big poppa e
november 4, 2013
wichita, kansas
p.s. bryan honl rocks.
the whole wide world
haiku.................................................................................................. 1
ode to poison mushrooms ................................................................ 2
stranded ............................................................................................ 3
epiphany............................................................................................ 4
lone ................................................................................................... 5
erosion .............................................................................................. 6
ennui, go on ...................................................................................... 7
whym ................................................................................................. 8
life...................................................................................................... 9
oed 1 ............................................................................................... 10
oed 2 ............................................................................................... 11
abrupt .............................................................................................. 12
mmm mmm, pro patria!.................................................................. 13
minuet ............................................................................................. 14
sexuality .......................................................................................... 15
routine............................................................................................. 16
heroin .............................................................................................. 17
flyboy ............................................................................................... 18
flashlight .......................................................................................... 21
lycanthropy ..................................................................................... 23
truelove ........................................................................................... 24
rage.................................................................................................. 25
love poem, no. 9 ............................................................................. 27
lincoln logs and rabid dogs ............................................................. 28
equalizer .......................................................................................... 29
wendy .............................................................................................. 30
ouroboros ....................................................................................... 31
aspartame ........................................................................................ 32
echo ................................................................................................. 33
appliance envy ................................................................................ 35
plastic .............................................................................................. 36
darn ................................................................................................. 37
asbestos ........................................................................................... 38
glue.................................................................................................. 39
listening to oak cliff bra ................................................................. 40
listening to deep in the heart .......................................................... 41
insinuation ...................................................................................... 42
new town, new school, new job, new life ...................................... 43
floss ................................................................................................. 44
partyboy .......................................................................................... 46
siena vision ...................................................................................... 48
commerce........................................................................................ 49
new poem about a coin .................................................................. 50
the miracle corner pocket luck shot ............................................... 52
bookends......................................................................................... 54
wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth ............................... 57
state of the art ................................................................................. 58
bigman ............................................................................................ 60
the politics of just friends ............................................................... 63
roadtrippin’ ..................................................................................... 65
pueblo dog ...................................................................................... 67
ode to poet x ................................................................................... 69
ma’amed .......................................................................................... 71
death to romance ............................................................................ 73
jesus moshpit .................................................................................. 74
just take another drink .................................................................... 75
real life über grrrl ............................................................................ 77
potty is pee ...................................................................................... 79
silly shower song ............................................................................. 81
map of your body ............................................................................ 82
1,000 secret things .......................................................................... 83
catching the bus .............................................................................. 84
painfully white ................................................................................ 86
poetry widow .................................................................................. 87
ode to a plaster casting ................................................................... 90
wilson road ..................................................................................... 91
lydia and the duck ........................................................................... 92
dreams ............................................................................................. 93
immortalized in celluloid ................................................................ 94
holiest of holies ............................................................................... 96
chain record store blues ................................................................. 97
wormboy ......................................................................................... 99
fuckety fuck-fuck ........................................................................... 101
hungry poet, will write for food ................................................... 105
steeple stabbed and hell bound .................................................... 106
her smile, like knives..................................................................... 108
incantation 1: the odyssey............................................................. 109
incantation 2: the home front ....................................................... 111
incantation 3: the sweet mysteries of hot peach cobbler ............. 115
leaving las vegas ............................................................................ 118
poem for a friend .......................................................................... 121
fratboy ........................................................................................... 124
¡the wussyboy manifesto! .............................................................. 127
deathwish ...................................................................................... 130
crushworthy .................................................................................. 132
moonlight through mini-blinds .................................................... 135
there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile
that will never be filled ............................................................ 136
wired ............................................................................................. 141
presque vu..................................................................................... 144
rats in the ivy ................................................................................. 146
pushing buttons ............................................................................ 150
boojiboy ........................................................................................ 153
receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart ................. 155
untitled .......................................................................................... 158
the endless pursuit of happiness, part one .................................. 159
the endless pursuit of happiness, part two................................... 161
the endless pursuit of happiness, part three ................................ 162
wallflower ...................................................................................... 164
krakatoa ......................................................................................... 166
the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit .................................... 169
drought ......................................................................................... 172
don’t forget to breathe, love ......................................................... 173
you are a strange fruit ................................................................... 175
us ................................................................................................... 176
the train station ............................................................................. 177
fists ................................................................................................ 178
13 metaphors for why we should’ve never dated ......................... 179
scars, part one ............................................................................... 181
emo love song in the key of 9 3/4 ................................................... 184
someone ........................................................................................ 186
albuquerque penance ................................................................... 188
austin penance .............................................................................. 189
sushi penance................................................................................ 190
wendy’s penance........................................................................... 191
war penance .................................................................................. 192
road penance ................................................................................ 193
hooter’s penance .......................................................................... 194
mikey penance .............................................................................. 195
el condor pasa penance................................................................ 196
watching lockup penance ............................................................. 197
breakfast penance ......................................................................... 198
working at spenser gifts penance #1 ........................................... 199
working at spenser gifts penance #2 ........................................... 200
working at spenser gifts penance #3 ........................................... 201
overnight shift at kinko’s hourly penance .................................... 202
disillusion curry ............................................................................ 205
passersby ....................................................................................... 206
sorrow, part two............................................................................ 208
the double glass doors of your heart ............................................ 210
cellophane ..................................................................................... 212
26 new rules for poetry slamming ................................................ 214
ode to george w. bush .................................................................. 216
bpe rap .......................................................................................... 218
silver .............................................................................................. 221
tigerlily .......................................................................................... 222
propers .......................................................................................... 223
mission statement ......................................................................... 225
cats ................................................................................................ 227
birth control .................................................................................. 229
thoughts on gay marriage ............................................................. 232
i want to hold you ......................................................................... 234
oh! canadian fedex lady! ............................................................... 236
closer to the heart ......................................................................... 239
muscleman .................................................................................... 241
napoleon ....................................................................................... 244
dead horses ................................................................................... 247
not drowning, but waving ............................................................. 249
scars, part two ............................................................................... 251
ode to dwarf planet 134340 .......................................................... 254
redneck ......................................................................................... 257
falling in like.................................................................................. 261
to the barista at the cafe down the street...................................... 264
neurotika ....................................................................................... 266
mixtape genius .............................................................................. 268
mementos...................................................................................... 270
the crush ....................................................................................... 274
she never really loved you ............................................................ 276
beardo ........................................................................................... 278
how to make love .......................................................................... 280
what i mean (when i say i love you) ............................................. 282
pretty girls make me sad ............................................................... 284
my undying love ............................................................................ 286
confessions .................................................................................... 289
the word ........................................................................................ 291
dear white people! ........................................................................ 293
the burning bush........................................................................... 295
caffeine .......................................................................................... 297
embouchure .................................................................................. 299
you................................................................................................. 302
jara................................................................................................. 306
bread and butter ........................................................................... 309
molly ............................................................................................. 311
04.05.94......................................................................................... 314
p.o.v............................................................................................... 364
doug, cale, and the closet king ..................................................... 369
the girl on the bus ......................................................................... 379
sorrow, part one............................................................................ 382
my very first real live nekkid lady ................................................. 384
how i escaped my shitty little town (a true story) ........................ 388
garanimals ..................................................................................... 392
everyday magic .............................................................................. 394
the butt triplets ............................................................................. 396
mosaic ........................................................................................... 411
temp hell ....................................................................................... 421
the lord of the breakfast club, part one ........................................ 428
the lord of the breakfast club, part two ........................................ 432
microwave ..................................................................................... 434
seesaw ........................................................................................... 441
michael6 ......................................................................................... 448
ABANDON HOPELESSNESS ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
why silence (1967)
i stare and only see
the height of mediocrity!
i must be like the shifting sand;
there is no place for me to stand.
like a robot i must be;
like the rest, no real me.
i do not wish to conform;
to be taken by this subtle storm:
convention here — convention there;
i shudder as it’s brought to bear.
lost am i and lost i’ll be,
as driftwood on the lonely sea.
but this for me is not the place,
for i must join the human race.
countless are the years i’ve fought,
but still no victory i’ve wrought;
so bend i must and bend i will,
if only silence to instill.
big poppa e’s father joined the navy on june 24, 1964. he was 17. he wrote this
poem in july of 1967 while aboard the aircraft carrier uss bon homme richard
(cv/cva-31) off the coast of vietnam. he was 20 years old and had been married
less than a year to big poppa e’s mother.
big poppa e was born may 11, 1967, and his father wouldn’t meet him until he
was four months old. he followed his father’s footsteps and those of his father’s
father and joined the navy at 17. many of bpe’s first poems were written aboard
the aircraft carrier uss saratoga (cv/cva/cvb-60) while on deployment in the
mediterranean sea in 1987. he was 20 years old.
.
haiku (1981)
parking lot whirlwind
ever swirling and swift
picking up the dust
1
Y
.
ode to poison mushrooms (1985)
shifting shafts of shining sunlight
arc across the summer night’s sky.
pulse and flash and blinding radiance
as a deathbloom blossom watches by.
2
O
.
stranded (1986)
alone
in a room
full of people,
together
with myself
in my mind.
searching
for some kind
of reason,
and a love
i am never
to find.
3
U
.
epiphany (1986)
a thousand times
i’ve kissed the lips
of faceless love in vain,
only to wake
a thousand times
alone and filled with pain.
but now my eyes
in sleep behold
this one thing to be true,
the face of love
in dreams obscured
forever shall be you.
4
K
.
lone (1986)
i run
across the wastelands.
my only mate —
the shadow
which i cast —
runs with me at my side.
we
wander
into the night,
chase
the sun’s fading light,
and rest
until it’s time
to run again.
i am at peace.
but,
an image burns my sight.
two shadows
converge
into one
and melt
into the setting sun.
i cannot run alone
forever.
5
N
.
erosion (1986)
youth,
as sand,
is easily washed away;
more often
it is shed
like unwanted skin.
time
dulls
the memory
with dripping claws,
rends and tears
what was,
making what is to be.
sandcastles
built in the prime
dissolve,
carried out by the sea
to be forgotten.
6
O
.
ennui, go on (1986)
living easy isn’t hard
wish i had a gold card
wake up another day
doesn’t matter anyway
dull day here we go
living at the movie show
dull life bores me
let them live it for me
got a job got a place
gathering lines across my face
got some hopes got some dreams
life is ripping at the seams
don’t drink don’t smoke
it’s getting hard for me to cope
wanna scream sometimes do
thinking about those eyes of blue
take a shower for an hour
looking for some inner power
close my eyes burn incence
hide within this inner fence
got some hate got some fear
wipe away the silent tear
i’ll get by i always will
looking for that hole to fill
7
W
.
whym (1987)
the pale flame of an unformed idea flickers in my mind
on sight i give chase trying desperately to bind
and capture the flame giving fuel and tinder
to build and shape and coerce the bright splendor
of a raging bonfire of flowing creation
that swells to burst into its fruition
and onto the paper that lies blank before me
becoming the words that tell their own story
8
W
.
life (1987)
waves of humanity
crashing
onto concrete shores,
floundering
in the wake
of self-destruction.
an angry void
opens
its doors
to human deceit
and rampant
corruption.
lives
on the brink
of becoming undone,
while the world
lives out
its lie.
all battles are lost
for none
can be won
when the world
watches
itself die.
9
H
.
oed 1 (1987)
excrement
smeared
across her face,
mother
raped
by a dying race.
through seeping sores
she cries,
enough.
her offspring
fight
amongst each other,
fools
against
their foolish brothers,
incestuous turns
upon their mother
leave her stripped
and dying.
don’t they know
they
shall
follow?
10
A
.
oed 2 (1987)
rape the slut mother!
bugger the bitch
with black fuming stacks
and oceans of styrofoam cups!
exhaust
and
deplete!
throwaway and decay!
mounds mounds!
like boils
on mommy’s neck!
fester!
molest her!
fuck the whore!
bend her over
like auggie doggie
and
ram
it to her
one more time!
even a dog knows not to
shit
where it sleeps.
incest!
molest!
digest!
hi-test!
now get undressed
and fuck
the green bitch brown!
11
T
.
abrupt (1987)
BRICK WALL
treble head
smack
the dash
splatters the red
googum grey mush
too bad so sad
little man wished he had
a car
now he do
he don’t
little bottle
broken
cut the piece
his grabbing hand
steering wheel in the other
lights out
idiot!
12
W
..
mmm mmm, pro patria! (1988)
big sticky parfait
of cherry syrup,
vanilla cream,
and blueberry gel.
a gooey concoction
whipped up
by bitter aging chefs
and waved
in front of the rotten-toothed mouths
of innocents ready
to be spoon-fed anything
candy coated
and easy to swallow.
until
the acrid aftertaste
sours their stomachs
and twists their bodies
with malnutrition
and transforms them
into a new wave of bitter aging chefs
doling out new and improved bonbons
and lemon drops
and heroes
wrapped in
red,
white,
and blue.
13
O
. .
minuet (1988)
…and then,
of all things,
she hands me a book.
i say,
what’s this?
she says,
a book of games.
i look at it,
turn it over in my hands,
open it,
and find the pressed petals
of a lavender rose.
i look at her
with antici
pation,
and she smiles
and says,
yes… games.
14
U
.
sexuality (1988)
beneath the coloured umbrellas
of an outdoor cafe,
she slowly puts down
her cappuccino
and whispers
something
foreign
under her breath.
i think it is latin.
she flashes a knowing smile,
finishes the hot liquid,
and proceeds to gouge her eyes
with a fork,
after which
she places the fork
upon my lap.
i ponder this a moment…
neatly fold my napkin,
and bid her adieu.
15
L
.
.
.
routine (1988)
i open my eyes.
there,
standing before me,
are two young women
clad in orange
polyester
jumpsuits.
the one on the left —
the prettier of the two —
smiles
at me.
i smile back.
i am not surprised
in the slightest
when she gently removes her head from her shoulders
and tosses it to me.
quite naturally,
i catch it.
while the other woman,
who bears a striking resemblance
to shirley temple on crack,
tap dances
and sings oh tannenbaum,
the head and i
tell dirty jokes
to one another.
we
have a lot
in common,
actually.
16
D
.
.
heroin (1988)
swan dive
off the edge
of the world
into a sea of molasses
with an enveloping
PLOP!
happy
little
ant
in amber
suspended weightless
in a numbing womb of goo
all sight
all sound
all pain
absorbed
in the fuzzy grey hum
of disconnection
17
B
.
.
flyboy (1988)
fucking cat!
we decided
it would be in our best interest
to fly our cat
ivan.
so,
with a rented helium tank
and k-mart punching bag balloons
in hand,
we traipsed to the top
of the bluffs.
quite suitable for the flying of cats.
the crowd was already there.
we
had put up flyers
all over town.
come! see ivan the flying cat!
saturday at 2:30 p.m.!
we
had this harness thing
with 4 little holes in the bottom
for 4 little cat feets
and 2 rings on the top
for tethering the balloons.
jim
held the balloons
as i blindfolded ivan.
18
E
.
.
on the end of a fishing line,
little legs dangling,
my kitty flew.
meow.
meow.
meow.
he got pretty damned high.
if i had watched bill nye the science guy
more often,
i could’ve predicted
what was going to happen.
helium expands at high altitudes.
POW! (meow?)
POW!POW!
POW!POW!POW!POW!
the crowd sucked
air in a collective gasp
19
C
.
.
as ivan’s
little
body
tumbled
cat-ass
over
cathead
little legs
kicking
and
clawing
down
onto the hard-packed floor
of the oil fields
with a wet, sticky
smack!
we
received
lots of hate mail
for that one.
it seemed a good idea
at the time.
20
O
.
flashlight (1989)
i am
a leaf
in a storm
drain
mouse in a hurricane
tossed
by winds i no
more
control
than i do the channels
of the moon
or the frequency
of the
child’s
screams
i scream
across the bandwidths
of unmodulated
white noise
the light’s
gone
out
the rocks
below the waterline
can’t be seen
21
O
.
. .
my fingerbones
etch
wicked bloody wakes
across
my
face
scattering
red flinders
down
into the frothing current below
22
L
..
lycanthropy (1989)
arching
twisting
gnashing man
all teeth and gums and shotgun eyes
shatters
splatters
the air about
with claws of rabid hate and rage
his drooling-thick
saliva scream
stains the silence razor red
smearing
dreary
disappearing
echoes drip and run and fade
23
I
...
truelove (1989)
when
her rubberband smile
stretched to snap
peels and cracks
into blue-black shards
that twist and curl
exposing
the bone-white enticement inside
my
pinprick eyes tense
like clock springs
ready to burst
from darkened sockets
and beckon
with sacrosanct truths
and lies
of love
and life
and death
and all within sight
is sucked inside
to live
in sinful pleasure
or die
in sacred agony
24
N
.. .
rage (1989)
the sun
lurches
from behind
the steeple-stabbed town
violets
shake
sun-splattered dewdrops
from dark petals
that quiver
in the prowling
miasmic haze
a worker bee
grumbles
crisscrossing the field
collecting tithes
carried wearily
at his sides
a stigmata-skinned lizard
arches
on a warming rock
its ridged backside
folded and wrinkled
into a frown
then
white-hot light
bursts
through stained glass
25
S
..
.
raining
multicoloured shards
upon the lowing herd
the grimacing preacherman
scarlet robes ablaze
lashes
his followers
into the apocryphal agony
His love invokes
sunday mourning
in a prairie town
26
T
..
.
love poem no. 9 (1990)
i see crosses empty crosses everywhere i look looming large and
threatening closing me in a pen a cell the prison bars the sharpened
spines of crucifixes plunged into the quivering flesh of the ground
around me hymns thicken the air chew my bleeding pimpled ears
and inject their larvae fester my pus-riddled head eaten alive by
squirming words and blindwhite promises i jab my fingers into
my ears and eyes and still the vibration rattles my body with the
monotone drone fills my eyes with visions of black and white and so
much fucking light tears at me with doubtful claws they rip and drip
as i strain to grip the truth but grab at nothing
the nooses
snake around my neck and ankles and wrists and pull tight for an
instant i am a human cross then sinew and sockets give way to
fountains of crimson absolution wash away my sins heal me cleanse
me make it all crystal clear just let me feel just one thing even if it’s
pain even if it’s pain let me feel
27
E
..
.
lincoln logs and rabid dogs (1990)
regression’s white-knuckled fist swells my lip and bloodies my smile as
i genuflect from a fetal crouch in a corner k.o.’d by visions of wascally
wabbits and nuns in white habits where in hell’s the deference i pray
my unseen days away looking for an answer a cure for this cancer
that eats a whole in my soul i wish i could drown my doubts in a
bowl of holy water but the tear-stained stormdrain of eternal desire
has smothered the fire that burned so fervently in my misplaced
youth i’ve lost it and the cost it’s so fucking hard to bear where did
i leave the wide-eyed ignorance that shouldered those summers of
razors and incense why’d they have to tell me there’s no such thing
as santa claus sainted clause it’s all cause and effect and causing me
to remember when i believed in a god and all was fine and all was
dandy and all was teeth stained with cotton candy but now all’s i
got are cavities pockets full of holes and a heart full of coals and a
head full of nothing at all i drank all my cigarettes and smoked all my
beers i got gas in my stovepipe and guns in my ears this lust is a must
‘cuz my love’s turned to rust and my eyes are sealed over by blood
sweat and dust i can’t wipe the i’s from my tears for the years i’ve left
behind are mine to keep and none but mine to weep laughter and
slaughter look like they rhyme they don’t though they should and do
after time and god doesn’t love me and neither do i and hate is to
me what the clouds in the sky mean to the lightning that spears at
the ground and what in the end makes the world go around i don’t
know what the hell i am trying to say except the price i’ve been given
is too much to pay my eyes are full-dry and so is my soul and what’s
left of my heart is burnt black and cold i’m crying i’m sighing i’m
trying i’m dying i’m not making sense to myself ‘cuz i’m lying so i’m
allowing this captive audience an escape a way out i wanna go home
where my innocence roams where it’s safe and warm and jesus christ
tucks me into my bunkbed every night but i can’t ‘cause i’m stuck
out here with the rest of you rocked by adulthood’s numbing wake
and wishing i could come home again
28
A
..
.
equalizer (1990)
i sometimes drive down the freeway at 35 miles an hour it pisses
people off but i don’t do it just to piss people off i just enjoy watching
all the cars speeding past when it rains i turn off the windshield
wipers and watch the world turn into an impressionist painting little
dots that shift and move and become renoir runabouts and monet
mercedes slithering past me i suppose if i looked into the faces of
the drivers i’d see little impressionistic frowns and scowls and even a
clinched fist or two but i don’t look especially at night i just stare at
the driplets of light and listen to the big band music playing over my
eight track sometimes i stick my arm out of the window and make
aerodynamic motions up and down in the wind like a sine wave and
the rain slaps my hand and little coloured beads slide down my wrist
and crawl past my elbow and collect in my armpit and i just smile
and smile as the angry people pass me by sometimes i even forget
about the pistol in my glove box
29
D
..
.
wendy (1992)
empty
as a pane
of glass
cold to the touch
of your pressed-flat
fingertips
you whisper
let me in
let me in
but your voice
only fogs
the window
30
O
.
ouroboros (1992)
he masturbates
with her body
instead of his hand
they touch
then turn away
side-by-side
the lukewarm space between
their dry backs
measured
in years
a misty reminder
of the love behind her
drips
from between her legs
and fades
into the tightly knit
fibers
of their crisp white
sheets
31
F
..
.
..
aspartame (1993)
i’m a one-man remembrance day parade
adorning myself
in mournful clutter
of fluttering fits of passion
bits of my past
in ashes
hastily discarded earrings
found
under the bed
a torn concert t-shirt
left behind
by the girl who said
take your cream rinse
and get the fuck out!
in every new pair of eyes
in every smile
i see more stuff
left behind
32
S
.. .
echo (1993)
no need
to screen
my calls now
everything is bigger
more space in the cupboard
more hangers in the closet
squares of cleanliness
suddenly
in the middle of dust-caked floors
i reek
of desperation
can’t remember
the last time
i left this room
except
to order cornerstore pizza
from the livingroom phone
or
wash the abandoned cum
from my bedsheets
woe to him
who is alone when
he
falls
for there is no one
to pick him up
33
T
.. . .
i keep it cold
in my flat
cold
so i can get away
with using heavy covers
when i sleep
i sleep
entirely too much
and listen listen
for footsteps stopping
outside my door
34
R
.. . .
appliance envy (1993)
they’re chasing me.
the kitchen utensils blame me.
the silverware shames me.
they’re in cahoots with
crockpots and saucepans and
garlic presses and
dusty stoneware.
the kitchen screams
and dreams for the day
when you return again .
not a pasta’s primavera’d, not an egg souflee’d,
and they’re pissed.
the knives are sharpening themselves
against the countertop,
scraping etching
at the black and white formica tile.
the spices and teas
in the cupboard overhead
plot to smother me.
my allies in the pantry
have all been smashed to bits —
the ramen and macaroni, the chicken soup and rice —
all dashed upon the linoleum
by spiteful sauce mixes
and angry bottles of balsamic vinegar.
soggy cakes of tofu and brown and wobbly sprouts plan
to jump me should i open the icebox door again.
i wish you’d come back
just long enough
to fix a crepe or something
and make this kitchen happy again.
35
I
.. . .
plastic (1993)
how many people have raised their hands to the sky
how many people have held their heads and cried
how many people have closed their eyes tight
and prayed for the existence of god
i cast myself
into a pit of millions dead
and billions yet to die
when i clasp my hands
and wonder
if my pleas are heard
wonder if i’ll live on
in pain
in ecstasy
or in nothingness
and like all before me
and all to come
i am answered only
in silence
36
P
.. .
darn (1993)
jagged fingers sew
cruel patterns and folds
into your creased face.
right before your dimming eyes,
like some quilt,
seams ripped apart and
carelessly stitched together again.
your visage frays,
unravels.
go ahead, disbelieve if you must.
this threadbare hag is not you,
not you with harsh-white hair
and crushed linen skin.
there! on the shelf! on the wall!
the true reflection!
in the rosewood picture frame,
in the sticky yellow pages
of the high school yearbook.
heave your wrinkle-bound fist
through the blasphemous glass,
then drape your bones
across the easy chair
and let your wandering mind’s cool breath
fill your head with
billowing breeze-filled truth.
and smile,
and ignore the mirror’s lies
as they trickle
from between your old woman hands,
slide down the insides of your varicose pencil legs,
and puddle
in your dirty pink house shoes.
37
C
.
.. .
.
asbestos (1993)
itchy swollen eyes
infected with anger
thicken the air with bloodshot glares,
inject
squirming blind-white rage
into the meat of any host
within reach. i am
helpless,
unable to resist
planting larvae into your stomach.
my hate gestates and grows.
the rotten acid sting
empties
into your soul, and i am
cleansed,
and you are pregnant,
bloated with malignance,
eaten alive even as i
bump into walls and
trip over tables
on the way out.
38
L
.. .
.
glue (1993)
two smiling-happy little glazed hams
basting
in their love oven
of moist sheets, pillows, and
discarded clothing.
all sweet pork stink
and promising sighs.
two piggies in a blanket
sharing the same wet spot
and breathless embrace
as four-in-the-morning sleep
woos and cuddles
their sticky snuggle-bunnied clutch
and fades them off to the morrow.
39
U
.. .
.
listening to oak cliff bra (1993)
little kitty chillin’
in the tall grass
under an oak tree
gots a butterfly
caught
in between his feets
little kitty smilin’
‘cuz he’s soaking up
the summer breeze
then he
lets it
go
40
B
.. .
.
listening to deep in the heart (1993)
twenty years old
sweet as a rose
every petal of her paper thin
i could see her veins
showing right through
her powder-perfect skin
pond-green eyes bright-eyed wide
how’d she’d smile when she’d see me
now
i don’t know
where she is
41
S
..
..
insinuation (1993)
hey can i bum a smoke?
no really i just need one
just one and i’ll be fine
just one and i’ll make it through these shakes.
where you going?
can i bum a ride?
my car’s all busted up.
i’m stripped i’m sans wheels i’m rudderless.
wherever you’re going i don’t care just take me with you.
can i sleep on your couch?
i don’t need a pillow i don’t even need a blanket,
i just need a place a place to crash for the night
so i don’t have to go back to my house,
so i don’t have to go back to my room;
i can’t stand the blank-eyed walls the silence the dark.
i’ll sleep on your couch tonight just for tonight,
just to get me through the night.
can i sleep next to you?
no i’ll keep my clothes on i’ll keep my socks on;
it’s not a sex thing it’s a warmth thing.
i can get through this night through these shakes
through this void just hold me just hold me,
and in the morning i’ll go.
in the morning i’ll go.
can i bum another smoke?
42
Y
...
..
new town, new school, new job, new life (1994)
stuck
in between times
— the last time
and the next time —
where nothing much happens,
and sleep
comes too easily
and too often.
the phone doesn’t ring
anymore,
but will.
dead saturday nights
will soon be filled.
the little black book full
of old numbers
that no longer work
will be replaced
by a new book
and new connections
soon.
but now,
in between and waiting
— patiently —
life is reduced
to twilight scrutiny
of the bedroom ceiling
and
the mournful hoot
of an owl
just outside
my window.
43
O
..
.. .
floss (1994)
i like to floss my teeth.
i mean, i really like to floss my teeth.
there’s nothing better than unwinding a good yard of floss at the
end of the day, kicking back on your futon couch with your beat feet
thrown over the armrest, your eyes closed, head back, listening to
some ella or bessie or billie or fats on the stereo, and stretching that
waxed dental floss between your fingers.
and none of that fancy stuff, none of that high-tech, space shuttle
floss, and no cinnamon or mint flavouring either, just the classic
type… not too thick, but just right. and you’ve got to pull it tight,
nice and tight, nice and purple-fingertip-tight. and the music is
playing and your eyes are closed and ohh…
you slip the floss between your teeth, just ease it in and scrape gently
up and down along either side of each tooth, and ohhh…
the pressure of a day’s work just disappears, even as you remove
bits of chicken chow mein and polska kielbasa sausage and strings of
lemon grass and bean sprouts.
ohhhh… it’s heavenly.
the pressure on the spaces between your teeth just vanishes, and
the sins of the day just vanish, and the missed opportunities and
the relationships that never work and flesh-eating bacteria and dying
children in afghanistan and biological warfare in america and the
world trade center and the pentagon and jihad and fatwa and holes
in the ozone and the fate of the planet and what happens when you
die and whether or not there’s a god…
44
U
..
.. .
it all fades away as the slender thread dances between your teeth and
skitters along your gums and removes all the dreck it finds.
such bliss! running your tongue across that pearly expanse of enamel
and not finding a single foreign substance, not a solitary unplanned
particle or rebellious crumb, just smooth ivory smoothness, your
tongue ice skating over the expanse of white…
i have this recurring dream. i won’t tell you all about it, but tori amos
is in it, and we floss each other’s teeth on a black leather couch
with one red pillow. this dream took a strange turn the other night:
instead of tori, it was my mother and she had this enormous ball of
floss and it was like she was mom of the undead and… i woke up,
suddenly, frightened by what it could mean.
mmmm… floss.
in heaven, just as you get off the elevator and still have songs of the
carpenters in your head, the host angel who greets you and takes you
to the correct line you’ll be standing in for the next two thousand
years will hand you a little white dispenser of waxed dental floss that
never frays, never breaks, and never runs out.
knowing that, what in this life is impossible to take?
45
C
..
.. .
partyboy (1995)
have you ever gone to a party with a friend where the only person
you knew in the whole place is that very same friend and your friend
happens to know everybody in the entire place and did you end
up glomming onto that friend sticking to their side and just kinda
nodding and smiling at everyone your friend introduces you to like
some mute sidekick and did your friend just kinda leave you standing
there by the cheese dip so they can go off to socially butterfly and
you’re left to just pick through the chips and lunchmeats feeling
like a real schlemiel because nobody will talk to you and the few
times you try to strike up a conversation with some random person
standing next to you they just sort of look at you like you smell like
play-doh or something and did you just find a piece of wall to lean
against and watch all the people go about their little party business
while you’re drinking flat beer from a red plastic cup and did you
look at everybody and they’re all thinner than you and they have
cooler hair than you and they’re tanner than you and taller than
you and their teeth are whiter than yours and their clothes are nicer
than yours and you totally feel like a loser because you’re doing the
wallflower bit just like in 6th-grade after your mom dropped you off
at your first dance and you felt like a real geek and did you listen
in on their conversations and find that they’re talking about totally
stupid shit like their clothes and their hair and their tans and diets
and their white fucking teeth and did you realize that these people
are just so completely shallow that the only thing they know how to
talk about is themselves and didn’t you feel so above these people
and superior that you can talk about something of more substance
than the brand of hair conditioner you’re using but then didn’t you
also feel so totally beneath all these people because you will never
look or be anything like them because they all look like they’ve got
the world handed to them like bright red delicious apples on a silver
platter and you’ve always had to work hard to get everything you’ve
ever had because you don’t have the looks of a model or mommy and
46
O
..
..
.
daddy’s money fed to you by a 1,000-mile long umbilical cord and
then all of a sudden did you look across the room and see that one
person standing by the mantle with a red plastic cup who looks like
they’re enjoying this party about as much as you are and then they
like smile at you and you smile back and you think thank god there’s
someone here who can see through all this shit and maybe this party
will turn out better than you thought and then they wave to you and
you wave back to them and smile and then they call out hey, what’s
up? and you get ready to answer back but before you do someone
from behind you says nothing much what’s up with you? and you
get pushed out of the way as some fashion mannequin shoulders
their way through the crowd to the person by the mantle and you
realize they weren’t smiling and waving at you at all but at some
boob standing behind you and didn’t you feel totally embarrassed
and burnt and so completely over this lame party and all the posing
and posturing and that same ’70s disco cd compilation they’ve been
listening to for the past two hours and your friend’s gone and there’s
no more dip and you can’t find the bathroom even though you’ve
asked four different people and you finally decide fuck it i’m out of
here and you just leave without saying a word and then you walk the
long way home sort of sad and sort of burnt but sort of hoping you’ll
happen upon some truly cool party with truly cool approachable
people listening to really good music and they’ll say hey, come on up
to the porch and hang out with us! wanna beer? but there’s never
any party and there’s never any people there’s just you walking
home in the dark all by yourself again and did you just let yourself
into your dark apartment and go straight to your room and put some
billie holiday in the cd player and maybe light some incense and
get undressed and get in bed and stare at the ceiling for a couple of
hours before you finally fell asleep?
i hate that.
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siena vision (1995)
pseudo english punk band loudspeaker spieling while the espresso
spout kooooosh! announces another caffeine connection mr. shortclipped-roman-style-dyed-black do with thrice-pierced ears drags in
another dollar and fifty in pocket change from a soon-to-be-satiated
customer in thrift store grunge three pots a-perking cafe siena brew
plup-plups that smell that arabica smell that kenya that special new
orleans grind with a hint of chicory it’s warm no breeze to blow the
flies by brick wall broken out in student art it’s spread infecting the
adjacent wall with sculptured faces painted ceramic faces of earth tone
red gray and blue the click-clack and scrape of dishes and silverware
on faux marble countertops soft hum of study seekers scratching
notepads the taste of pumpkin pie cinnamon globber stuck on my
goatee tastes even better the second time around homegirl too-cool
dink-dinka-dinks her spoon on the edge of her herb tea cup chats to
roman-do boy behind the counter where you been where you going
what’s on the tube tonight? tip jar is overflowing measure the coffee
level it off with a knife jam it into the espresso machine kooooosh
like a jet taking off as steam is forced through specialty coffee grinds
all to the punk rock beat
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commerce (1995)
look at your hair! your frizzy halo of ozone-tearing hair! seen so
much goddamn bleach i could dip your head in a bucket and clean
my toilet sparkly white! oh jesus, so much pancake makeup, you
clog the pores of everyone within a 5-foot radius with a flutter of
pink and frosty blue dust! your face has a half-life of 40,000 years,
you put so much shit on it! and have you smelled yourself lately,
dollface? take a whiff! you smell like you opened every perfume ad in
15 cosmos and rolled in ‘em like a wet-haired sheepdog in the grass!
you drape your fake-bake body in come-hither clothes and fuck me
in the ass pumps and silicon triple-d muskmelons for breasts, and
you claim to be a feminist? you’ve got a spice girls mind and a miss
america mouth wrapped inside a lipo-sucked carcass that’s nothing
more than a twisted caricature of male desire trafficking female selfloathing and shame! i look at you and think of walt disney’s head
frozen in a chamber somewhere. look at you! you thing! you it! you
beckoning finger! you vicious circle! i’ll tell you what you are! you
are a chocolate-covered cherry with no cherry left! you are a strip
mall! blinking sign, come inside, buy buy buy, but your shelves are
stripped bare! a commercial! a billboard! the goodyear blimp! you
are baywatch! you are the motherfucking pepsi generation! you are
the reason jim carrey makes $20 million a picture! you are the starspangled banner! you are the american dream gone nightmare! now
go wash your goddamn face off, shave that almond-head shaped ass
of yours, tear off those fake-assed nails, deflate them fake-ass titties,
go to the thrift store and buy some real clothes, throw out your jenny
craig and rejoice in the body of a real woman, and get a goddamned
personality while you’re at it!
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new poem about a coin (1995)
there’s a coin in the tip
of my sock,
and i have no idea
how it got there.
it feels like a dime,
which used to be
enough
for a phone call,
but now is not quite enough.
it’s not really bothering me.
it’s not chafing me
or cutting me.
it’s not hurting me.
it’s just there,
and i’m aware
that it’s there.
the only thing keeping me
from unlacing my boot
and pulling off my sock
and removing it
is the fact
that the energy expelled
in removing it
exceeds the amount
of irritation it inflicts.
and so
it stays,
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rattling around my sock,
bobbling around my toes,
in and out,
in and out,
in between.
and i find myself
thinking of
you.
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the miracle corner pocket luck shot (1995)
my friend brian
made the killer pool shot
the other day
at lasalle’s.
it was so good
i told him i’d write a poem about it.
but how?
how to convey the sheer beauty,
the utter perfection,
of this shot?
two ball combo
not one
not two
but three bumpers
back spin with a perfect leave
set-up snug for the next shot
straight sinker into the corner pocket
and
the bastard
called it.
damn.
if he was any good
at playing pool
it still would’ve been
a good shot,
but brian sucks at pool,
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couldn’t play his way out
of a wet paper sack.
this was nothing less
than divine intervention,
a true blue-chalk marvel
of epiphaniacal proportions.
i ended up beating him
by three balls
because brian really does suck at pool,
but damn
if that wasn’t
a fine shot.
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bookends (1995)
1. serendipity
our journey begins
with crisp fuji apples
and kiwi pepper jam
bought
with pocket change
from a parking lot farmers market.
drizzled by honey-sweet sun
from a sky too blue
for words,
we walk — no…
we traipse —
through wooded parks
kicking oak balls
under fallen birch,
snacking on wild miners lettuce,
sharing chapstick and
singing songs
until our voices
go numb
and our cheeks
flush cherub red
from smiling so hard.
and later
beneath great aunt johnny’s handmade quilt,
we snuggle
entwined like
grape vines
in a cuddle puddle,
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caressing each other’s hands
our faces
our lips.
and it feels so warm,
and it feels so nice.
more then anything
it feels
like our first few steps
together.
2. graduation day
our serendipity
didn’t last
nearly as long as we had
hoped.
how could we go
from the warmth of hands held,
stomachs trembling
at the thought
of our first embrace,
and whispers
hoarse with passion —
i want us to be together for a long time —
to the cold static of a long-distance phone call
from four blocks away…
you’re not the one.
we dove in
head first, eyes closed,
and sank straight to the bottom.
so deeply,
so quickly,
never got the chance
to adjust
to the pressure.
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true bliss
hardened
in the amber of silence,
the death of conversation,
of our walks through the park,
making love,
kissing,
touching,
until it was all gone.
the last time i saw her.
she was so beautiful it hurt.
i knew.
she knew.
when she left,
i emptied my drawer in the bottom of her dresser,
packed my toothpaste,
my socks,
my pillow.
we never made it to summer time.
the laughs we shared
over turkish delight and gyros
made us think of more long walks in the park,
leaving the key in the door at the hotel at disneyland,
spooning,
lucky charms,
the warmth of her hands.
but it was only the last laugh
before summer,
before graduation,
before goodbye.
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wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth
(1995)
she said
her wounds
were still
salt-fresh,
a phrase
from her youth
of skinned knees and bruised elbows.
salt-fresh
and my voice
still
had enough sting
to bring tears.
my wounds
bear the shine
of half-forgotten scar tissue,
but hers
still
seep.
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state of the art (1995)
listen to america breath
listen
listen
somewhere in this country
is a madman
with a handful of gun
and a headful of bad ideas
his eyes blinking 87 times per minute
and his white-knuckle hands
clinching
clinching
he’s right outside the ice cream store
right outside the ice cream store
is a little girl
with a strawberry snow cone
artificially coloured
with red dye #5
it’s 1950
and her happy red cone
lipsticks a carcinogenic smiley-face
across her little mouth
she’s got a little pink dress
and a little pink bow
in her curly-girl hair
and her little hand
is clutched
in her daddy’s big hand
in her daddy’s big hand
is a gold watch
with his name engraved on the back
it’s 1982
and he’s retiring
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.
he’s got a happy little hat on his
big fat head
with a red rubber band
stretched under his chins
40 years
he’s been with the company for 40 years
working
never been sick once not once
only three vacations in the entire time
put three kids through school
through college
the mortgage
the car
40 years
and he’s got his gold watch
and mobile homes and fishing poles and log cabins in his head
but he’ll be dead in 6 months
of colon cancer
of heart disease
of diabetes
of alzheimer’s
he’s got his gold watch
his gold watch
and he watches
the children
playing under high tension electrical wires
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bigman (1995)
i knew a man
he was a big man
and he had him big hands
with big pointer fingers
fat sweaty fingers
like sausages
frying in a shallow pan
and in him big hand
he had a big leather bound book
with big gold letters
etched on the cover
that said
my god is bigger than your god
and this big book
put big ideas
in him big head,
ideas about
my love
my life
my sex
my death,
ideas he was
proud to share
with a thump
of his big finger
one day this big man
came to me and spoke
of skies filled with embers
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his eyes blazing
with the fires
of righteous indignation
and i clucked my tongue
at this man
sucked my teeth
shrugged my shoulders
and walked away
him was not amused
him raised him mighty book
and slammed it down
with all him strength
and my family planning centers burst into flames
and the blood of my best friends swam with virus
and my sisters were bound and gagged with apron strings
and the vocal cords were torn from my throat
and this big man
pounded on him big book
and him shouted
what’s your small god going to do now?
and i introduced that big man to my god
my small calibre semi-automatic deity
and as he was looking down
the barrel of my small god
i whispered a passage i had memorized
from my little black book
for lord handgun so despised the world
that he gave his only begotten son
Christ Hollowpoint
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for whosoever
shall receiveth him
unto their bodies
shall be torn asunder
and live forever
as statistical data
and for the first time
in him big life
this big man
was at a loss for words
the moral of the story is this
you can take away my voice
but you can’t take away my thoughts
you can’t take away my actions
and
it ain’t the size
of your god that counts
it’s what you can do with it
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the politics of just friends (1996)
i’ve reached that point again that point in a failed relationship where
the cuts on your fingers from the last slammed phone received are
still scabbed over and the warmth of the last sleep-over has not
quite faded where the anger has basically evaporated and has been
replaced by a resolve to move on and the exchange of things begins
because you are still connected by the long sticky strands of shared
space and shared warmth and you start gathering the things you’ve
left at one another’s places cds and underwear and toothbrushes
and hair care products and razors and favourite t-shirts and favourite
pillows these reminders of seven months and you have to decide
if you want to keep the photos of the two of you smiling whether
they should stay nestled in the dresser mirror and on the walls of
your work cubicle and on the cork board in the kitchen you’re still
all over each other like a coating like a skin of shared phrases and
shared clothing and you still hear her name in all of those songs
and the chili-mac you made a month ago that she said would mold
before you ate all of it is still in the fridge growing a fine fuzzy beard
and the half-gallon of ice cream from root beer floats way back when
is still in the freezer and now you’re in the beginning stages of just
friends where your hand still twitches unconsciously toward hers in
a darkened movie theatre and you have to remind your own bed who
you are and get used to the non-breathing non-warmth of your own
bedroom walls and you know it’s for the best and you know this is a
good decision and you know this is the last best chance to salvage at
least a friendship but you still miss her warmth and her smell and her
taste and the way she looked at you when you made her laugh and
you have to keep reminding yourself what you’re not missing the
miscommunications and the misunderstandings and the mistrust
and the missed opportunities and the arguments and the denials and
the fading chemistry and the silence especially the silence but you’re
still wondering if there’s still a chance for something to rise out of
the ashes of this another failed relationship that looked so promising
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in the beginning and still had hope in the middle and now leaves you
cold in the end and now the empty spaces need to be filled the times
you want to pick up the phone need to be filled with something else
because just friends can’t talk on the phone about the weather like
real friends can or like lovers can because just friends means space
it means distance it means it’s over it means i am trying my hardest
to move on but there are still things i miss about you it means i
have to learn to watch teevee by myself again first kisses are easy to
remember but no one ever tells you when the last kiss happens or
when you’re going to make love for the last time it just comes and
then it goes and then you come to realize that yes that time two
weeks ago or three weeks ago that was the very last time we’ll ever
make love and that time in the car after that last long talk that was
the very last time we’ll ever kiss and now the future is just a great
big open space again i miss you i hate you i love you i never want to
see you again i’m alone and where else do i go from here other than
where i always go… forward… again.
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roadtrippin’ (1996)
there’s something magical and healing about a solo roadtrip.
it’s about forward motion, something about going somewhere and
leaving something behind. it’s about yearning to blow off your job,
quit your girlfriend, sell off all your stuff and pack what’s left into the
back of your pickup truck.
it’s about whittling your existence down to its necessary parts — just
you, an 80-gig ipod, a sleeping bag in the back — and throwing the
map out the window and getting the hell outta dodge.
it’s about raising your head from the keyboard attached to a computer
on a desk in a cubicle in a work center in a business that makes
things for other businesses that sell things to other businesses and
realizing that your paragraph in the great american novel is due for
yet another rewrite.
it’s about yearning to tattoo the sticky black ink of your tires across
the belly of this land, to become another steel corpuscle in the
freeway bloodstream and flow into towns you’ve never seen and
follow the pulse to their beating hearts.
it’s about blazing down the highway, just you and patsy cline, just
you and johnny cash, just you and soft cell and singing at the top
of your lungs — don’t touch me please i cannot stand the way you
tease!* — at 75-85-95 miles per hour.
it’s about playing ski-rack or cop car for 600 miles at a time.
it’s about pulling over recklessly, immediately, across four lanes of
traffic to stop under an overpass to scribble a phrase or two that falls
in your path like a safe from the sky.
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it’s about leaving everything behind and cleansing yourself in a gritty,
sweaty, unwashed catharsis of road dirt and sunburnt forearms and
parking in a field infested with crickets in some town somewhere
and drifting off to sleep in the same cutoffs and radiohead t-shirt
you’ve been wearing since diving into the colorado river in needles,
california, three days before.
it’s about the random encounters in gas stations and greasy spoons,
in coffeeshops and dark saloons. it’s about being embraced by
serendipity and spirited away from the real deal angst machine of
modern day existence.
it’s about smiling that healing smile that only days and days on the
road can bring.
i love a good roadtrip, man, that shakes your head and clears the
cobwebs and allows you to think clearly for the first time in years.
* lyrics from “tainted love” by soft cell
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pueblo dog (1996)
the puppy’s name
was too hard
for white tongues —
all i’s and th’s,
tiwa for fry bread.
the boy found him
in the tribe’s sacred mountains
behind taos pueblo,
where white people
are not allowed.
little,
smooth,
eyes sealed shut.
his first meal was bear fat
and goat’s milk from a
torn plastic bag.
little fry bread barely survived
his first night in
the pueblo,
but grew gappy-toothed
and happy-butted,
curling around the ankles
of the boy
who was allowed to speak
only tiwa
as he learned to be
a real man.
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the boy’s aunt
never let fry bread
out of the courtyard
of their adobe house,
kept him away from the bum dogs
in the open square
who begged greasy chunks
of
dough
from the white people
and their cameras.
he was too scared, anyway,
and content on his haunches
licking deer meat
from between his toes,
but she could see him smell
at the fry bread
in the wind
just as her nephew
watched the bmws and mercedes
in the dirt parking lot.
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ode to poet x (1996)
i see your
rubbernecking
head
lolling around in
perfect boredom
while the other poets proceed
unnoticed,
unheeded,
disregarded &
dismissed
by you, poet x,
who can’t be bothered
by these faux poets
& their trite phrases.
you whip out your poetry
dangle it onstage,
wag it around,
climax,
then collapse in your seat
flaccid & smug & flutter-eyed.
if you’re too tired poet x,
if you’re too bored,
if you’re above listening
to what i have to say
or what they have to say,
then poet x
why
don’t
you
leave?
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get out the door you’re yearning for
because i have better things to do
then watching
you
yawn.
i’m so goddamned tried
of watching as you stick
your middle finger
up your own ass
& rub it under our noses
like it was vick’s vap-o-rub.
poet x
the moment you lost
the ability to inspire
& be inspired
is the moment your name changed
to ex-poet.
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ma’amed (1996)
my friend nancy
was ma’amed
the other day.
she’s 25
and was not amused.
she ran home
and glared into the mirror,
pinching her cheeks for elasticity
and checking for baggage under her eyes.
she told me,
just last week
my 26-year-old friend and i
decided
we were at that perfect age
neither too young
nor too old
to date anyone we want
from 18 to 50.
and yet,
just like that
some overly polite supermarket checker —
the little bastard! —
with pimples and a greasy smile
ma’amed her
and offered to carry her groceries,
damning her
to a too-near future
of backyard barbecues
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and early bedtimes
and planned vacations
and mortgages
and mid-life crises
and pta meetings.
and this coming just three days
after not being carded
at the liquor store downtown.
laughing at first,
then sighing,
i realize that i too
am nearing the twilight
of my omnisexual years,
where hair dye and tattoos
are just as good
as career suits and sensible shoes.
and even as i roll my eyes
at the giggly slip of a counter girl
for whom i would have killed myself
fifteen years ago,
i quietly mourn the passing
of her affections.
gee, sir, i didn’t know sting was in the police!
here’s your receipt, sir!
have a nice day!
sir!
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death to romance (1996)
i’d like to bring
a class action suit
against the makers of hallmark cards
and the producers of romantic comedies
and the writers of bad love poetry
and syrupy pop songs.
i’d like to sue their asses off
and you can all join me,
all you lonely housewives
chain-smoking romance novels,
you lonely placers of personal ads
with empty email inboxes,
you lonely pursuers of picket fences
and lawn chair weekends.
we can sentence them all to death
and string the bastards up
and light a bonfire beneath them
of burning mariah carey records
and when harry met sally videos
and high school yearbooks
and dozens and dozens of dying red roses
and rotting boxes of chocolate,
and we can watch the bastards kick
like our hearts have under the weight
of their sunset beaches and candlelit dinners,
their harmonies and melodies
and vows of ‘til death do us part.
we can burn them all
then scatter the ashes from hollywood to paris,
and then maybe —
just maybe —
we can get on with our lives.
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jesus moshpit (1996)
i am the biggest monster in all the moshpit! i don’t give a damn and
if you don’t like it, i’ll pull a stage dive and take your greasy punk
ass out!
i wade through the arching, twisting, gnashing whirlpool of elbows
and knuckles, and i’ll mess up any droog foolish enough to meet
my gaze! for i am a lumbering behemoth with a six-foot tall spiked
mohawk and a pierced uvula! i got arms like i-beams, fists like anvils,
neck like a sewer pipe, head like a volkswagen! i shrug my mighty
shoulders and sweaty punks go flying through the air like gnats off
a yak’s back!
yea though i mosh through the valley in the shadow of punk rock
music, i shall fear no punk! for i am the biggest, the baddest, the
meanest, the no-pain-feelin’est, jack-booted-thuggin’est, steel-toehavin’est, no-toof-grinnin’est, boba-fett-walkin’est, wookiee-scalpstalkin’est punk rock motherfucker in all the valley! as a matter
of fact, i made the valley, with one mighty drag of my pinkie toe!
goddamn! shazam! poetry slam! green eggs & ham!
and just because you see me standing in the corner all by myself
watching the moshpit mayhem from afar… skinny… in a black
depeche mode t-shirt… it don’t mean nothing, ‘cuz i don’t have to
prove myself to nobody! damn!
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just take another drink (1996)
so, i’m sitting on the couch drinking early times whiskey straight
from the bottle with this chick i’ve been seeing for the past couple
of years, and the stereo’s spieling this vicious smoky room ricochet
coltrane sax solo, and my girl’s looking up at the glow-in-the-dark
stars on the ceiling and just a-smiling like a busload of mongoloid
schoolchildren on a field trip, so i poke her in the ribs with my big
toe and i ask her, i say, “baby, what is it that you’re thinking about,
‘cause i just gotta know…”
and she looks at me and she says, “man, it’s this music, it’s this
rabid coltrane be-bop jazz! it’s got me thinking ‘bout that time
we was in that old white mercury with the oxblood tuck-and-roll
interior and the battery-operated holy mother of jesus suctioncupped to the dashboard, and you were blazing a path down that
methamphetamine highway, man, pedal to the metal like a one-man
gang-bang bending the needle of that speedometer over backwards
and still pressing your foot harder on the gas, so fast that when we
hit a bump we flew like the goddamn space shuttle, man, we took
off, man, like ten-fifteen feet into the air, and when we touched
back down we’d bounce like a goddamn skipping stone, and you
could hear the elbows of those two waitresses knocking against the
roof of the trunk every time we hit the ground, and i was slumped
against the passenger side door trying not to get blood all over the
upholstery and listening to the wind, oh man that wind, the roar
of that wind was so loud you could barely hear the sirens of the 17
nevada state troopers behind us splashing the sharp desert rocks
with blueandred blueandred blueandred, and they were so close
you could almost smell the adrenaline on their breath, but you just
looked straight ahead, man, you didn’t look at the rearview mirror,
you didn’t look at the gas gauge, you didn’t look at the suitcase in
the backseat, you didn’t look at me sitting in a puddle of my own
blood, man, you just kept driving, and i said, ‘baby, what the hell are
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we gonna do?’ and you closed your eyes, and you opened the glove
compartment, and you reached past the .38 with the black electrical
tape stretched around the grip, past the last box of hollow-point
shells, searched around until you found it, that coltrane 8-track tape,
and you popped it into the tape deck, and you cranked the volume
knob all the way up just as loud can be, and i tell you, man, no music
in the history of this entire planet ever sounded so goddamned
brilliant as a love supreme right at that very moment!”
and then this girl i’ve been seeing for a couple of years? she lays her
head back on the couch, closes her eyes and smiles, and i look at her
and say, “baby… what the fuck are you talking about?”
and she looks at me and says, “ahhh… nevermind, man, it’s the
coltrane talking. just take another drink.”
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real live über grrrl (1997)
let me tell you about my girl.
she is… beautiful. she’s got curves in her hips and a smile on her
lips and a little round belly just like a real woman should. when
she smiles, she glows, like ten thousand fireflies caught in a womanshaped bottle, and when she smiles at me, oh… she just melts me
like an ice cube in a frying pan.
sometimes she’s quiet and shy and lowers her head when she’s
embarrassed. sometimes she’s in my face with an idea that burns
in her mind and flickers in her eyes. and sometimes she curls her
fingers into fists and raises them in the air and shakes them when
she’s frustrated and growls at the fucked up way the world is. and
sometimes she just puts her head on my shoulder and pats my hairy
belly and tells me she likes me a whole lot.
we can spend a 9-hour roadtrip just talking and talking about this
and that and the other thing and — boom — suddenly, we’re there.
and we can just sit at opposite ends of her bed, each with a book,
and not say a single word for hours… except with our toes… under
the covers.
the woman in my life has hairy legs. this may not mean a lot to
you, but to her it’s a statement. it’s a manifesto. she loves being a
woman, everything about being a woman: the blood, the softness,
the struggles, the sisterhood, and the space she has deep inside that
she allows to be filled only in the way she chooses. the woman in my
life loves her vagina. the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it, the
wild bush of pubic hair so thick you could grow tomatoes in it, and
you know what?
i feel the same way about it.
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the woman in my life is a complete person. she has no desire to be
a square peg for some dumb boy to force into his round hole, nor
does she want to be used as a bridge, or an umbrella, or a scented
handkerchief.
sometimes she lets me sleep on the good pillow, next to the wall,
just how i like it. sometimes she tells me to have a nice night and
walks herself to her door. and sometimes she taps on my window
and asks very politely through my screen if i know any warm places
she can sleep.
i’ve wanted to write a poem about her since the day i met her, but
i won’t. depriving the world of one more crappy love poem will
probably do my karma some good.
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potty is pee (1997)
my girlfriend said
when she was a kid
go potty
meant go pee.
i told her that was weird
because everybody knows
go potty means go poop.
she said, “nope, potty is pee.
poop is poop.”
i told her
maybe it was a family vocabulary thing
because i had never heard that before,
but she insisted that potty is pee
and said anyone who doesn’t think so
was lied to as a child,
because potty is pee
and that’s that.
i asked her,
“what about the phrase potty mouth?”
she said, “exactly.” i decided to drop it.
i called my friend david
and asked for his unbiased opinion.
i told him,
“my girlfriend is so silly…
she thinks potty is pee.
isn’t that weird?”
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david told me,
“but, potty is pee.”
i stared at the phone in disbelief
for a full minute,
then i told him,
“she got to you first, didn’t she?”
david was silent. i hung up on him.
my friend vandy
said the whole thing was silly
and just a matter of semantics
(whatever that means)
and said i should just drop it
before it gets out of hand.
i agreed,
and as i walked away,
vandy said under her breath,
“especially since you’re so wrong.”
so, i made a long distance phone call
to my mother in wichita, kansas,
and asked her, as nonchalantly as possible,
“so, mom, if i said to you
that i need to go potty,
what would that mean?”
she thought a moment,
then said,
“sounds like you need to take a shit.”
i told her, “thank goodness!
everybody here seems to think
it means go pee!”
she laughed and said,
“that’s funny, everybody out here thinks it means go pee, too!”
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silly shower song (1996)
there’s a waterlogged spider in my soapdish,
been there a week or two.
he’s puffy and pale in his watery jail,
and i think his spider body is starting to smail.
i had an agreement
with that fair spider:
just don’t get on my girlfriend
or crawl up inside her.
but curiousity got the best of him,
and he checked out the shower stall on a whim,
and he slipped and he slid and he fell
into the soapdish.
poor little spider.
sweet apple cider.
was gonna throw a curve ball,
but instead i threw a
slider.
oh dear spider,
you’re dead.
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map of your body (1998)
i stand in the shower
watching you
wash your hair,
watching
hot water cascade
down your breasts
in soapy rivulets
and arc in streams
from your nipples.
and i realize
i have touched
every part
of your body,
kissed
every curve,
tasted
every inch,
and still
i am fascinated
by the sight of you.
then i look into your eyes
as you catch me in the act
and smile back at me
like you know
exactly
what i’m thinking.
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1,000 secret things (1998)
i sing to thee
of a thousand secret things:
the soft patch of hair
between your breasts,
thin wisps of fuzz
just long enough
to tug
with my pressed lips;
how we fall asleep,
our bodies
spooned together,
my arm
curled around you,
your long fingers
keeping my open palm
nestled
over your heart;
the gentle rise of your hips;
the smell
of the back
of your neck;
how we rub our feet together
soft
as sleep overtakes us;
how your full mouth
grows small
when you’re mad;
how you kick your leg
when frustration
won’t let you sleep.
i can tell when you’re sick
just by tasting you.
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catching the bus (1998)
so, my girlfriend says to me, she says, “how’re you doing?”
and i say, “you know, when you’re walking to the bus stop, and
everything is going just fine, and a little breeze is blowing, and the sun
is out, and the sky is blue, and the birds are singing, and everything
seems just about right in your little world, but then you look up and
you see the bus you’re supposed to catch pull away from the curb,
and it’s the last bus of the day, so you haul ass trying to catch the
bus, and you’re waving your arms trying to attract the attention of
the bus driver, and your backpack is flopping all over the place, and
your lungs are burning, and there are those precious few moments
where you’re running and the bus is rolling at the very same speed,
and you both kinda hover there, and it could go either way, i mean,
the bus could suddenly slow down and stop and it would’ve been all
worth the effort, or it could remain just out of reach and you’ll watch
it drive away and disappear around the corner into the next block
as your legs give out and you jog to a stop and you end up standing
there in the middle of the street all hot and sweaty and out of breath
and pissed off that this beautiful day has caught you off guard? well,
i feel like that, like i’ve been walking through this beautiful day, and
suddenly i’ve looked up, and i’m at that slender second where i have
to decide what i’m going to do, whether i’m going to chase after
the bus that i’m almost surely going to miss and end up all hot and
sweaty and pissed off all over again, or maybe i should just say to hell
with it without a regret and start walking home with a little of my
self-respect intact.”
and i stop talking and look down at my thumb.
and she just sorta stares at me for a bit, then she clears her throat,
and then she says, “i meant, like, are you hungry? because i’m going
to the kitchen to get a sandwich. do you want anything?”
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and i look up at her for a moment, take a deep breath, look back down
at my thumb, and say, “do i want anything? well… no, i think i have
everything i need.” and i watch her walk away and disappear around
the corner into the kitchen.
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painfully white (1998)
i can’t compete with the black poets i love: maya angelou, etheridge
knight, amiri baraka, gwendolyn brooks, sapphire. i can’t. their
words are so raw so vibrant so alive with meaning and history and
pain and struggle and desire and music so much music so much
rhythm so much culture. like a thick tapestry of dark blues and bright
reds and deep blacks draped around their shoulders that defiantly
keeps them warm despite the weight. i can’t compete. my ancestors’
voices can’t conjure the sound of be-bop jazz and back porch blues,
dreadlocked rasta and sweet soul music — no — my ancestors’ voices
sneer: nigger, coon, porch monkey, blue gum, jiggaboo, nigger. and
that is not music to my ears. when my cousin, my flesh, says to
me, well, that’s what she gets for dating a nigger, it is not music
to my ears. when my aunt says to me, if a nigger ever gets elected
president, they’ll be shot dead the very next day. it is not music to
my ears. when my nephew jokes, why do black people smell? so
that blind people can hate them, too, it is not music to my ears. my
ancestors did not watch burning crosses from cracked windows with
wide eyes, i am afraid, but smug from behind white hoods. i rub this
blessed white skin of mine until it bleeds trying to find some colour
underneath some culture some base some strength some pride but
it is stained by blood i did not spill. and i hear that beautiful music —
the tribal rhythms of africa, the souful chicago blues and new orleans
jazz, the back-breaking gospel from the american south — and i am
saddened that my ancestors gave langston hughes so very much to
write about. and realize that, even as i write these words, i am riding
on the coattails of someone else’s pain.
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poetry widow (1998)
fuck poetry!
she said,
the smoking gun of her finger in my face.
fuck poetry!
you don’t write poetry for me anymore,
you write excuses.
oh, i’ve hurt your feelings again, here’s a poem.
oh, i’ve disrespected your body again, here’s a poem.
fuck poetry!
you’re not a poet,
you’re a snake-oil salesman.
you don’t have relationships,
you have anecdotes.
i’m not your girlfriend,
i’m your material.
you take every sweet emotion we’ve shared,
every intimate joy,
every secret,
and you twist them into laughter
at your stupid poetry slams.
that’s not poetry,
that’s robbery.
you rob our relationship of meaning
in front of audiences
who cheer you on.
i used to love your poetry.
i was so flattered
the first time
you wrote a poem about me.
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it was so sweet, all that talk…
curves in her hips and a smile on her lips
and a little round belly just like a real woman should
but now i see right through your schtick.
fuck poetry!
you don’t write poetry,
you write foreplay.
you write propaganda.
you prostitute your abilities
on self-centered conquests.
i’m not your muse —
your hunger for acceptance
your fucked up self-esteem —
that’s your muse.
fuck poetry!
as a matter of fact, fuck bukowski!
and fuck ginsberg, too!
fuck ferlinghetti and keruoac!
fuck snyder and burroughs and rexroth.
fuck sibilance and consonance
and assonance and alliteration!
fuck free verse and sestinas
and quatrains and limericks and haiku!
fuck iambic pentameter!
fuck moon, spoon, june!
fuck soulmate, partner, friend!
fuck lover!
fuck god! fuck jesus! fuck all his disciples!
nothing is holy!
nothing is holy!
nothing is holy!
nothing… in your poetry… is holy…
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fuck poetry!
i don’t need your goddamned poetry, boy,
i need a man!
a real man who doesn’t hide
behind his barnes & noble journal
and his word processor.
i need a man.
you gonna be that man?
you gonna be my man?
or is momma gonna have to go shopping?
you want to write poetry for me?
fine.
put down your pen
and love me a poem.
respect me a poem.
listen:
i need you
to stop trying to find
the right words
and just
be
Poetry.
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ode to a plaster casting (1998)
it doesn’t do justice to her hands.
hers have long narrow palms,
slender fingers,
graceful fingers,
tipped with careful nails
so perfectly smooth,
so pale,
as to almost be
transparent.
hers are hands to be cupped
with both of mine and
warmed with mine
then brought to my lips
and kissed.
hers are gentle backscratching hands,
crafty short story hands,
poetry hands.
not chalky hands,
not cold dusty hands
wrapped around an apple
held between alabaster breasts
like eve.
she was motionless
for 45 minutes
covered in cool plaster-of-paris
smiling
the entire time
so she could smile at me
from my wall
when she was gone.
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wilson road (1998)
oatmeal.
that’s what i remember.
my young mother
stirring oatmeal
in the early morning dark,
scraping the sides of the saucepan
with a wooden spoon.
that meant it was time
to wake my sister up
and get ready,
put on our bunny slippers
and pile pillows and blankets
into the back of the gto —
me and my sleepy kid sister —
so my mom
could drive my dad
to the railroad.
she was 22.
i was 4.
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lydia and the duck (1997)
so, this duck waddles into the bar,
flaps up to the stool next to me,
and he quacks:
hey there twinkle tits. i’m zeus. what’s your sign?
i knock back a slug of my warm boilermaker,
take a gander of his beak to his wings and back again,
and i say:
neon, and right now it’s flashing no vacancy.
he arches a feathery eyebrow,
strikes a match on the bottom of his webbed foot,
stokes a stubby lucky strike, then he quacks:
look, hula-hoop hips, I ain’t got all day for this witty reparté.
i’m a man with needs, and you got what I need.
capisce?
normally, see,
i woulda told this bird brain
to fly south for the winter,
but this was 2 a.m. on a saturday night
after $18.50 for shots of early times
chased by pints pabst blue ribbon,
and there’s only so much freebird
you can take from that goddamned jukebox.
so, what the hell…
i took the duck home and fucked him,
then i cut his throat and plucked him,
and i had myself a mighty fine duck soup.
zeus my ass… arrogant prick…
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dreams (1998)
i had a strange dream the other night.
i dreamt i went on a fishing trip
with marvin gaye,
otis redding,
percy sledge,
and michael bolton.
after about five minutes,
michael bolton disappeared.
i never figured out what happened to him,
but i do remember otis chuckling to himself
every time he chopped up the bait.
i had a strange dream the other night.
i dreamt i went on a fishing trip
with miles davis,
john coltrane,
charlie parker,
and kenny g.
the last thing i remember before waking up
is miles saying to ‘trane and bird,
“well, lookie there, fellas… we’re almost outta worms.”
and they turned and smiled at kenny g
as miles reached into his tackle box for his fillet knife.
i had a strange dream the other night.
i dreamt i went on a fishing trip
with charles manson,
ted bundy,
jeffrey dahmer,
and george w. bush.
they seemed to get along just fine…
except jeffrey kept eating the bait.
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immortalized in celluloid (1998)
i want a soundtrack to play at important parts of my life so i’ll know
they’re important. if i hold someone’s hand and the gentle chords
of a strummed guitar swell into a sweet symphony of violins and
cellos, i’ll know it’s true love. if weird scary music plays as i walk into
my dark and lonely apartment… alone… i’ll know it’s time to find
a new apartment. if there is no music, i’ll know what is happening
is not very important; post offices are places with no soundtrack
whatsoever… unless you’re very unlucky.
i want to run down the street as fast as i can… in slow-mo… with
buildings exploding and plate glass windows shattering and cars
crashing and women and children screaming and bullets ricochetting
and sirens blaring and lots of mayhem and destruction… then… i
want everything… back to normal. and no one gets hurt. and no
one dies. it just looks really freakin’ cool.
i want people to hear my deep meaningful thoughts in a whispery
voice-over when i’m thinking deep meaningful thoughts so i won’t
have to actually tell them what’s on my mind, they’ll just know.
when i want someone to know i am being sincere, i want my face to
completely fill that person’s vision so they can see… in my eyes…
how very sincere i am.
i want to fast forward through the parts of my life i don’t like, and
when the good parts come, i want to hit pause.
even better… i want to do something over and over and over again
until i get it right, and i want the cutting room floor to be littered with
break-ups and arguments and embarrassments and speeding tickets
and crying jags and sicknesses and vomiting, leaving only first kisses,
paydays, sunsets, awards ceremonies, graduations, promotions, and
lots of passionate lovemaking.
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i want a talented team of writers to script everything i say so i always
say exactly what i’m supposed to say at exactly the right moment. i
want all my dialogue to be lifted from the texts of best-sellers and
hit broadway plays. i want all my love scenes choreographed and
enhanced by a host of expert lighting technicians and makeup artists
who can erase every imperfection, focusing all attention on my golden
brown eyes… my full lower lip… my straight white teeth…
music, of course, will be playing during these times — regina spektor,
joanna newsom, ani difranco — music that enhances the love i feel
inside for this person whose inner voice i’ll be able to hear as we
make soft focus love.
i want my life to be lightweight and romantic and crowd-pleasing.
i want all the loose ends tied up by last ten minutes. i want my
performance to appear effortless.
i want a happy ending.
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holiest of holies (1998)
I don’t like you very much anymore you constant companion foil nag
I find excuses to avoid you my closet needs organizing my bookshelf
needs alphabetizing my bicycle needs riding anything to avoid the
mirror
we were so close back then back when I had nothing but you
i kept you dog-eared in my hip pocket of my blue dungarees and
logged our adventures crawling through vacant lot underbrush on
our bellies to avoid snipers spiriting urgent messages over enemy
lines or love letters to that red-haired girl who played the cello and
wore thick sweaters and never formed her mouth around my name
not even once
you held my secret plans treasure maps codes clues confessions
you got me through long nights — eternal nights — soaked by tears
chewed by dogs creased and folded spindled and mutilated in an
endless series of backpacks. your comrades followed one by one
discarded after tours of duty and sent home to the bottom of the
closet in a wobbly old sneaker box bound with rubberbands and
marked with a 9-year-old’s hand sanctum sanctorum keep out!
there was a time when i would’ve rushed into a burning house for you
now i’m fucking frustrated by your constant berating your incessant
catcalling your derision your judgement your failure to motivate me
to fill you again with newborn words and carefully-crafted turn of
phrase, unwritten symphonies of wit and wonder.
now
i just want you
to leave me alone.
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chain record store blues (1998)
i worked at a chain record store over the holiday season and the
worst thing about it wasn’t the customers or the shitty hours or the
shitty wages or the frenzied display of rampant consumerism posing
as some quasi-religious celebration nor was it the snot-nosed kids
working there who referred to me as pops because my hair’s not
blue and my eyebrow doesn’t have 47 piercings and oh fuck me
i’m not cool i’m not def i’m not fresh i’m not phat i’m not fly i’m
not old school i’m not punk rock! and why? well, i’ll tell you why!
because i dared to buy the latest paul simon album on my employee
discount, ooooooooh! no, the worst thing about it was the music,
man, having to listen to fucking christmas music every fucking day
between halloween and new year’s, and oh my god did i wanna roast
nat king cole’s nuts over an open fire!
anyway, it’s the afternoon of christmas eve, and my chain record store
is packed with last minute shoppers, and i’m on the edge, man, after
not having had a break in five hours, and my poor balls are swollen
with piss, and we’re running full blast with all five registers ringing
up long lines of idiots, and each one of them has got a handful of
screaming kids yelling “i want britney spears!” and “i want justin
beiber!” and “no, mom, eminem doesn’t have any cussing on it, i
promise, just buy it for me, you fucking whore!”
and in the middle of all this christmas joy comes this wide-eyed waif
of a girl in a red babydoll shirt and baggy skater pants with seven
silver hoops in one ear and a pierced lip and a pierced tongue and
three nose piercings and a pierced belly button and the star wars
rebel alliance symbol tattooed on her neck, and she wafts up to my
cash register and delicately places a brand new shiny copy of christina
aguilera’s latest cd on my counter and says, “hi, i’m nikkii with two
k’s and three i’s, how are you?” and i say, “well, trish, i’ll tell you, i
was just thinking about having my foreskin reattached because no
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one ever asked me if i wanted half my three-day-old penis chopped
up for no goddamned good reason, and even though it’s only a little
square of blackened leather in a jar of formaldehyde on my shelf at
home, i am gonna sew that fucker back on! and then i’m gonna take
a razor and slice my penis in half from the mushroom cap all the way
down to the base, and then i’m gonna slice it in fourths, and then
i’m gonna pierce the tip of each piece and attach them with silver
chains to my ass so my cock will blossom like a flower, and then
i’ll really be punk rock, don’t you think that would be punk rock?
and i’m not gonna stop there, no! i’m gonna take body modification
to a new level, trish! i’m gonna have the skin of my face removed
and reattached to my ass so whenever i take a shit it looks like i’m
smoking a cigar! haha!” and i jump up on the counter and kick the
avril lavigne display and send cds raining down onto the heads of
the frightened shoppers, and then i unzip my pants and unleash
my four-inch cock, and i let loose an arching yellow fountain just as
the mormon tabernacle choir sings it’s beginning to look a lot like
christmas, and i scream “there is no god! there is no jesus! there’s
only me, and i’m sending all you capitalist dogs to hell!”
then nikkii with two k’s and three i’s says, “do you take checks?” and
all of a sudden i’m back at my register behind the counter just staring
at this skater chick, so i say, “you know, skater chick, that christina
aguilera cd sucks except for that one song on the radio,” and she
says, “well, it doesn’t matter, it’s only for my brother, and he’s lucky
he’s even getting this, so just fucking ring me up!” so i fucking ring
her up and say, “have a very merry christmas, nikkii. next?”
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wormboy (1998)
so, i’m fingerfucking (insert name of prominent boy in the audience
who deserves to be mocked), and he’s really getting into it, and
he’s moaning and groaning and grinding, and my middle finger is
stretched just as deeply inside him as it can go, so far i wanna call
him “elliot… (e.t. voice with middle finger extended).” soon my fist
is shoved so far up his ass i feel like jim henson, “hi ho, kermit the
frog here!” and something suddenly occurs to me, so i say to him,
i say, “baby, you know what?” and he says, “(moan),” and i say, “if
you were in some horrible farming accident and got both your arms
and both your legs chopped off, i’d still love you. you’d be my little
worm boy. i’d just make a special backpack so we could go on long
walks together, and you could just lean your head on my shoulders
and give little chin hugs, and when we got married i’d just put your
ring on a silver chain so you could wear it around your neck. sure,
people would stare, but fuck ‘em. i’d look ‘em straight in the eye
and say, ‘hey, he might only be a torso, but he’s my torso, and i love
him from the top of her head to…’ well, you know what i’m talking
about. to be honest, you’d be the perfect boy. and if you ever gave
me grief, i’d just lie you on the ground and tickle you until you shit
all over yourself. and if you really pissed me off, i’d just rent boxing
helena for the 10th time to show you how good you’ve really got it.
sleeping with you would be a little weird, though, because half the
time you’d end up under the covers at the foot of the bed with the
socks i’d kicked off during the night with the cat gnawing at your ear.
and when we’d go into the mall bookstore, i’d have to check you and
the backpack behind the counter. but, think of all the money you’d
save on clothes… all you’d have to buy is extra large athletic socks
and stretch them up over your head like a terry cloth turtleneck.
of course, we’d have to be really careful about the dog. that’s a big
dog, and you’ve seen how horny he gets around the furniture.” and
by this time, my boy, who i’m still fisting, has stopped moving and
breathing hard and is just looking at me with this cute little pissed
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off look he gets when i say something stupid, so i go, “what?” and he
goes, “to be honest, big poppa, if you lost even your middle finger
in a freak farming accident, i’d dump you so goddamned fast your
head would spin, and i’m not talking like spin once or twice, but
you’d have to get a job at the barnum and bailey sideshow as billy
the spinning head wonder boy, so shut your goddamn cake hole and
fuck me right because i’ve got to be at work in 25 minutes!” so, i say,
“okay.”
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hungry poet, will write for food (1998)
i saw my poet friend john
the other day sitting in the lobby
of the butte county social welfare office.
he smiled,
shrugged his shoulders with palms turned
to the smoke-stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling,
and said, “this world is unkind to us poets.”
i scratched my ear
with the rolled up tip
of my appointment slip —
#B79 — and couldn’t help but agree.
a few days later
i was back
filling out more forms
and checking more boxes
and saw my african dancer slash poet friend holly
sitting in a dirty molded plastic chair
with an appointment slip in her hand.
she looked up from her journal and said,
“my job at the bookstore doesn’t pay enough.
i need to get my teeth cleaned.
i need a checkup.
i need to buy some cat food.”
poetry has a way
of keeping us all in need.
us poets.
us dreamers.
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steeple stabbed and hell bound (1999)
he’s back.
his jet black sedan
prowls a darkened highway
cobblestoned
with the blackened husks
of this victims’ skulls.
his engine’s roar
is the plaintive wail
of a thousand howling wolves
and the sticky black hurricane
of furious bat wings.
his steely grip
locked around a steering wheel
fashioned of arthritic knucklebones
from a thousand suicides.
his black-clad thumb and trigger finger
pinch
a swollen black stogie
wrapped with crackling baby skin
and stuffed with the eyebrows
of a thousand strangled children.
crucifixes and swastikas
of brittle bone and twisted hair
rattle from his rearview
to the rhythm
of cackling laughter.
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his headlights
cut the night
like a knife
through a black velvet dress.
he knows
where i live,
knows
i’m alone,
knows
i slammed the phone
on you
last night.
and now he’s coming for me
in a cloud of black crows and locusts
and bitter black wind.
he’s coming for me,
and i close my eyes
and wait.
107
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..
.
.
..
.
her smile, like knives (1999)
thin shivers of lip
turned down
slightly
at the corners,
even her smiles
hid something.
that small slit of a mouth,
that cut,
barely covered
the bright
white
points
of her teeth.
her sharpened smile
could cut glass,
could lash out,
could wound
without even trying,
without even meaning to.
a smile like prison gates
ripe with razor wire,
like crumbling cement walls
crowned with shards of glass.
it was an ex-girlfriend smile,
a smile i wasn’t on speaking terms with anymore.
i could never kiss a mouth like that.
it would hurt to touch her lips,
even with my fingertips.
108
N
.
incantation 1: the odyssey (1999)
…and i look
into the 17-year-old eyes
of my father
in that boot camp snapshot
and see…
the son of a son of a sailor’s son
four generations
of escaping to sea
fleeing backwoods and boondocks
for shipping lanes and greasy docks
and endless ocean blues.
goodbye godebowl, oklahoma!
go to hell bakersfield, california!
eat shit shamrock, texas!
fuck you, wichita, kansas!
four generations
of kicking the dust
of our shitty little towns
from our boots,
of setting out on our own
still wet behind the ears
and working our way
across the sea
to find ourselves.
four generations
of telling our fathers
to kiss our asses,
109
G
.
..
.
.
..
of turning our backs on home
and never looking back,
of turning our hearts
into bitter black holes
and facing the void
at sea.
and returning
a little taller,
a little skinnier,
to replace the fractured homes
that spawned us
with wives and houses and mortgages and
bills and dreams upon dreams upon dreams and
sons.
…and i look
into my 17-year-old eyes
in that boot camp snapshot
and see…
we have never left home,
never severed the umbilical cord
that strangled us all,
never freed ourselves
from becoming exactly what we despised.
all of us turning
in ever-shrinking circles
yearning
for a home
we’ve never had.
110
S
. .. .
incantation 2: the home front (1999)
to die brilliantly
was always the goal,
to tear at our school clothes
upon impact
of a well-aimed dirt clod
and tumble screaming and gurgling
from freshly erected mountains
of dark, moist earth
in a tangle
of scuffed hi-tops
and bowl cut hair,
to crumble
in a heap
with a weak medic…
spilling from our lips,
to heave a trembling sigh
and die
with our eyes half open
and our hands clutching
an invisible smoking carbine.
we were a motley crew of redneck kids
battling hordes of the enemy
in the shadow of skeleton houses
at the outskirts of town,
crawling on our bellies
in the water pipe trenches
of soon-to-be strip malls and
convenience stores and
rows upon rows
of cloned tract houses.
111
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. .. . .
every saturday we met
while our parents watched family shows
on the teevee,
met in the field
cleared of trees and paved
with streets named oak and birch,
met by the scuffed yellow tractors and
earth movers and
dump trucks
(tanks & jeeps & troop transports)
left by workmen over the weekend.
we
peppered our speech
with grizzled epithets
worthy
of combat
and bristling with battle-hardened authenticity:
stop crying and fight like a man!
get off your ass and fight like a man!
stop crying before i give you a reason to cry! be a man!
i remember
the last time
we played war.
john p.
crouched behind
a thick tangle of tumbleweeds
and hefted a fist-sized clod
embedded with concrete and weeds —
i heard it sizzle
as it missed my ear
by inches —
112
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. .. . .
and nailed bo
right
between
the eyes.
bo,
who was always the point man
leading us into the thickest of battles,
who always died the most magnificent deaths,
who spewed paint-stripping obscenities
strange and venomous and wondrous to our ears,
whose body arced like a dying gull
through the air to collapse with a huff
onto the trampled earth
clutching severed limbs
and sucking chest wounds
and convulsing
with the most convincing
of death throes.
bo just stood there,
stunned
by the chunk of rock
embedded in his forehead,
and let a slender thread of red
carve a trail
through the dirt
of his nose.
we tensed,
waiting for the inevitable torrent
of curses that would become catchphrases
in the battles to come.
we watched
one bulbous drop
of real live blood
113
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. .. .
.
dangle from the curve
of his nostril
and splash on the laces
of his dirty white tennies.
he glared at john p.,
then gary,
then mookie,
then me,
then tore the concrete from his head
and threw it with all his might
into the ground.
he mounted his bmx bike
and peddled
away.
i’ll give you a reason to cry.
the next saturday
it was just me and
gary’s kid sister grace
swinging our legs
from the attic
of our favourite skeleton house
and talking in hushed tones
about the end
of summer.
114
I
. .. .
incantation 3: the sweet mysteries
of hot peach cobbler (1999)
1.
12 years old,
turning tricks in okie truck stops,
my grandma:
1938.
she’d do anything
to get out of that dusty oklahoma town,
anything,
to fade into the western sunset
to pick peaches penny a pound
in the golden state:
in lamont,
in arvin,
in wasco,
in shafter.
she’d lie,
tell them she was 16.
she’d lie,
tell them she loved them.
lie
on her back
in the dirty rags and boxes
of their pickup trucks,
this pale slip of a blue-eyed farm girl.
easy money from a lonely man
600 miles from his home.
his wife.
his 12-year-old daughter.
115
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.
. .. .
.
and their hot breath stank
of bathtub gin
and hand-rolled cigarettes,
and their rough stubble
tore at her skin
like a father’s belt,
and she held them all
tightly
and dreamed of palm trees
and fields and fields
of peach trees
ripe for the plucking.
2.
i watch my grandmother’s hands
blurred by constant motion
and the gravity of age.
she slips the just-sharpened knife
into the soft flesh
of her backyard peaches
and guides
the edge
along the unseen stone,
cracks open the virgin fruit
with a soft, wet ripping of ripe flesh
then peels the thin skin
with flicks of her thumb
against the blade.
she does this for an hour,
her hands pink and sticky with juice,
while i stir cinnamon and nutmeg
into boiling sugar syrup
and roll flour and salt and ice water
into dough.
116
S
. .. .
.
later
we spoon the warm golden crisp
and golden bulbs of sweetness
into bowls
of cold milk —
pure childhood —
and she nods her head
as i smile the same grateful grandkid smile
i’ve had for years.
i do most of the work
when my grandmother makes
peach cobbler these days,
but she insists
on cutting her own peaches.
117
T
. .. .
.
leaving las vegas (1999)
i exist
in a forest of chain stores and pavement,
of billboard whores and sacraments of
plastic coins and dice meant
to distract the masses from their
dreary daily routines
as wobbly cogs in the great white machine.
i exist in an x-rated cacophony of pre-packaged destiny,
of come-hither eyes from a thousand blinding signs,
of cocktail waitresses bound in tight poly plumage
and gagged by patriarchy gone mad mad mad,
of sex-store dollar booths satiating salivating sociopaths
with eye candy debutantes and
gaily coloured tissue boxes while
minimum wage jizz moppers wait
to sop up their discarded sickness,
of oxygen mask octogenarians chain-smoking lucky strikes
and shuffling across casino carpets
clutching change cups to skinny chests
like drowning men with life preservers,
of shipwrecked showgirls and their silicon come-ons
shaking their money maker
for drooling fools and their viagra-choked tools
who think this must surely be the american dream…
i exist but i do not live
for this life is not for me
not this quagmire of consumerism
not this miasma of materialism
not this bloated corpse of sexism
this wretched hive of scum and villainy.
118
H
. .. .
.
i see with my naked eye
fields of hunched shoulders pressed
against huge banks of slots,
rocking unconsciously back and forth
and mumbling,
stuffing quarters into slots and
coaxing their dreams to life
at the amazing technicolour wailing wall.
i exist
as a shadow cast
on a casino wall
watching,
sick to my soul,
and yearning to leave this shopping mall town
and its chopping block people
and escape.
but to where?
to a corporate culture that trades billions of pink chinese lungs
for trillions of nicotine tainted coffin-nails
and the bright, white image of the marlboro man
called progress?
to a soft drink youth movement of mass-marketed rebellion
that teaches our children to pay for their advertising
and display corporate logos proudly across their pubescent chests
and define themselves
not by their actions
but by their fashions?
to a sound-bite government of photo op polemics
smiling for the camera and regurgitating
the latest cross-referenced trends and poll statistics
119
E
. .. .
.
as they kiss white babies
and bomb brown babies
over there
somewhere?
to a society
where the term work ethic
means working your life away
for ethics-free companies
and religion means
you’ll be rewarded for your sad lonely life
after you die
bitter
burnt
heartbroken
and alone?
there is no escape…
there is no leaving las vegas…
every town in america is las vegas
and we are all hopeless gamblers
on an extended losing streak
just rolling those dice
as the skyscrapers come tumbling down around us.
120
N
. .. . .
.
poem for a friend (1999)
i imagine myself
with you, my friend,
on childhood street corners
sweating
in the summertime sun,
sucking on frozen kool aid in a dixie cup
in the curbside shade
of a broken down pickup truck.
i imagine us
locking and popping
to old school hip hop
like boogaloo shrimp,
trying to pimp the candy store hotties
with our portable cardboard dance floors.
we’d spin our gangly bodies
into b-boy oblivion,
boombox blastin’ staccato break beats
while melle mel bellowed,
don’t push me ‘cuz i’m close to the edge…*
and i’d be right there with you, man,
frontin’ with some white kid cabbage patch
running man mime shit
while we waited for the inevitable bidding war for our music.
sucker mc’s could not fade us
‘cuz we was lyrical assassinators,
cold cut commentators,
gesticulating wildly
over plates of your great aunt’s
red beans and green tomatoes,
collard greens and mashed potatoes.
121
I
. .. . .
.
and i’m telling my friend about this dope poem
i’m writing about him and me when we was kids,
and i look to him for that glowing smile of recognition,
expecting imagined stories to fall from his tongue like ripe plums,
populated with characters named skillethead and june bug,
prefacing everything with, “man, remember that one time?”
and i’d be like, “man, that shit was off the hook!”
but my friend doesn’t smile.
he just clucks his tongue
and says:
i appreciate the enthusiasm
with which you embrace
what you think
is my culture,
but i have news for you, my friend…
my mother wasn’t weezie jefferson,
and my father wasn’t fred sanford,
and i didn’t spend my childhood
on street corners
with fat albert and the cosby kids.
i don’t appreciate
your re-writing of my childhood
so you can pretend
you had a black friend.
i’ve lost track
of the white friends
who think negro is an esoteric culture
with secret handshakes and code words
you can just pick up through osmosis,
through the beastie boys and blaxploitation flicks.
it’s cool you know so much
122
F
. .. .
. .
about langston hughes and
etheridge knight and
maya angelou
and it’s cool you know so much
about miles davis and
john coltrane and
thelonious monk…
but that does not mean
you know shit
about me.
now why don’t you go write a poem about that?
* lyrics from “the message” by grandmaster flash and the furious five
123
Y
. .. .
. .
fratboy
or he loves his girlfriend’s thesaurus (1999)
baby,
listen to me.
i like you…
a lot.
as a matter of fact,
i admire you.
i adore you.
i am gratified by,
keen on,
partial to,
pleased by,
sweet on,
and delight in,
and derive pleasure from
you.
i care for you.
i cherish you.
baby, i dig you!
i fancy you.
i get a kick out of you.
i go for you.
i hanker for you.
i hunger for you.
i yearn for you.
i prize you,
revel in you,
savor you,
relish,
deify,
glorify,
idolize and treasure you.
124
O
. .. .
.
i worship the ground you walk on,
sing praise to the phone you talk on,
shout hosannas to the blackboard you chalk on,
exalt the grout you caulk on,
because you’re a starring role, not a walk on.
i am captivated and fascinated by you,
enraptured and enchanted by you.
i care for you.
i delight in you.
i hold you dear.
i hold you high.
i put you on a pedestal.
baby,
i think the world of you,
would do anything for you,
would walk 500 miles for you,
then would walk 500 more for you,
just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles for you.*
baby,
i! love!
you!
now,
come on over here…
that’s right.
you know i love you, baby.
don’t you, baby?
why don’t you come on over here
and let’s get a little somethin’ somethin’ going on.
you know what i’m saying,
let’s try a little tenderness.
let’s get naked.
let’s breed, baby, let’s mate.
125
U
.
. .. .
.
.
i’m talking about having relations,
excitations,
stimulation,
oh look! erection!
lubrication!
penetration!
fornication!
copulation!
conjugation!
orgasmatration!
ejaculation!
jubilation!
i’m talking about smokin’ rubber hammer head shark
wide-bore piston jack rabbit love, baby!
i wanna knock boots with you,
square the circle with you,
become the beast with two backs,
plow the fields of love with the scrotum tractor,
get down, get funky, and get back up and do it again with you!
let’s get nasty, baby! let’s get stinky, baby!
let’s get to know each other in the biblical way, baby!
let’s practice making a baby, baby!
oh! quit that grinnin’ and drop that linen and
fuck me ‘till the cows come home, baby!
what? where you going?
wait a minute… what’s wrong? baby, what’d i say? come on back,
baby, it’s all good, we can… i don’t know…
cuddle, caress, touch, fondle…
bitch!
e-mail me?
* lyrics from “500 miles” from the proclaimers
126
L
. .. .
.
.
¡the wussyboy manifesto! (1999)
my name is big poppa e,
and i am a wussyboy!
it’s taken me a long time to admit it…
i remember shouting in high school:
no, dad, i’m not gay!
i’m just… sensitive.
i tried to like hot rods and jet planes
and football and budweiser poster girls,
but i never got the hang of it, dad!
i don’t know what’s wrong with me…
then, i saw him,
there on the silver screen,
bigger than life and unafraid
of earrings and hair dye
and rejoicing in the music
of the cure and morrissey and
siouxsie and the banshees,
talking loud and walking proud
my wussyboy icon:
duckie in pretty in pink.
and i realized i wasn’t alone.
and now i look around
and see a whole new school of wussyboys
living large and proud of who they are:
jake gyllenhall in donnie darko, wussyboy!
tobie mcguire as peter parker in spiderman, wussyboy!
127
I
. .. .
..
and lord god king
of the wussyboy movement:
elijah wood as frodo baggins in the lord of the rings, wussyboy!
unafraid to prove to all of middle earth
that two wussy hobbits
can take the dark lord down!
now i am no longer ashamed
of my wussiness, hell no,
i’m empowered by it!
when i’m at a stoplight and
some redneck testosterone methamphetamine
jock fratboy asshole dumb fuck
pulls up beside me
blasting his trans am’s stereo
with power chord anthems
to big tits and date rape,
i no longer avoid his eyesight! hell no!
i just crank all 12 watts of my car stereo
and i rock out right into his face:
i am human and i need to be loved
just like everybody else does! *
i am wussyboy, hear me roar!
(meow!)
bar fight? pshaw!
you think you can take me, huh?
just because i like poetry
better than sports illustrated?
well, allow me to caution you,
for i’m not the average every day
run-of-the-mill wussyboy you
beat up in high school, punk,
i am wuss core!
128
K
. .. . .
..
don’t make me get renaissance
on your ass because i will
write a poem about you!
a poem that tears your psyche limb from limb,
that exposes your selfish insecurities,
that will wound you deeper and more severely
than knives and chains and gats and baseball bats
could ever hope to do.
you may see 65 inches of wussyboy
standing in front of you,
but my steel-toed soul is
ten foot tall and bullet proof!
bring the pain, punk,
beat the shit out of me!
show everybody in this bar
what a real man can do
to a smack-talking wussyboy like me!
but you’d better remember
my bruises will fade
my cuts will heal,
my scars will shrink and disappear,
but my poem
about the pitiful, small, helpless
cock man oppressor you really are
will last
forever!
* lyrics from “how soon is now?” by the smiths
129
E
. .. . .
..
deathwish (1999)
we are all going to die someday.
and we all have to deal with this fact our own way.
some people are new-agey about their deaths, requesting that their
bodies be burned in a big tibetan ceremony until their heads burst
open and release their spirits skyward. then, a small gathering of
friends can mix their ashes with potting soil and have a tree-planting
shindig where everyone wears party hats and tells dirty stories and
feels a whole lot better afterwards knowing their fallen comrade’s
essence will course through the veins of a living tree.
well, that scenario is all fine and good, but i see a slightly different
scenario for my death.
call me grandiose, but when i die, i want world markets to collapse,
tectonic plates to shift, volcanos to erupt, hurricanes to blow, jet
planes packed with passengers to plummet from the sky, endangered
species to fall dead, mountains to crumble, and the entire bush clan
to spontaneously combust the moment i breathe my last breath.
i want virgins sacrificed by the bus load and lots of weeping and
moaning and gnashing of teeth when i die. i want the thousand years
following my death to be known as the millennium of mourning.
i want the year i was born changed to the year things got cool.
i want my last words to contain the cure for aids, cancer, heart
disease, bad breath and the common cold… and the exact location
of jimmy hoffa’s body. i want my crappy hometown of bakersfield,
california, consumed by a holy fire storm and anyone looking at it to
be turned into a pillar of salt.
130
D
. .. .
.. .
i want everyone who believes in god to tear at their eyes and swan
dive off skyscrapers, and i want everyone who doesn’t believe in god
to make me their deity. i want the members of christian youth groups
to wear little motivational bracelets that say WWBPED and when they
look at those bracelets in times of moral dilemma, i want it to give
them the motivation to launch tri-state crime sprees and kill-crazy
rampages because that’s exactly what big poppa e would do.
i want hundreds of thousands of women to claim i was the father of
their love children… because i was the father of their love children!
i want every person on this entire planet to simultaneously change
their facebook status to oh shit big poppa e died.
i want the vast majority of the earth’s population to be so overwhelmed
with sadness and loss that billions commit suicide en masse, and
i want those pussies left behind to become raging alcoholics who
masturbate constantly and without joy.
i want the oceans to dry up and every crop to turn brown and every
puppy to get hit by a car and every voice raised in one colossal global
wail. i want obi-wan kenobi to pause, put his fingertips to his temples,
stagger and say, i just felt a terrible disturbance in the force, as if
millions of voices cried out, then were suddenly silenced.
i want reality to come to a screeching halt when i die, and the only
way you’re gonna prevent the apocalypse from dancing down main
street in a tight red dress is by protecting me like the freakin’ crown
jewels because if anything happens to me, man, i am taking every
one of you with me!
131
S
. .. .
.. .
crushworthy (1999)
i want someone
to have a crush on me
for a change.
to notice
when i don’t come to class
and wonder if i’m okay.
to get nervous
when i enter the cafe,
to fumble
with her papers
and books,
to pick at her clothing
and check her reflection
in salt shakers and napkin holders.
to catch her breath
when she sees me from across campus,
tug on her best friend’s collar,
and point with her eyes,
and whisper loudly,
there he is…
big poppa e!
to run around the block
as quickly —
and nonchalantly —
as she can
just to walk past me.
make eye contact.
and smile.
132
O
. .. .
..
.
to look into my big brown eyes
such long lashes!
from across the room
and think, yesss…
to look at my full kissing lips
and think, oh yesss…
to hear my voice
and imagine
how her name
would sound
if i said it
if i whispered it
if i… (shivering breath)
oh yesss…
i want someone
to make up nicknames for me,
to talk about me in code:
i saw backpack boy today
in the library
in the romantic lit. section!
i saw steel-toed boots boy
talking to some girl
in the bookstore today!
i want someone
to go straight home every night
and check her answering machine
just in case
just in case
and check the phone cord
and check the battery
and check the tape
and make sure the goddamned blinking light
isn’t burned out
just in case i called
133
M
. .. .
..
.
i want someone to say,
you’re wrong about him,
because you don’t know him
the way i know him!
because she can just tell
i’m a good person,
must be
a good person,
gotta be
a good person
because i write poetry about my grandma and my cats,
and because she likes me so much
for some reason,
some unexplainable psychic supernatural reaction
to me.
me.
i want someone
to mark her calendar
he talked to me today.
to wonder
what i would smell like
after a long warm sleep
under a down comforter.
to close her eyes
and picture
what our kids would look like.
to write silly wretched wonderful
poetry
about me
for a change.
134
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. .. .
..
.
moonlight through mini-blinds (1999)
whenever i need proof
of god’s existence,
i need only
run my open palm
along your spine,
trace the small of your back,
and cradle
the half moons of your behind.
god must
be an artist
to have crafted
such exquisite angles,
such curves,
such warm, smooth, fine hairs.
soft,
like rain.
135
O
. .. . .
..
.
there’s a hole in my heart
in the shape of her smile
that will never be filled (2000)
i will never forget
the last sentence
of the article in the newspaper
the next day:
the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic.
it rattled our minds
as we ran our fingers
across the gouges
in the pavement,
our eyes squinting
through a thousand glaring pinpricks
from windshield fragments,
searching
for lucky pennies
scattered —
hundreds of them —
from her broken penny jar.
the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic.
that sentence robbed us of closure.
we weren’t allowed to marvel
at the mortician’s handiwork:
she looks like she’s asleep.
we couldn’t cup
her lifeless hand —
powdered
and coloured
with an artist’s touch —
136
N
. .. . .
..
.
and confirm
that it was true
that it actually really
had happened.
no, the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic,
and they wouldn’t even run photos because it’s a family newspaper,
and you can’t run photos like that in a family newspaper.
we had to just
agree,
nod our heads in unison
and agree that she was gone
and would never be back,
this precious flower
plucked
in mid-blossom.
and we held each other
and remembered her
as we had last seen her,
pink and alive and smiling
that big thumbs up smile.
and we were warmed by the knowledge
that if anyone could’ve changed the world
she could’ve.
she would’ve
had she only been given the chance.
but now…
we’ll always feel like she’s out there
somewhere
always at the corner of our eyes
in the summer sea of spaghetti straps and backpacks
137
E
. .. .
.. .
.
tan lines and smiles
she’ll be there,
and we’ll catch our breath,
turn,
and see nothing.
i think about that last sentence every time i drive,
it echoes in my brain as i near the spot on the four-lane highway
where she crossed the median and died.
i picture the time of day: around 11 a.m.
the sun was out. the sky was blue. there was no rain.
she was driving alone. she was probably smoking.
she was listening to james taylor’s greatest hits.
we know this because the tow crew
pried that cd from what was left of her stereo.
and i grip my wheel white-knuckled as i near the spot.
and i can’t help counting down
the time she had left.
(and she didn’t even know it was coming.)
it was a bright sunny day and she was singing…
i’ve seen fire and i’ve seen rain
20 seconds
i’ve seen sunny days that i thought would never end
10 seconds
i’ve seen lonely times when i could not find a friend
5 seconds
but i always thought i’d see you, baby, one more time again…*
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and just like that we are past it,
and the scars in the pavement are left behind.
and just like that we are past it ,
and the white cross we left in the grass
on the embankment is left behind.
and just like that we are past it ,
and the lucky pennies,
and the photos,
and the little good luck tokens,
and the letters,
and the constellations of shattered windshield
are left behind.
just like she
was left behind.
the headline should not have read:
chico state university student killed in car crash.
no, the headline should’ve shouted
in capitol letters across the front page:
JENNIFER LYNN O’HARE KICKED SO MUCH ASS!
she was a poetess, a priestess, a goddess, a feminist, a fighter,
a lover, a laugher, a teller of truths, a spinner of midnight balcony
tales shrouded in heinekin and camels.
she could break down brian johnson’s male chauvinist arguments
with the precision of a surgeon, hurling words like patriarchal and
misogyny and hegemony in a rapid fire distillation of everything
she had learned in women’s studies classes. we almost felt sorry for
brian as she leaned towards him on the edge of her stool pointing
with the glowing cherry of a lit cigarette.
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she was a god-awful drummer, but a very enthusiastic drummer, a
deep and passionate kisser, a liver of life, a lover of all things. not
the best of students but the best of teachers, a mentor, a sister, a
daughter, a confidant, a friend… my friend.
these words should have been displayed
on the pages of every newspaper in the world,
but they were not,
most people in this world probably didn’t even realize their loss.
and i feel sorriest of all for those people — you people —
those of you who never had the chance to meet her.
because jen was that cool.
the last sentence
in this poem
is how i will remember
jennifer lynn o’hare:
this world is a better place for having jen in it,
even if it was for only 20 years.
* lyrics from “fire and rain” by james taylor
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wired (2000)
i have a post office box for my business letters
and a mail box at my single bedroom apartment
for my personal letters
and a mail slot in my cubicle
in the office where i work
for my inter-office memos.
i have call waiting on my home phone line
and a high-speed internet connection for my home computer.
i have an answering machine at home
and a direct line with voice mail at my work number.
i have a smart phone with voice mail
and skype on my laptop and desktop with voice mail.
i have e-mail addresses through my work,
my university,
and america online,
and i also have free internet e-mail service
through hotmail.com,
gmail.com,
and yahoo.com.
my home computer can even send and receive faxes.
and i have a stand-alone fax machine.
i have a graphically-pleasing website
featuring photographs of me and my two cats —
which i also upload to my flickr.com account —
and all my short stories and poetry and essays and music reviews
and book reviews and movie reviews and food reviews.
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just surf to www.bigpoppae.com,
and you can read all about me.
you can even connect to the rss feed of my diary entries,
which i cross-post every day
on xanga,
livejournal,
friendster,
myspace,
blogger,
and tumblr.
i have 2,347 facebook friends
and 433 twitter followers
and 126 subscribers to my weekly podcast.
i am a member of four internet chat services
and six internet listserves,
and i frequently post messages
on no less than 12 online forums
at websites like penpals.com and foreignfriends.net.
i have 127 buddies on my america online buddy list
with whom i can exchange instant messages
anytime we’re online at the same time.
i publish a personal zine six times a year
and send it to other personal zine publishers
all over the world.
i have personal ads in seven newspapers across the state
under the heading
looking for a friend,
and i am registered with 12 internet personal ad websites
such as love.com, match.com, okcupid.com,
meetingpeopleiseasy.com, and singles.net,
all under the heading
still looking for a friend.
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anyone
can contact me
at any time of the day or night.
they can phone me,
they can fax me,
they can page me,
e-mail me,
instant message me,
send me a virtual greeting card.
anything.
and no matter where i was,
and no matter what i was doing,
i would stop what i was doing
and i would talk to them.
but,
so far…
nobody has.
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presque vu (2000)
i contemplate angels dancing
on the heads of pens
and pencils
pressed to pads of paper
as i labour
to give birth
to beauty
as a poet it is my duty
but as a human it is my folly
to fail
so i flail away
on stages
ripping words from pages
bats freed from cages
to swoop overhead
to snatch hearts from chests
eyes from sockets
hands from pockets
blood will be spilt
by these words i spit
but i be watching
as my carefully crafted phrases
sick
brick
and i stand there
struck dumb
some impotent magician
top hat of lack
no rabbits to pluck
no words to speak
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no more lyrical miracles
no more verbal herbals
no more
poetricks
i suffer from premature articulation
and stand flaccid
limp
my pen in hand
full of empty desire
to articulate
but devoid of
beauty
ability
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rats in the ivy (2000)
pain is a gift,
she says,
pointing to her heart.
as long as you feel pain,
you know
you are still alive.
she smiles as she says this,
as if offering a bon bon.
and i say,
smoke
is a symptom
of an inefficient fire,
and i pinch what’s left of our love
between my thumb and forefingers
and i suck
to numb
the pain.
(suck)
and it’s a good thing
because i was tired
of that pansy-assed love bullshit
i was experiencing in other so-called healthy relationships,
you know,
that lame happiness nonsense,
that silly stability tripe,
that boring great fucking sex
unsweetened by the pang of regret.
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how fucking blind was i?
i had no idea of the pure pleasure
of a truly self-destructive co-dependant relationship.
oh, but now how i revel in it’s beauty!
don’t worry about me, i tell my therapist!
i’m fine! i’ll survive!
i thrive on contradiction!
i like it when shit don’t make sense!
i can quit anytime i want to!
(suck)
fuck trust!
fuck mutual respect!
fuck solid ground to stand on!
that shit makes you weak!
loving you is a work-out!
i’ve got muscles on my corpuscles
‘cuz my heart is pumping iron
every time you scream,
i am addicted
to what your dick did!
when we make love,
no, when we have sex,
no, when we fuck,
no, don’t go away,
no, just hold me,
no, just get the fuck away from me,
no, give me back my fucking key,
no, how come you never call me?
no, can’t you just leave me alone?
…i miss you…
fuck you!
i love you…
(suck)
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wait, here’s a haiku:
i am charlie brown,
and you are lucy, and your
love is that football!
and i just keep coming back for more!
you are the heroine of this love story,
and i am hooked.
i got motherfucking donkey kong on my back, baby,
only it’s not donkey kong,
it’s you in a rented monkey suit!
and we’re slinging syringes stuffed with satisfaction,
sucking crack pipes crammed with contentment,
popping pills of understanding,
snorting lines of devotion,
huffing sacks of commitment,
anything
to keep us from seeing
that this shit stopped working
a long, long time ago.
and i don’t even know what love is anymore;
all i know is this ache, this hunger,
this desire for the fire that once burned
in my stomach when you used to smile at me.
remember that?
before we were junkies
hooked on the open-handed smack
of this broken relationship?
(suck)
i don’t know how to get over
this sweetest hangover.
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not even a methadone clinic full of
well-adjusted romantic replacements
could help me kick this habit.
hell no!
i’m addicted to the real deal street level shit you’re working, baby,
100% pure uncut grief
wrapped in the thin paper
called love.
those aren’t tears in my eyes, baby,
it’s just the smoke,
so roll me up another hit
and light my fire.
(suck)
(butt that sucker)
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pushing buttons (2000)
now, this is what i don’t want:
i don’t want racism,
sexism,
homophobia,
date rape,
serial killers,
cia dope dealers,
television evangelists,
and late night faith healers,
telemarketers,
politician fat cats,
cigarette companies,
lab rats,
traffic jams,
kids with guns,
parents with guns,
neighbours with guns,
cops
with guns,
coloured folks in cages,
minimum wages —
when are we going to have a maximum wage? —
road rage,
anger,
danger,
frustration,
loneliness,
depression,
futility,
hopelessness,
heartlessness,
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slackers who support liberal causes yet can’t be bothered to vote
and complain from their couches as our rights are taken away, multinational corporations profiting from poisoning the environment,
raping human self-esteem, and co-opting culture,
mass media vultures spoon-feeding damage control as infotainment,
shiny tokens in a crow’s face as another poor man faces another
arraignment.
i am tired of seeing a woman’s precious body dismembered and
used to sell products: look, breasts, buy this car! look, breasts, see
this movie! is that your final answer? no, motherfucker, i’m just
getting started!
now, this is what i do want:
i want happiness through art and expression, through interaction
with like-minded individuals who do things rather than just talk
about doing things, through risking embarrassment and rejection
and reaching out for that connection that makes life worth living.
i want good food free of poisons. i want to walk into a market and
buy my rice milk and veggies with a poem instead of money. i want
everyone to know that i stole that line from allen ginsburg.
i want people to stop falling in love with songs on the radio and go
out and fall in love for real and write their own love songs.
i want every vote cast in this country to actually be counted!
i want the president to be voted off the island, and i want aretha
franklin installed as president: congress better r-e-s-p-e-c-t, bitches!
don’t make me whip out my v-e-t-o!
i want to pick up the phone and call mumia abu jamal and be like, yo
mumia, let’s go pick up leonard peltier and go see that new jackie
chan movie. and this time, you’re paying.
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i want my father to call me on the telephone and say, hey son, i just
wanted to say that i love you. i want that last line to not make me
cry anymore.
i want a tank full of gas and a sunny day and 1000 miles of open road
with not a single traffic cop, cross street, or stop sign.
i want calvin and hobbes back… now!
i want a kick ass girlfriend who cries with me during that scene in
toy story 2 where sarah mclachlan is singing as the little girl takes
her little cowgirl doll for a ride and the doll is so happy because she
thinks they are finally going to play again, but no, she gets taken to
the dump, and we both know how that feels, man!
i want a feast… i want a bean feast! cream buns and donuts and
fruit cake with no nuts so good you could go nuts… daddy, i want
an oompa-loompa now! *
i want love and passion not packaged as fashion, but as truth.
i want you, i want me, and i want no space between.
i want more than three minutes to finish this poem because there’s a
whole lot more that i want, that i don’t want, that i need, and i want
to tell you all about it..
* lyrics from “i want it now” from “willy wonka and the chocolate factory”
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boojiboy (2001)
i see you, militant white poet x, be-bopping and cock-rocking to
co-opted hip-hip rhythms, busting out bumper sticker diatribes to
pre-packaged beatbox beats.
you’ve got your lee press-on dreads on your pointy head and your
free mumia iron-on patch on the back flap of your $100 jansport
backpack, your $125 nike sneakers, your cell phone humming from
the hip pocket of your tommy hilfiger hip huggers, and your $35 hot
topic t-shirt with consumerism sucks across the chest.
and you’re pointing your straight, white, middle class, american
male finger as you sneer, “fuck the bourgeois… man!”
and then you beatbox.
and then you freestyle.
and then you beatbox.
and then you raise your fist defiantly in a militant salute, just like that
poster of malcom x you bought in the mall and hung on your dorm
room wall.
and then you leave.
and i can’t help wanting to stick my finger in your face and point
out how much easier it is to pin a feminists kick ass button on your
backpack than it is to actually treat women with respect and kick
misogyny’s ass face to face on a daily basis.
how much easier it is to slap a free leonard peltier sticker on
the bumper of your beemer than to free yourself from society’s
stranglehold on the truth and fight the prison industrial complex
that holds peltier hostage.
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how convenience is bliss full of soundbite politricks and push button
oprah topics — racism is bad!!! sexism is bad!!! homophobia is
really bad!!! george w. bush!!! — self-satisfying slogans that sing you
to sleep without accomplishing a single thing, except allowing you
to deny your blindingly obvious privilege from being a card-carrying
member of said bourgeoisie.
how convenient to stage bedroom revolutions and basement coup
d’etats to fight the powers that be one rage against the machine cd
at a time, one tibetan freedom concert dvd at a time, one poetry slam
at a time. you keep talkin’ about a revolution, but your revolution
will be memorized from pop songs and ad campaign sing-alongs and
mass-marketed, corporate-sponsored propaganda made to satiate
and silence the activist inside you.
how much easier to spiel a self-serving, hypocritical screed posing
as poetry than to stop denying your privilege and start using your
privilege to change this fucked up, straight, white, american,
patriarchal hegemony so that people who are not white and straight
and american and male can live lives free of oppression.
and i want to get in your face and deconstruct the fucked up front
you have constructed in order to prove how open-minded and
politically active and militant you are… but i don’t.
i just watch you leave the open mic, climb into your friends benz and
drive back to campus, satisfied you have made… a difference.
and how convenient is it for me to pick such an easy target as you
— umbilical-corded college student with shoes costing more than
would feed for a year the third world slave who sewed them for you
— how easy it is to point out your obvious shortcomings than it is to
deal with my own.
fuck the bourgeoisie? no boojieboy, fuck you. and fuck me, too.
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receipt found in the parking lot
of the super walmart (2001)
soap
shampoo
hair conditioner
toothpaste
dental floss
shaving cream
after shave lotion
deodorant
hair gel
spray starch
anniversary hallmark card
flowers
candles
matches
incense
2 filet mignon steaks
2 portabello mushrooms
1 loaf sourdough bread
butter
garlic spread
paprika
fresh parsley
4 yukon gold potatoes
sour cream
fresh leaf spinach
croutons
red onions
red peppers
feta cheese
sun-dried tomatoes
slivered almonds
balsamic vinegar
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extra virgin olive oil
fresh strawberries
block of white chocolate
bottle of white wine
barry white’s greatest hits cd
4 aromatherapy candles
aromatherapy bath salts
aromatherapy massage oil
mr. happy back massager
hershey’s chocolate syrup
honey
box of condoms, 32-count, extra large
spermicidal foam
astro glide personal lubricant
box of dental dams, 32-count, cherry flavoured
feather duster
dog leash
dog collar
fly swatter
rope
rubber gloves
hot water bottle w/ hose
clothes pins
needles
nail file
ice pick
hacksaw
plastic garbage bags, extra large, heavy duty
5 bungie cords
leather gloves, black
turtle neck sweater, black
jeans, black
knit beanie, black
hiking boots, dark brown
flashlight
d-cell batteries, 8-pack
wheelbarrow, large
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shovel
black and decker mini-vac
plug-in air freshener
stain remover, heavy duty
ajax tub and tile cleaner
carpet fresh, lilac scent
bleach
scrub brush
pumice stone
5-pack sponges
2 large beach towels
1 hustler magazine
1 penthouse magazine
1 barely legal magazine
1 box kleenex tissue, deep forest series
tylenol caplets, extra strength, 128-count
melatonin, one bottle, 64-count
1 packet razor blades, 6-count
cat food
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untitled (2001)
mmmmm…
and the darkness
could not hide
her smile.
that was…
(searching)
…so…
(yes yes)
…nice, she said, exhaling the word
like incense smoke, like warm, like new.
and it was
nice,
very nice
to feel those words
tickle the back of my ear,
her arm
curled around me from behind,
her fingers blossoming like lotus petals
gently pressed against the open book of my chest.
and we had no use
for question marks
in this poetry of the flesh,
no use for foreshadowing,
no use for words
other than perhaps… perhaps…
and sweet sleepy sighs
as we faded,
and her cats snuggled tightly
around our toes.
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the endless pursuit of happiness, part one (2001)
i went to the candy machine in the break room just a moment ago,
and there it was, amongst the plastic packages of cookies and chips
and gum and poptarts, for only 65 cents — true love — nestled at e4
between the reese’s peanut butter cups on the left and the hershey’s
chocolate with almonds on the right.
imagine, the thing i’ve been searching for my whole life, and there
it is, in bright yellow plastic wrap in the candy machine at work, and
for only 65 cents.
i know i’ve already spent way more than that trying to find it, so 65
cents was one hell of a bargain. i reached into my pocket, and found
that i had exactly 65 cents: two quarters; a dime; and five pennies.
since the machine only took silver, i was out of luck. a nickel short.
i went to the receptionist and asked if i could borrow a nickel, even
offered to give her the five pennies for a nickel, but she didn’t have
it. she had no change.
i went to all the people who work near my cubicle and asked if they
could trade my five pennies for a nickel, and none of them, not a
single one, could do it. they had no change.
i finally dug around the crumbs and lint balls in the very bottom
of my backpack, and i found one dirty dime, more than enough to
make my 65 cents, so i marched back to the break room with change
in hand…
…only to find the true love in bin e4 was gone. there had been
only one, and someone must’ve gotten it while i was looking for the
money to pay for it.
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i looked at the machine…
i looked at the money in my hand…
i looked back up at the machine…
then i put my 70 cents into the machine and pressed e5: hershey’s
chocolate with almonds. got a nickel back for change.
i put the chocolate bar in my pocket and went back to work.
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the endless pursuit of happiness, part two (2002)
after work, i walked to my bus stop. on the way i passed the brightly
lit windows of a gift shop, and right there in front of the biggest
display was a box marked deluxe true love. there was a photo on
the box of a man and a woman staring into each other’s eyes and
smiling slow, dreamy smiles. the flashing sign next to the box said,
only $69.99! going fast!
i walked in and went to the front counter and asked the cashier what
about this brand of true love made it deluxe. he said that this particular
true love was especially long-lasting, yet it encouraged individuality,
which many other cheaper brands of love often neglect.
i took out my wallet and told him that i would take one, but the
cashier said that he was all out because of the christmas rush. he said
he could put me on the rain check list, but he cautioned that the
wait would be several months, if not longer. i asked if he could sell
me the one in the window, but he said it was an empty box. i asked
if he had anymore in the back, and he said he didn’t think so, but he
would look just in case.
when he came back out, he held a much smaller box that was
wrapped in bright paper with neon ink and colourful photos of
people smiling very large and beaming and driving sports cars and
talking on cell phones and playing computer games and watching big
screen teevees. i asked him if that was it, was that deluxe true love,
but he shook his head slowly and said, “no, we are all out of deluxe
true love, but we do have several boxes left of instant gratification
for only $29.99.”
i told him i already had loads of that and thanked him for his time.
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the endless pursuit of happiness, part three
(2002)
when i got home, i turned on the teevee and flipped around the
cable channels and stopped for a moment on one of those home
shopping channels. and there on the screen was a big colourful box
of deluxe true love, only this was a special version of deluxe true
love they called the limited edition deluxe true love supreme.
the salesman said these versions were hand-crafted in very small
batches by experts in the art of making love, and he said his company
was allowed to sell only 100 boxes. the time was running short, he
said, since 67 had already been sold in the last five minutes. the
price, he said, was three low monthly payments of $99.99 each.
what made this version of deluxe true love so supreme, he said, was
its easy application, its long lasting strength, and its durability. it
wasn’t like those shabby versions of true love you could buy for less
elsewhere, he said. they were fine for the first few months or even
years, but they inevitably began to fade. this enhanced version of
true love was specially made to last the lifetime of its owner; in fact,
it even came with a ‘till death do us part money-back guarantee.
fourteen more boxes of limited edition deluxe true love supreme
were sold as i watched, so i grabbed up my phone and called the
1-800 number and was greeted my a friendly receptionist named
molly. she asked me what product i was interested in, and i said i
wanted a box of limited edition deluxe true love supreme. she asked
me what credit card i used, and i said i didn’t have a credit card. she
asked me if i wanted to use an atm card, and i said i didn’t have an
atm card. she said she could only accept one or the other, but i asked
her if i could just arrange to send cash. she put me on hold.
and i watched as five more boxes were sold. and seven more boxes
were sold. and then six more boxes were sold. and the announcer
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on the teevee said, “we only have one more box of special edition
deluxe true love supreme left, and our lucky next caller will have the
first crack at it!”
and then the receptionist came back on the line, and i said, “i’ll take
it, please, i’ll take that last box of special edition deluxe true love
supreme! i want it more than anything in the whole wide world!”
but she replied, “i’m sorry sir, we can only accept major credit cards
or atm cards with the visa or mastercard logo. we do not accept cash.
i’m very sorry, sir. i cannot help you, sir. have a nice day, sir.”
then the friendly and helpful operator ended the call.
on the teevee screen, the smiling salesman announced that a mrs.
gladys goldfarb — 87 years young! — from millington, tennessee,
was the proud owner of the last box of limited edition deluxe true
love supreme.
i turned off the teevee and let my hands collapse into my lap. i felt
something hard in the pocket of my jeans. i reached inside and slid
my hand all the way to the bottom.
i felt something warm.
i heard the familiar crackle of plastic wrap.
i smiled.
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wallflower (2002)
“i can’t dance,” i tell her as i try to free my fist from the grip of this
painfully beautiful woman pulling me toward the throbbing horde
on the house party dance floor.
“i can’t dance!”
and she purrs, “sure you can, it’s easy!”
and i say, “of course, it’s easy… for you! but you could be choking
on a chicken bone and giving yourself the heimlich on the edge of a
chair, and paula abdul would be like, ‘goddamn, that girl’s got some
moves!’”
but me? i hit the dance floor and epileptics come up to me and say,
“brother, i know how that feels.” i can’t dance!
what little i know about dancing, i learned from ally sheedy in the
breakfast club. i can’t dance!
if i fucked like i dance, i would never get laid!
(pause)
oh my god! i do fuck like i dance! that’s why i never get laid! but i
don’t tell her this, i just say, “i can’t dance!”
and she fixes her feline gaze upon me, and in my mind i hear her
whisper: just… watch… me.
and i am powerless to do anything but watch this goddess in the
form of an english lit. major in jeans so skintight they are no longer
fabric, they are flesh, they are a big blue tattoo with a pulse and a
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waistline cut so low you can almost see the baby faces of her knees
peeking over her belt loops.
she winks at me and wades backwards into the frothing tide of
bobbing college kids and begins rump-shaking this wickedly gyrating
humpety-hump-hump dance that defies the laws of physics, her body
thrashing like a south american river full of starving piranha tearing
apart an unsuspecting cow to the beats of kanye and jay z.
her blur of an ass is twitching so frantically, yet so precisely, she must
have robotic pistons in her hips as she slips the pointy tip of her
tongue to her lips. if you taped drumsticks to her undulating midriff,
she’d do deadly drumrolls across the forehead of every boy on the
dance floor… goddamn.
she’s cleaving rhythmically through the booty jungle like a flesh
machete, and i haven’t blinked once, and she’s eyeballing me,
mouthing the words come dance with me as she runs her open
palms over the ebbs and flows of her body and quivers like a fleshy
jackhammer, like a jell-o mold madonna, like a field of dragonflies
fluttering their wings at once.
she’s setting up sympathetic vibrations inside me like sitar strings,
and my body succumbs to the rhythm, my feet shuffling, my knees
bucking, my hips bumping.
then she breaks away from the crowd and catwalks towards me, her
eyes burning all the way through me and into my beating heart that
wants nothing more than for once to dance with abandon.
and she reaches her slender hand to me in super slo-mo, and my
fingers blossom to accept hers, and i whisper, “i can’t dance, but
tonight… i’m gonna try.”
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krakatoa (2002)
my father is a skilled BBQ technician,
and every central californian summer of my youth,
he would lay his magic hands on meat
and conduct grand operas
of seared flesh and glowing charcoal briquettes,
lifting galloping symphonies of flame
to do his bidding.
his backyard orchestra pit was nicknamed krakatoa,
a mammoth BBQ not store-bought
but hand-built
brick by concrete brick
until it loomed over us,
a visual horrorshow bereft of aesthetics
but efficient beyond reproach.
it was our fiery altar
to the gods of summer,
and we worshipped weekly.
when i was in high school,
we were a few streets removed
from poor white trash
and couldn’t afford grade a choice #1,
so when my father bought meat,
he had to pound it into submission,
and i’m not talking with one of those
namby-pamby chrome-plated tenderizer mallets
from the kitchen section at sears, oh no,
my dad used a ball-peen hammer
from the garage.
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and he would knock the resistance
right outta that rump roast,
cursing his day’s frustrations away with every blow,
attacking that t-bone till toughness fled shrieking,
transforming cheap cuts of cow
into beef-flavoured butter
that melted at the gentle kiss of a fork.
and while we stoked the coals
from the safety of shredded lawn chairs —
prodding porterhouses,
charring chuck roasts,
brushing and buttering and bbqing briskets and rib eyes —
we sat beside each other
and didn’t say a word,
just stared deep into the flames of krakatoa.
him drinking a silver bullet of coors,
me knocking back my brown bottle of I.B.C. root beer…
elvis on the a.m. radio.
and it didn’t matter
that i got crappy grades and cut class and
stole books from the mall and
played my depressing goth music too loud too late
and was probably on drugs
and probably gay
and probably a democrat
and probably going to amount to nothing
but a burden on my parents.
and it didn’t matter
that my dad and i didn’t really speak anymore,
that he understood me no better than i understood him,
that he probably hated me as much as i hated him,
that we were quickly becoming strangers
in our own home,
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more disgruntled housemates
who tolerated each other
than family,
than father and son,
than flesh.
okay, yeah, maybe all that stuff did matter,
but in those moments at the grill
we could at least pretend
all that mattered
was making sure the steak had enough
secret recipe bbq sauce
so it wouldn’t dry out,
spreading the coals
to distribute the heat evenly
so no one got burned.
just me and my dad
in the backyard,
while my mother and sister
set the table inside
and never
ever
disturbed us.
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the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit (2002)
there once was a mean old punker
with oil for blood and poison for spit.
his name struck fear both far and wide:
they called him josephus moshpit.
now josephus was a mean old punker
with a mohawk at least six feet
with spikes he’d use to spear them punkers
and lift ‘em off their feet.
the chains he wore around his neck
couldn’t stand the strain, they’d break,
so he chucked them all in favor of
three pissed off rattlesnakes.
the rings he wore upon his fists
were silver skulls and daggers.
his teeth were fangs, his nails were claws,
his lips just like mick jagger’s.
the steel-toed boots upon his feet
were splattered with blood and gore;
the tread was made of broken glass
that left gouges upon the floor.
an eyeball was tied upon his lace
to remind him of a recent victim,
and he’d smile and laugh as he recalled
just how hard he’d kicked ‘em.
yup, josephus was a mean old punker,
as mean a punker as you could ever catch,
that is until that fateful day
that josephus moshpit met his match.
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you see, there was another punker
as mean as the devil in tight pants
who challenged josephus one sorry day:
her name was wynona slamdance.
oh, wynona was a pistol,
she was evil though and through,
with elbows of sharpened plexiglass
that would cut a man in two.
that night the punks were in the pit
tangled up in a dreadful swirl.
as a hellish punk band raged on stage,
josephus thought, “who’s that girl?”
he glared at wynona slamdance
on a speaker about to dive,
and tore a helpless punker in half
and waited for her to arrive.
he took out a file and sharpened his teeth
and leered at the pitiful sinner.
he licked his chops with his forked tongue
and thought, “i’ll eat that bitch for dinner.”
wynona leapt from that mighty speaker
into a swan dive that seemed to float,
and when josephus cracked opened his maw,
she slid right down his throat.
at first his face was bright with triumph
at vanquishing another foe,
then all of a sudden his expression changed
from one of glee to one of woe.
he clutched at his belly,
he clawed at his throat
he scratched at his eyes,
then he started to bloat.
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he wrapped his arms around the bulges
as if he were trying to fight ‘em,
and blood foamed upon his lips
as the battle raged inside him.
josephus threw back his head and howled in pain
as his shivering chest began to split,
and crimson gore shot like a fountain
to announce the return of wynonna moshpit.
her plexiglass elbows burst from his belly
with a evil stomach churning rip,
and quivering chunks of liver and spleen
dangled from each bloody tip.
she emerged from what was left of his body
naked save for a bloody speedo,
then she discarded his rotten bloody carcass
like a dime store flesh tuxedo.
the crowd by that time had stopped to stare
at the battle wynona had won,
so she jumped on the speaker tower and screamed,
“get back in that pit and love someone!”
the moral of this sordid story
about the day josephus moshpit was licked
is this: if you mess with a punk rock moshpit girl,
you’re liable to get your sorry ass kicked.
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drought (2002)
a tear
weighs less
than a raindrop,
yet an ocean of tears
can crush
the life from you.
sadness
is heavy,
it bends the back arthritic.
a body needs to be touched,
it thirsts.
cracked desert floor
weeps for warm rain.
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don’t forget to breathe, love (2002)
you are comice pears to me, the gentle give under thumb, the snick
of teeth past grassy skin into succulent fruit beneath, the rush of
sweetness, the smell of fresh nectar at the corners of my mouth, the
webs between my fingers, drooling down my forearm, my elbow.
you are the perfect mixtape to a long roadtrip with nothing between
you and me but a thousand miles of ancient joshua trees and spiky
saguaros pointing at the sun darkening my forearms, simple thoughts
of you my soundtrack, my silent smiles the cadence, the rhythm of my
heart the beat. silence does not exist here. we talk.
you are the perfume of sleepy warmth snuggled in a bed engulfing
us and three cats, the prickle of sweat dew-dropping tiny hairs on the
back of your neck. you smell so good when you sleep inches from me,
my nose planted betwixt your shoulder blades, breathing you in, my
palm between your breasts. your breath catches for just a moment,
then releases in a smiling sigh. you love me, even in your dreams.
you are the oh my god! pause as we turn towards each other in unison,
mouth agape, gathering our energy to burst forth in laughter, in big
milk-spilling chortles and life-affirming guffaws. you remind me of
full-body little kid laughs, giggles building to howls and ululations of
uncaged laughter so big your belly bursts, so big you have no choice
but to fall to the ground and flail red-faced and puffy with tears.
you are poetry, pure and simple, written not to impress, but to express,
poetry as sunshine and rain, as food and water, as oxygen.
you are the firm grasp of fingers entwined, yearning to press flesh
deep inside itself, and defiantly daring the world to even try — just
fucking try! — to pull these hands apart, these hands that were meant
to hold each other, meant to guide and follow, meant to hold and be
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held, meant to wrap around each other while standing in line at the
supermarket, while driving, under tables while dining with friends
and family, under covers pressed to hips and shoulders and bellies,
nails raking across backs, cupping faces, touching lips.
you're the look that says, don’t forget to breathe, love. be. stop
thinking. it’s perfectly okay to embrace bliss. no one will mind.
you are bare feet in a late autumn stream, rock-numbed and slicked
with algae, the rolling texas hill country surrounding us, the hint of
baking biscuits and cowboy coffee and homemade roux gravy wafting
from the railroad hotel behind us, us on the bank of the llano river
feeling like the luckiest people in the whole wide world and forgetting
for a whole hour all the things we’re supposed to be stressed about,
all the bullshit rendered silent in the presence of such stillness.
you are secret alcoves in rocky grottoes, sleepy chords from a
strummed guitar, nate and brenda and david and keith and especially
claire, your toe-clinchingly great buttermilk pie and my world famous
veggie burritos. you are bubble soda and deep-fried sushi rolls with big
mac sauce, bathtubs stained by sharpie tattoos, flirting on livejournal,
modest mouse at midnight through computer speakers.
i could go on.
i want to go on, adding stanzas until my fingers cramp. we’ve only just
begun to live this poem, and i’ve only just begun to write it down.
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you are a strange fruit (2002)
pomegranates
are odd.
crack one open,
expose the ruby heart:
pure beauty.
but they are difficult,
and messy,
and you can’t quite figure out
what you are supposed to do with them.
eating one
stains your fingers
bloody,
fills your mouth
with inedible matter.
but the juice:
oh, the juice!
sweet
cut with tart.
perfect.
worth every bit
of trouble.
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us (2003)
you might not know them, but you’ve seen them.
standing stiffly beside each other
in the line behind you at the supermarket checkout line,
in the video store,
in the dmv:
the bitter couple.
fingers curled into ball-peen hammers
held rigidly at their hips,
the rictus of frustration
on their lips.
the silence
measured in sighs.
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the train station (2003)
i remember it like i’m right there right now and my shoulder’s wet
and my back hurts and the hard plastic chair is making my shirt stick
to the small of my back and the train station is packed with people
waiting on their own hard sweaty plastic chairs and my shoulder’s
wet and i am miserable and i can’t hold you tighter without hurting
you and your head is on my shoulder and we are waiting for your
train to come and take you away and we both know you will never
come back even if you do physically come back you will be different
it will all be different and my shoulder is wet and i am miserable and i
know it’s the right thing to do and you know it’s the right thing to do
but we are dreading the moment when your train is called because
then we will have to commit ourselves to an irreversible decision
neither of us wants yet both of us need and the announcement
comes and you lift your head from my shoulder and stand and wipe
your nose and rub your eyes and i pick the sweaty shirt out of the
small of my back and i adjust my shoulders and i pick up your bags
and we walk to the gate and we stop and we stare at each other redrimmed eyes puffy cheeks miserable knowing we have to do this
knowing there’s no way around it but through it and we nod our
heads in unison and we hug each other so tightly and my shoulder
is wet and i am miserable and you walk away from me without ever
once looking back and i watch you the whole way watch you get on
the train watch you disappear and you disappear and you
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fists (2003)
the thing about store-bought flowers
is that they always die
no matter what you do.
you can give them everything —
all the water, the nourishment,
the sun —
but you eventually must watch them
fade.
slowly at first,
brown around the edges,
heads drooping.
and then one day
you can’t even remember
what they looked like
when they were new,
what it felt like
to walk into the room
lit by those little yellow hands
with a thousand soft fingers
reaching for you.
you finally sigh,
pick the sad bouquet of brown fists from the table,
and throw them away
so you don’t have to look at them anymore.
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13 metaphors for why
we should’ve never dated (2003)
you are the jagged rusty tip of a nail sticking out of a polished
wooden banister, and i am the little kid sliding down that bannister
in baby blue felt pajamas.
you are the computer hard drive grinding to a complete halt, and i
am the last 200 pages of the great american novel written in a mad
12-hour rush that were never saved.
you are the speeding train hurtling toward the stalled greyhound,
and i am the cure for cancer whispered by the bus driver seconds
before impact.
you are the answering machine that eats the tape, and i am the
telephone call from the lottery saying i have just won 26 million
dollars if i just call back right now.
you are a small furry rodent wrapped tightly in duct tape, and i am
richard gere.
you are the bullet, and i am the kennedy.
you are rock, and i am scissors. you are scissors, and i am paper.
you are paper, and i am rock.
you are gollum, and i am frodo’s ring finger.
you are a daytime emmy award, and i am susan lucci.
you are a ham sandwich, and i am mama cass.
you are a super tanker bulging with oil, and i am alaska. you are
george w. bush, and i am alaska.
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you are the matrix revolutions,
and i am the kid from cleveland sick with cancer
who begged the make-a-wish foundation for a chance
to see the last matrix movie before he died
and whose last words were, “i want my stupid wish back!”
you are michael jackson,
and i am not gonna go there.
you are the sharpened spine of a sting ray’s tail, and i am the crocodile
hunter! and yes, i went there!
you are the proposed sequel to the goonies and i am corey feldman…
waiting… for that phone call… for the last 20 years.
which is to say, you and i do not go together like peas and carrots;
we go together like candy apples and razor blades.
and i am aware of this, i know this, and yet at three in the morning,
i find myself staring at the ceiling and thinking
about you.
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scars, part one (2003)
when i belch,
i finish by exhaling deeply
as if ridding my lungs
of any remaining gases.
i don’t make a big deal of it.
it’s just something i do.
and every time i belch like that,
i think of trish,
the first person i ever knew
who belched liked that.
we only dated two and half months.
graduation was enough
to end our college romance,
but she left the belch with me.
there was a time when i could eat
campbell’s tomato soup all by itself,
but no now, not after kimberly.
now a bowl of campbell’s tomato soup
just seems… silly
without a grilled cheese sandwich to sop it up.
i have a scar
on the knuckle
of my right pointer finger
from when i slammed the receiver
of the phone so hard
after breaking up with sonia
it shattered both my phone and my skin.
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once a year,
every year,
just before the academy awards,
that old scar prickles,
and i’ll send sonia an e-mail
asking for her oscar picks.
she usually answers.
two lives dig their nails
into each other
for a couple of months, a year, more,
and leave curly-cues of flesh
in their wake.
favourite movies co-opted,
catch phrases caught and adopted,
books,
discarded concert t-shirts
for bands you’ve never seen
found beneath futons so long ago
you’ve forgotten they were once someone else’s.
they are
blackened rings
hidden deep
in the hearts of oaks.
they are hiroshima shadows
on crumbling brick walls.
i don’t know what you will have left behind,
how you will have marked me:
a love for sweet tea and the central texas hill country,
sushi and avocados and alt-country and naps and buttermilk pie
and the endless pursuit of the perfect plate of migas,
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a yearning to write from a deeper place,
to calm my anger and defensiveness,
to quiet my insecurities,
to untie the knot deep inside my guts.
arguments about traffic about money about jealousy
about space about space about space.
these scars
are water stains
on eggshell plaster walls,
so faint
you can only see them
when you wrinkle your nose and squint.
they are small half-moon crescents
dug into the meat of my heel,
whispering of barefoot summers
fishing from wooden docks.
they are badly-fused broken bones
that ache
when i read poems about rain.
but i want you to know
that i have torn my shirt off for you.
whip my bare back with rose bushes and nettles,
i’ll take the scars,
and i cherish every one of them,
and i gladly collected them,
and the stories behind them,
and the lessons learned,
and all the songs that for the rest of my life will sing only of you.
i’ll take the scars.
they’re the only things that prove you have loved,
and i have loved you as much as i could.
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emo love song in the key of 93/4 (2003)
i see you sitting there in the library
with your nose pressed into a book,
and i’m sitting across from you crossing my fingers
hoping you’ll stop and give me a look.
the sound of your voice makes my face go full flush,
as red as ron weasley’s hair,
and i want with all of my being to reach out
and take your hand, but i do not dare.
i used to think that cho chang was the one
who was the object of my desire,
but now i know my dear you’re the witch
who turns my heart into a goblet of fire.
(chorus)
oooh oooh, hermione granger i love you,
i can’t keep you off of my mind.
climb on the back of my nimbus 2000,
we’ll leave hogwarts far behind,
far behind, wooo oooh oooh ooooh oooh
sometimes i hide under my invisibility cloak
just so i can watch you from afar,
and i don’t care if your parents are muggles,
the lights in your eyes shine like stars.
if i had the chance to go back to first year,
i’ll tell you just what i would do,
i wouldn’t take that sorting hat from my head
‘till it said i belong to you.
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and yeah i know you know who is out there somewhere
trying to kill me with his evil dark art,
but the mark he left on my forehead is nothing
compared to the lightning bolt-shaped scar on my heart.
(chorus)
i’ve written you a note on a scroll my dear
and tied it to my owl hedwig’s leg,
and i’m hoping my words will convince you to love me,
so i don’t have to fall to my knees and beg.
it says, “if you love me half as much as i love you,
meet me at midnight behind hagrid’s shack,
and if you’re not there i’ll know that you don’t,
and i’ll have to find my way back to being your best friend.”
(chorus)
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someone (2003)
someone quicker to laugh than to rage. someone who does things
rather than sit on the couch talking about doing things. someone
who makes things. someone who makes things happen. someone
who watches the news and gets angry and wants to do something
about it. someone who can appreciate a long, deep breath full of
summertime after being pelted by swollen raindrops the size of baby
fists. someone who can sit on a couch under a blanket and read with
me while nick drake is playing on the stereo, sipping chamomile tea
with lemon and honey and touching hips. someone who will look
me in the eye and tell me i am wrong, but who doesn’t always have
to be right. someone who can have an effortless conversation lasting
hours, but who isn’t afraid of silence. someone who is an amazing
kisser. someone who won’t be grossed out that i love having my
toes popped for me. someone who giggles during sex because sex
is just so weird. someone who enjoys debating movies and politics
and what happens after you die. someone who enjoys lazy bike rides
across long bridges and back alleys. someone who would rather
see local theatre than watch teevee, but who also appreciates that
the office and peep show make teevee almost worth watching every
once in a while sometimes maybe a little kinda if it’s on the internet.
someone who isn’t afraid to dance even though they secretly
know they look silly when they dance, but that’s okay since most
everybody looks silly when they dance. someone who won’t hesitate
to jump inside a shopping cart at the supermarket and allow me
to push them through every aisle. someone who explodes in fits of
percussive laughter in the most inappropriate situations. someone
who is quick witted and whip smart, but doesn’t feel the need to
prove it all the time. someone who can’t pass a jell-o butt puppy
without patting its wee scruffy head. someone who has favourite
words and goes out of their way to use them regularly. by the way,
some of my favourite words of all time are: succotash, scallywag,
shindig, flibbertigibbet, and brouhaha. someone yearning for travel
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and adventure, but who also appreciates the lure of tire swings on
old oak trees. someone with their shit together… most of the time.
someone who can admit when they’ve fucked up, and who is patient
when i fuck up, which i will… often. someone who doesn’t take
themselves so seriously they can’t mock themselves. someone who
will stick up for what they believe in, especially if i don’t believe in it.
someone who’s fearless even when scared shitless. someone who can
dominate me at scrabble, balderdash and cranium. someone who
can actually spell the word brouhaha. someone who can appreciate
the joy of handmade mixtapes. someone who cries with me at pixar
movies. someone who spoons. someone who kicks ass. someone
who has lofty goals they can actually taste. someone who has gotten
their heart torn apart and has learned to sew it back together all by
themselves. someone who appreciates handmade birthday cards and
homemade cakes that are kinda lopsided but honest.
(pause)
b-r-o-u-h-a-h-a.
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albuquerque penance (2003)
hatch chiles roasting
over apple wood fire in
a backyard oil drum.
the skin blackens then
crackles as chile juice bursts
in bright green bubbles.
submerged, the skin slips
easily as banana
peels on a sidewalk.
thick home-rendered lard
protects hands while unsheathing
the hottest peppers.
new mexican stew:
potatoes, onions, chiles,
and crushed tomatoes.
handfuls of cumin,
salt, pepper, oregano,
and pungent garlic.
mighty southwestern
feast worthy of poetry:
one haiku won’t do.
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austin penance (2003)
couple builds fort
of cardboard and newspapers
under wet freeway.
swollen lips of sky
spit rain at passing traffic.
man holds sign: i need.
toothless woman steers
shopping cart with garbage bag
umbrella overhead.
man under bridge has
four empty pants pockets and
two hungry puppies.
dirty asphalt steams.
angry car horns bitch and moan.
moist breath warms cold hands.
motorists ignore
soaking onramp veteran.
his thumb pleads: somewhere.
election billboards
leer, if you voted for me,
you’d be home right now.
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sushi penance (2003)
ted the sushi chef
is a true poet, crafting
haiku from raw fish.
his poet’s palette
playfully juxtaposes
textures and flavours.
press the flesh and rice
to palate with tongue to melt
with warm wasabi.
barbecued eel and
sweet avocado mingle
in taste bud tangos.
eyes closed, head tilted,
close-mouthed smiles giving birth to
breathy sighs and moans.
cleanse the tongue with hot
green tea and pickled ginger,
then dive in for more.
pablo neruda
spent nine lives striving for what
ted does with sharp knives.
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wendy’s penance (2003)
drive-thru window guy
asks, “what’llya have?” i say,
“can i get world peace?”
he says, “we’re outta
world peace. would you like to try
a burger meal deal?”
i think about it
for a moment, then say, “can
you biggie size that?”
he says, “of course i
can biggie size that. that will
be four fifty-six.”
i’m thinking of man’s
inhumanity to man…
the environment…
drive-thru window guy
hands me my order, then he
says, “have a nice day.”
hot salty french fries
won’t help world peace one bit, but
they sure do taste good.
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war penance (2003)
let’s get all the chairs
and blankets and make a tent
in the living room.
we’ll order pizza,
make crank calls, and talk about
our very first kiss.
you can kick my ass
at scrabble. i’ll kick yours at
trivial pursuit.
we’ll turn off the lamps,
get in out sleeping bags, read
comics with flashlights.
we’ll fall asleep with
foreheads touching, faint traces
of smiles on our lips.
you will wake up to
the smell of fresh-baked orange
rolls and ground coffee.
it will almost be
like the whole wide world is not
sliding into hell.
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road penance (2003)
1,500 miles
from st. cloud to las cruces
for our monday gig.
matthew and i have
seemingly endless supplies
of dick and poop jokes.
i drive. matthew sleeps.
cold coke. punk rock. blurred landscapes.
take a piss and switch.
matthew drives. i sleep.
hot coffee and cigarettes.
take a piss and switch.
thirty bucks gets you
a tank of gas and nearly
500 more miles.
tiny clenched fists of
pain wrench the muscles along
my road-weary spine.
i’m reeling in those
miles, sister. i’ll be home by
tuesday afternoon.
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hooter’s penance (2003)
my dad says he comes
here for the great hot wings, but
i don’t believe him.
the hot wings here are
not all that hot, and neither
are the waitresses.
some of them are nice,
though, in a cheap sort of way.
the hot wings, i mean.
hooters inspires me
to beg forgiveness
for being a man.
waitress asks, whatchoo
writin’? i say, some haiku.
she looks skeptical.
i’ve never dated
a hooters waitress. there are
good reasons for that.
teenaged hot wings cook
probably thinks this is the
best job in the world.
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mikey penance (2003)
mike henry makes strong
margaritas with lots and
lots of tequila.
i never drink, but
last night? yeah, i drank like a
fish out of water.
i made it through one
scrabble game before i bid
my drunken adieu.
hilary was such
a good girlfriend... she gave me
love and a bucket.
she kissed my sweaty
forehead, said, i love you, then
tucked me into bed.
three ibuprofin,
lots of water, and hil’s love
got me through the night.
happy birthday mike!
next year, don’t make those fuckers
so damn strong, old man!
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el condor pasa penance (2003)
i would rather be
a hammer than a nail, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather be
the ocean than a sail, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather be
a blackbird than a snail, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather get
a postcard than email, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather be
the outlaw josie wales, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather eat
a guppy than a whale, yes
i would, if i could.
i would rather be
jonathon livingston seagull than slobodan milosovic, yes
i would, if i could.
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watching lockup penance (2003)
murder of orange
jumpsuits mumble payphone prayers
to distant lovers
skinny eyes critique
blue tattoos on bulging lockdown bicep canvas.
constant noise hangs thick
as thieves spread past exploits thick
dried blood on concrete
thin wool blankets and
steel-piped air inspire fields of
fetal positions.
fluorescent flicker
illuminates roaches and
slim/lipped gangbangers.
slack jaws ruminate
lost life in the pale glare of
television screens.
freedom auctioned for
concrete tombs, cigarettes and
death row religion
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breakfast penance (2003)
stove door swings open,
releasing pleasing orange
scented biscuit clouds.
thick mits slide beneath
350-degree
cookie sheet of love
frying pan heats oil.
potatoes chopped in cubes wait.
the tension rises.
tomatoes hiding
with crispy bacon beneath
fluffy scrambled eggs
cheddar climbs grater
leaves bits of itself behind
for us to snack on
salt chases pepper
in savory tug of war
for domination
soapy water drains
from sink. bits of last night’s food
run to meet their doom.
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working at spenser gifts penance #1 (2003)
i’m surrounded by
fart-related merchandise
and cheesy sex toys.
spenser gifts is a
playland for gross little boys
and their frat boy dads.
i would never date
someone who thought sexy meant
playboy underwear.
baseball capped thug leaves
pinpression middle finger.
how original.
movie theatre
spews pre-teens waiting for rides.
they surge toward us.
high school gangstas crowd
poster rack in far corner.
spidey sense tingles.
everybody
plays with the newton’s cradle
but no one buys it.
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working at spenser gifts penance #2 (2003)
punk ass fucker’s goal:
make all the dancing hamsters
sing at the same time.
i conduct tinny
symphonies of orgasm
keychain orchestras.
if i saw someone
from my high school working here,
i’d think, huh... loser.
my personal hell:
hours of the muzak versions
of 4 non blondes songs.
if i hear the theme
from the brady bunch one more
time, someone will die.
screaming child in mall.
i just close my eyes and think,
please don’t bring him here.
bathroom breaks each hour.
i don’t really have to go.
i’m just really bored.
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working at spenser gifts penance #3 (2003)
if you dress sexy
to go to the mall, you are
probably fourteen.
the only cool things
they sell at spenser gifts are
homies bobbleheads.
the mall goths with their
hot topic bondage pants and
chains crack my shit up.
i patrol spencer’s
harassing shoplifters and
hunting for haiku.
bob marley incense
neither smells like bob marley
nor marijuana.
the kiss incense smells
nothing like gene, paul, ace, or
peter, thank goodness.
the down’s syndrome kid
who can name all the simpsons
characters likes me.
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overnight shift at kinko’s hourly penance (2003)
10 p.m.
back at work again.
seems like i went to sleep just
a few hours ago.
11 p.m.
dj cues breakbeats
rips fingertip symphonies
crossfade tchaikovsky
12 a.m.
big band tunes fill my
head with scratchy memories
i’m too young to have.
1 a.m.
i can copy, fold,
staple, bind, score, collate, fax.
college served me well.
2 a.m.
kinko’s graveyard shift.
mountain dew and mini-thins.
my heart’s exploding.
3 a.m.
rapscallion would
be a great hip-hop name
for a vegan m.c.
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4 a.m.
i need this damn job
like john f. kennedy needs
a hole in his head.
5 a.m.
a slew of design
students flood my quiet store.
they are all so tired.
6 a.m.
girl with bright green eyes
and shoulder-length black curls gets
the special friend price.
7 a.m.
thom yorke wails his pain
as early morning fades from
cobalt to baby blue.
8 a.m.
i choose the christian
muzak station and hide the
remote, then clock out.
9 a.m.
sweetie leaves her door
unlocked, so i can slip in
and sleep beside her.
10 a.m.
i’m too wired to sleep,
too tired for anything more
than one more haiku.
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11 a.m.
still not asleep yet.
sitting beside her reading
kavalier and clay.
12 p.m.
we are giving up
on sleep and making pancakes
in our underwear.
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disillusion curry (2003)
i knew a girl once.
i don’t remember her name. i may never have known her name, to
be honest, but she was the cute girl at the thai place for a long time,
my favourite waitress in my favourite restaurant in my favourite little
college town.
she always made me smile.
one day, she was wearing a sheer white shirt, and you could see right
through her sleeve to the large tattoo on her forearm. i asked her
about it, and she rolled up her sleeve and showed it to me, this huge
colourful tattoo of a pepsi can.
i was… well… sort of taken aback.
i asked her about it, and she said, “yeah, i used to love pepsi. drank it
all the time, so much that all my friends used to call me pepsi.”
we paused for a moment.
then i asked her about the use of the past tense, and she said, “yeah,
the real shame of it is that i don’t even drink pepsi anymore. i drink
dr. pepper.”
at that very moment, precisely as she finished that sentence, i fell
deeply… out of love… with the cute girl at the thai place.
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passersby (2003)
i am the boy on the bus you shoulder past every morning on your
way to work, the one with your favourite book in his backpack.
i am the girl walking in the rain as you drive past thinking how glad
you are to be in a car instead of outside in the pouring rain.
i am the waitress you didn’t tip because you thought i took too long
getting the lemon for your herb tea even though i apologized and
didn’t charge you for the tea because i thought you were cute.
i am the telemarketer who called at dinner, the one you hung up
on in mid-sentence, the one with whom you have more things in
common than anyone you will ever meet, the one you’ll never meet
again for as long as you live.
i am the temp worker who closes her eyes and breathes the scent of
your hair conditioner as you pass her in the hallway at work, the one
whose name you’ve never bothered to remember.
i am the 76-year-old woman who drove so slowly on the freeway that
you cursed her and honked at her and drove angrily past her, the one
you would’ve fallen madly and deeply in love with had you only met
her at 21 when she was a dancer and a poet.
i am the small woman with tiny hands and watery blue eyes who
purchased an orange juice and a plain bagel every weekday morning
at your cafe on her way to work, the one with long wisps of auburn
hair she tucked behind her ear as she ordered, the one who stopped
coming to the cafe one day and never came back, the one you called
the oj girl, the one you passed three years later while walking through
a crowded airport in lexington, kentucky, but didn’t recognize, the
one who saw you and thought, oh, the bagel guy.
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i am the man who lived in the apartment next to yours, the one who
slept with his head inches from your pillow separated by a hand’s
breadth of drywall, wood, and space, the one you never met because
he worked the graveyard shift, the one whose newspaper you
borrowed every morning, read over breakfast, then carefully placed
back in the plastic sack and returned to his front door, the one with
the cd collection nearly identical to your own.
i am your third grade sweetheart gazing out a bus window at an
airplane passing thousands of feet overhead, the one who wonders
whatever became of that little boy who would chase her around
the jungle gym, the one who sighs deeply and turns back to her
magazine as you gaze out the window of an airplane at the white
roof of a bus stuck in traffic thousands of feet below and wonder
how long it’s been since you had a belly so swollen with laughter
you could barely breathe.
i am the cable guy, the pizza guy, your mom’s next door neighbour,
the landlord, the counter girl, the mechanic, the cop, the paperboy,
the exotic dancer at the all-nude strip club, everyone you’ve ever
stood behind in lines, cut off in traffic, spoken with through fast food
drive-thru windows, sat next to in a movie theatre, walked past on
the sidewalk, taken a piss next to in subway bathrooms, purchased
lattes from, whose lawns you mowed when you were a kid, who
filled your tank, who rang you up, who changed your tire, who gave
you a flier while walking past a bar a club a coffeehouse.
we pass within inches of you every single day.
we have so many stories to tell.
and you will never know any of them.
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sorrow, part two (2003)
edmund loved sad songs.
he collected them like some people collect stamps. he had japanese
pop tunes that made his heart ache, mississippi blues riffs that caused
tears to burst from his eyes, pakistani folks songs he could not begin
to understand that made him bury his face in his pillow at night just
thinking of them.
and he wondered how the sound of a bow drawn across the strings
of a violin could conjure within him the forlorn thoughts of lost
loves and dashed hopes, how breath blown over an oboe’s reeds
could bring him to his knees and weep.
and he wondered what those sounds had in common with the distant
longing trill of train whistles, the mournful wail of wolves howling,
the wind through the leaves of willow trees.
edmund felt if he could isolate the roots in all of these sad sounds,
he might be able to arrange the notes into one chord, the playing
of which would connect all the sad songs ever sung and all the sad
sounds ever heard and bring forth an unstoppable human tide of
glorious and profound emotion.
and one day, after much labour, he found it.
and he organized a performance in a grand hall, and he invited
members of the world press to come and encouraged them to
broadcast the event simultaneously to all corners of the globe.
and on the night of the performance, edmund stood in front of
his keyboard in a somber grey tuxedo and tails and a tall smoky
stovepipe hat. he cleared his throat, and he spoke very softly into
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the microphone, “and now, ladies and gentlemen of the world, i give
you my gift… the chord of ultimate sadness.”
and the whole wide world held its breath.
and edmund brought his grey-gloved hand down softly on the keys.
and there issued forth from speakers all around the planet — from
every radio station, from every television station, from every web
browser — pure and beautiful and complete… silence.
and fat laughing buddhas with huge flapping earlobes danced waltzes
down the cheeks of the whole wide world.
edmund closed his eyes, lowered his head, and smiled.
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the double glass doors of your heart (2003)
if you had a full-body tattoo of a 7-eleven sign, i would open up the
double glass doors of your heart and walk inside, saunter over to
the slurpee machine of love and get myself a nice 32-ounce coke
slurpee of faith and devotion, then i’d sashay over to the candy aisle
and get myself a nice butterfinger of passion — maybe even a nice
jumbo butterfinger of passion, the really big one that’s as big around
as an ok sign — and then i would traipse over to the magazine rack
and get a fresh copy of juggs magazine of eternity, then i would
wait in line behind the guy buying a money order to pay to have
his phone reconnected… and i would wonder… how that guy got
in here because what the fuck? this is not just some 7-eleven down
the block from where you live, no, this is the 7-eleven of your soul
tattooed on your body, so why the fuck are you letting people in
here to pay their goddamned phone bills? but then the guy would
be done and i would prick my finger and pay for my coke slurpee of
faith and devotion and my jumbo butterfinger of passion and my
juggs magazine of eternity with drops of my lifeblood, and i would
make my way for the double glass doors of your heart, but the doors
wouldn’t open, and it would occur to me how odd it is that places
that are open 24 hours a day have locks on their doors? and then it
would occur to me that you had tricked me! i would realize that you
had that body-sized tattoo of the 7-eleven sign removed with laser
technology while i was in there spilling blood for my coke slurpee
of faith and devotion and my jumbo butterfinger of passion and my
copy of juggs magazine of eternity — was it the juggs magazine? i
can put it back! i can get, like, newsweek! — and then i would just sit
there, propped against the locked double glass doors of your heart,
my feet splayed out in front of me, eating my jumbo butterfinger of
passion, drinking my coke slurpee of faith and devotion, reading my
blood-stained juggs magazine of eternity and wondering what was
going to happen next… wondering… just how long… the fucking
counter guy has been in here! do you just let anyone, like, live here?
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inside your heart? was he trapped, too, back when you had a bodysized tattoo of… fucking… circle k? what the fucking fuck? is that
what your heart is? a revolving door in the circle k of doom?
loving you is like a really weird dream…
i don’t even know i’m having.
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cellophane (2003)
i am starting my poem from the middle of the audience, with no
microphone, with no paper, with nothing but my words, rising
amongst you all unashamed and unafraid, as if one of your very own
has suddenly been electrified with the spirit to speak and is incapable
of resisting temptation.
now…
i am slowly walking around the room, causing heads to turn and
eyes to follow, focusing the attention of this room like the spokes
of a giant invisible wheel with my words at the hub. the barriers
between speaker and spoken-to have been erased. there is no stage;
all the world’s a stage! there is no microphone; all of our mouths
are microphones! there is no poetry; there is only life! there are no
poets; there’s only us breaking down the barriers between us.
now watch! as this empowers me to do things i normally would
never do, like find the most beautiful woman in this entire room,
walk towards her with my bedroom eyes a-glinting, run my fingers
through her soft, rose-scented hair, and gently place upon her lips…
a kiss.
now watch! as this woman — who normally would never allow me to
do this — allows me to do this!
now watch! as i find the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker in
this entire city block, press my forehead to his, and offer my stare as
a challenge.
now watch! as i slowly walk away… without getting my legs
broken…. for he knows this is not just a slam poem: this is a lucid
dream over which we have complete control!
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this is not just a poetry slam: this is statement! this is a manifesto!
this is us raising our voices as one and telling the powers that be that
we do not need their $200 million special effects budgets! we do not
need their 60,000 watts of sound! we don’t need their super cable,
their high-speed internet, their cell phone networks!
at the poetry slam, we have distilled mass communication down to
its most basic elements — a mouth, a stage, and an audience — and
with those simple tools, we can do anything.
we can build bridges between us, or we can burn them down. we
can build skyscrapers of knowledge, or we can tear them down. we
can elect effective political leaders, or we can bring them down.
we can inspire this guy to go straight home tonight and call every
ex-girlfriend he’s ever had and leave two words on their voice mails:
i’m sorry.
we can empower this girl to go home tonight and call every exboyfriend she’s ever had and leave two words on their voice mails:
fuck you!
and we can allow this woman to go home after this show and write
things in her journal she never thought she’d have the courage to
write before this night.
you see, this is not just some kind of game we are playing: this is
real, this is true, this is life, this is us comparing notes on the human
experience to confirm that we exist.
you are no longer sitting in a smoky bar watching a poetry slam,
no, you are cradled in the hearts and minds of fellow poets. you are
amongst friends. you are surrounded by family. you are safe. you are
one of us.
and this shall be our motto:
slamito ergo sum… i slam, therefore i am.
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26 new rules for poetry slamming (2003)
1] just because you think you should start your poem by singing
does not mean you should. (sung )
2] if your intro is longer than your poem, you’re not done yet.
3] growing tomatoes on your porch doesn’t make you a farmer. putting
out a grease fire in your kitchen doesn’t make you a firefighter. and
filling notebooks full of shitty poetry does not make you a poet.
4] despite what you think, i don’t wanna choose whether you read a
funny poem or a serious poem. just read the fucking poem.
5] you might think we wanna hear the same three poems over and
over again, but you are wrong! i don’t care if they score well every
time! either write some new shit, or sit the fuck down!
6] henceforth, each slam poet will be allowed an oppression poem
maximum of… say… 25. so go ahead, knock yourself out, fuck shit
up, but then you have to find something else to write about. you’re
not doing your struggle any favors by turning it into a cliché, and
your pain isn’t nearly as interesting as you think it is.
7] anything remotely resembling the phrase the revolution will
not be televised will henceforth be taxed, and all proceeds will
be sent directly to the family of gil scott heron. and this includes
the revolution will not be memorized, the evolution will not be
criticized, the solution will not be hypothesized, whatever. so either
pay up, or write your own goddamned catch phrase!
8] 8, 8, i forgot what 8 was for. *
9] friends don’t let friends freestyle. seriously. you suck at it.
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10] for once, write a sestina. would it kill you?
11] just because you’re the only poet who dares saying racist, sexist,
homophobic asshole things at a slam doesn’t mean you are brave or
edgy or pushing the envelope, it just means you’re a racist, sexist,
homophobic asshole.
12] saul williams stopped writing slam poems in ’96. if you’re still
jacking his style from back then, maybe you should stop, too.
13] if you cry every single time you read that sad poem, i will stop
believing you. just read the fucking poem.
14] if you use your poetry to get laid, maybe it won’t turn sour on
you right away, but you will eventually pay for it… by having poetry
written about you that is read in front of your entire community and
posted on every online social media website in existence.
15] writing a poem about the poem you want to write is not really
the same as actually writing the poem. don’t tell us about the poem
you want to write, just write the fucking poem.
16] not all poems have to score 30s. have the courage to write 20s.
17] the scores at poetry slams are a piece of theatre used to keep the
interest of people who think they don’t like poetry. they are for the
audience. they are not for the poets. anyone who takes the scores
seriously needs to quit poetry and take up poker.
18] henceforth, all poems must stop immediately after the fifth
utterance of the word i.
(pause… then walk off stage.)
* lyrics from “kiss off ” by the violent femmes.
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ode to george w. bush (2003)
there are three things in this life that are inevitable: excruciating
pain; endless suffering; and, in the end, george w. bush.
george w. bush is eternal.
like a carbuncle on the ass of god, george w. bush is omnipresent.
like the fetid breath of doom itself, george w. bush is ubiquitous.
like a scallion hoard of bulbous burgomaster in blinding white
diphthong and hairless flexing duotangs, george w. bush is endless.
like curmudgeonly mountebanks wagging their shiny brown fluxus
on gutterwailing thoroughbreds of umbrageous vituperance, george
w. bush is infinite.
like the rotting severed footlimbs of girlfriends numbers 12 & 3
moldering in your bedsheets and squirming blindwhite holy hell,
george w. bush is undying.
like galloping swaths of born-again vegemites with flaming swag
hammery locked tightly in their bony ungues, george w. bush will
always be there.
waiting for you nattering swarms of naysayers and nincompoops,
nabobs and nimbly whores, like lovelorn holy rollers engorged with
armageddon vindaloo, like love gone to pus, like ambergris and
violoncellos and marshall stacks and acid rain, not unlike a kitty
head in the bowling bag of destiny.
yes, not unlike a kitty head in the bowling bag of destiny.
gaze upon him in fear, you silly stupid mortals, you stupid silly
insipid mortals, you vapid jejunum and simian flibbertigibbets,
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you menial moribunds and tepid iguanas, you lame-fisted lovers of
hullabaloo and pork rinds, you bulbous benefactors of babylonian
nipple clamps!
george w. bush towers above you all, grating and witless and bizarre,
wrapped in swaddling clothes and drooling madly, a fistful of asian
tentacle porn in one hand and a pitcher of vanilla coke balanced on
his enormous penis, his filthy rotten penis, his festering and pimpled
penis, his syphilitic and seeping penis, sticking rotten vegetables in
his snotty bunghole and sucking his tears to sunday while the world
licks its wounds.
george w. bush will always be there…
but, like god, he just might not be there for you.
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bpe rap (2003)
my name is big poppa.
my rhymes is improper.
if you try to dive on me,
you’ll do a belly flopper.
i can’t be controlled.
my rhymes is like gold.
if you try to step to me,
you’ll be knocked out cold.
and you know why?
well, i’ll tell you why…
i rock hip-hip
like bare feet rock flip-flops,
like timex got tic-tocs,
like yo momma needs a tic-tac,
and yo sister eats them big macs.
ain’t no slack in my mack.
you’d better jump back,
or i will attack,
and you would not like that.
ruh!
i’m slaying emcees
with my doo-doo rhymin’.
i’m bustin’ out my rhythms
like i bust yo momma’s hymen.
what? you wanna play games?
let’s play simple simon…
simon says, “uhmmm… shut the fuck up!”
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i slam so good, one-two-three,
punk-ass tolstoy got nothin’ on me!
my rhymes are warm wool slippers,
put your cold-ass feets in.
they’ll lock you up like
aleksandr solzhenitsyn!
i’m cookin’ up lyrics like i was a chef, see?
i’ll give you rhymes and punishment like dostoevsky.
before you step to me, you better back the fuck off,
‘cuz i got mo plays than anton chekov,
got more little girlies than vladimir nabokov,
got more winning moves than garry kasparov,
got more poetry in motion than mikhail baryshnikov,
got more funny lines that yakov smirnov.
i got more melody than tchaikovsky,
i got more abstraction than wassily kandinsky,
i know more cat people than nastassja kinski,
and i shit better poetry than robert pinsky.
that’s right! i said it!
i do not regret it!
if my wienie was a rabbit
maybe i would let you… mmm… pet it?
and you know why?
well, let me tell you why!
my name is big poppa.
watch me while i drop a
poem on your dome,
shine it up like chrome,
make you move yo momma
back into a nursing home!
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i’m a slam barbarian,
a pain librarian,
make a cattle rancher
turn into a vegetarian,
make sir lancelot think that he is maid marion,
take a regular n and give it some horns and fangs
make it a scary n.
aww yeah, that shit was so deep it was shallow!
you can’t just understand that, you have to overstand that shit!
peace!
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silver (2004)
if you submerge
a chunk of dry desert soil,
it won’t get wet.
the intensity of its need
insulates it
from the very thing
it needs most.
loneliness
is like that.
forlorn people stink
of misery,
and their intensity
repulses us.
there’s no one more alone
than a person surrounded
by those who refuse to touch them
simply because they need so badly
to be touched.
this society breeds
brothers and sister of tantalus
surrounded by orchards of fruit trees
with wrists that flick at their approach.
chunks of dry desert
shining silver
in puddles of water.
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tigerlily (2004)
a key to understanding her is understanding tigerlily.
she introduced me to tigerlily about two weeks after we met. tigerlily
is what she calls her period, and there’s a magical lilt to her voice
when she speaks of it, and a gravity.
all the girls at the treatment center where she’d spent six months
named their periods. it was a ritual of healing and rebirth, a sacred
ceremony marking the time when her tiny body had healed enough
to bleed again, a celebration that the 75 pounds of flesh wrapping
her thin bones had blossomed to 85 or 90 pounds, just enough
to flick hidden switches in her body and reawaken the dormant
womanhood held captive by hunger.
when she bled again for the first time, she wept ferociously, reclaiming
her body and reconnecting to every curve and hollow, refusing for
good the fight of finger and throat that burned her tongue with acid
and etched the enamel from her smile and distanced her soul from
her flesh.
the other night, we walked to the 24-hour restaurant near campus
holding hands and smiling. as we talked and absentmindedly rubbed
bare legs together under the table like grasshoppers, she picked bits
of my blueberry pancake and plopped them into her mouth, little
bites, and i realized it was the first time i had ever seen her eat.
she still struggles. she’s a vegetarian who skips lunches too often.
she smokes too much. she still drinks diet coke. her 5’1” frame is
all gossamer and willow branches, but there’s a determination in
her gaze that radiates to every limb, a solemn promise she made to
herself to never again drive tigerlily away.
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propers (2004)
this one goes out to those who refuse to be defined, who look at
government forms as a challenge, who see the safe little boxes next
to caucasian and asian, black and hispanic, and make their own
little box labelled all of the above, who scratch out the question
entirely and write their own names in large capital letters, who,
when forced to choose between male and female write instead “see
attached 27-page document detailing why my gender and sexuality
will never fit within the confines of your stupid little boxes.”
this one goes out to those who fight every day for the simple right
to exist: for every gay kid ever beaten up for being gay; for every
straight kid ever beaten up for being gay; for every girl who looks
into the hungry eyes of magazine models and shouts, “i don’t need
the body of a skinny 12-year-old boy to be beautiful!”
for every boy who winces when his friends measure their masculinity
by how many girls they screw over and are man enough to call them
out for it. for every girl who has screamed enough! and marched with
her sisters to take back the night from monsters who would rather
they stay at home afraid.
for every band geek who picked up a guitar or drumsticks or a french
horn instead of a bong, for every poet who picked up a pen instead
of a gun and expressed their anger with ink and not blood, for every
jock who refused to see those physically weaker than them as less
than them, and for every teacher who risked their jobs by simply
being there when no one else would.
this one goes out to you.
to those who refuse to define themselves by the size of their parents’
bank accounts, by the clothes they wear or the music they listen to,
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to those who demand to be defined by their actions not by their
fashions, who can’t wait to turn 18 so they can finally vote those
idiots out of office, who refuse to be passive consumers in this selfcentered nation and throw away their teevees and make their own
movies, who throw out their playstations and make their own video
games, who teach themselves to play their own music and write their
own novels and create their own art.
and most of all… this one goes out to the kid listening right now
who thinks i cannot possibly be talking about them, the quiet kid,
the one who never raises his hand or his voice, the one with no
friends, who’s never been on a date, the one ignored by parents, by
teachers, by other kids, yes, this one goes out to you most of all.
know this…
i understand.
i hear you.
i used to be you.
don’t let anyone say your voice has no value.
raise your voice, kid, and don’t ever stop.
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mission statement (2004)
we are poets, and that lifestyle choice may have destroyed our credit,
yes, it may have destroyed relationships, yes, it may have destroyed
our backs from sleeping on couches between times when we could
afford a place of our own, yes, but oh, the beauty! the soul! the whole
wide world!
we live for that connection between a poet and someone moved to
touch their hand to their chest and whisper “oh… i get it,” between
two people sitting cross-legged on dusty wooden floors bathed in
joni mitchell and candlelight at 3 a.m. heads bowed hands held
knees touching, between the wind and a person alone at a bus stop
whispering his truth over invisible turntable breakbeats from the
shady confines of his hoodie. it’s all poetry — all of it! — every single
breath is scented with poetry!
we will die penniless, but oh the stories! the love! the whole wide
world held limp in the palms of our hands! the smiles on our faces as
we bid you all goodbye with a twinkle in our eyes and so many sweet
sad songs in our hearts!
so many people never get a chance to fly because they never have
the courage to leap blindly stupidly floppingly out of the nest and
bash themselves against all the branches all the way down, then get
up and do it again so many times they feel like they’ll die if they try
again, but that’s the only way to learn how to fly, and every poet
who’s spread their wings and left the bonds of this earth has a body
covered in scars and bruises you feel in every word they speak.
we don’t just write poetry: we live poetry. warm noses on cold
windowpanes leave haiku in frost. blank pages across foreheads
yield truth. we can cut our wrists on your lips and drip psalms on
your tongue. we can’t help it, we are poets.
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people chain themselves to desks and cage themselves in cubicles
and trade their precious hours on this planet for scraps of paper and
a gold watch and some fleeting notion of security, and we are the
crazy ones wasting time with moonbeams and seashores? we’re the
irresponsible one chasing fireflies and making love on rooftops?
fuck that! poetry may be the rose-coloured glasses through which we
see the world, but we get to see everything! we are not allowed to
close our eyes! we do not have the right to remain silent!
we are hopelessly, painfully, ravishingly, terribly, horribly in love with
love and life itself, even when it hurts, even when we cry and beg for
it all to end, even then it’s all so very beautiful and real and perfect
that we carry sunshine in our chests, our rib cages cast shadows on
the blind side of our skin, you can see ghosts dancing in our flesh if
you squint, and we guide ships to rocky shores by toeing the lips of
the ocean and spreading our arms wide.
our goal in life is simple: to be
wide-eyed and breathless at the wonders of the world around us,
and dance naked in the warm summer rain, and laugh and laugh
even when everything sucks, because we won’t always be happy, and
we won’t always be right, and we won’t always be beautiful, but right
here and right now we are young enough to be alive, and all the
stoplights are so green they sprout tendrils that tickle the tops of
passing buses, and the whole wide world is still so full of magic and
possibility it would be an insult not to drink deeply of it.
that’s what we do: we drink deeply of life in full-throated gulps.
that’s who we are: we are poets.
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cats (2004)
why can’t you be more like my cats?
my cats are happy when i come home. they greet me warmly, are
very obviously happy to see me, even wiggle their little tails at me
with anticipation for my touch.
they’re never, like, “where have you been all night long?”
they’re never, like, “what’s this? is this cat hair on your hoodie? you’ve
been hanging out with other cats, haven’t you?”
they’re never, like, “how come nothing but cats leave comments on
your facebook? you’re using your facebook to flirt with other cats,
aren’t you?”
they’re never, like, “who used up all the cell phone minutes calling
sexy granny chat lines?”
they’re never, like, “when are you going to pay me back that $2100
you owe me?”
no, they’re just really, really happy to see me all the time. the only
thing my cats want more than for me to touch them is for me to pick
them up and hold them and whisper cute things into their ears. they
love that shit. why can’t you be more like my cats?
my cats are never cold and distant for weeks at a time. my cats never
roll over and turn their backs to me immediately upon getting into
bed because it’s that time of the year. my cats never say, “don’t pet
me, i have a headache.” my cats never say, “i hate it when your legs
touch me when we sleep because you get me all sweaty.” my cats
never say, “don’t kiss me, your breath stinks!”
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my cats never say, “i hate giving you blow jobs because it takes you
30 minutes to cum and then my jaw all hurts.”
my cats don’t care where i’ve been, all they care is that i’m back,
and that makes them happy, because they miss me when i’m gone,
even when it’s just to go to the bathroom. they love me dearly, and
they have no problems with that. they need me, and this does not
fill them with insecurities. they know i will always be there for them,
and i know they will always be there for me. they love me for who i
am. and they don’t sweat me all the time about looking for a job. and
they aren’t always on my back about my so-called porn addiction.
and if they had been the ones to have bailed me out of jail that one
time, they would’ve been glad to do it, and they would’ve been over
it by now.
my cats love me.
why can’t you be more like my cats?
loving you is like having a great big potty box full of cat shit right
there in the middle of the living room, only there are no cats…
there’s just shit.
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birth control (2004)
dear future ex-girlfriend,
first off, i am so sorry.
i mean, i don’t even know you yet, but if you and i are going to
date sometime in the future and eventually break up, then yeah…
i probably owe you an apology.
i’m sure things started out pretty good.
i probably met you at a poetry slam, right? met you in the break
between rounds after having rocked the mic, and you said, “hey,
good job!” and i said, “hey, wanna be my girlfriend?” and you
probably looked at me with that gleam in your eye shaped just like
me, and that gleam probably looked kinda cute, and kinda witty, and
kinda silly, and kinda charming.
then we kinda… fucked, right? then we kinda tried to build a
relationship around the fact that we had fucked, and only then did
we actually try to get to know each other, right?
and then the gleam kinda dimmed, right?
because you probably found me kinda… high maintenance, right?
you probably noticed that i said i love you more times in a day than
any other guy you’ve ever dated, which, at first, was pretty cool, until
you realized it had less to do with you and more to do with me
hoping for that echoed response i crave from all my audiences, and
that probably made you think i was a wee bit clingy, and that probably
hurt my feelings and made me feel defensive, and that probably
made you feel like i needed to take care of my own shit instead of
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depending on you to take care of it for me, and that probably made
me feel you were cold and distant, and you probably started thinking
i needed therapy to get over my co-dependency shit, and i probably
started thinking you were a mean-spirited bitch and fuck you anyway
because you are so very obviously the one who needs therapy…
and then… i made you laugh by saying something silly and
charming even though you hated me having that power over you,
and everything went back to being warm and wonderful again.
until it wasn’t, again, and it could’ve gone on that way forever, except
something finally snapped, some intrinsic connection was lost, and
we spiralled from there, holding loosely with a grip weakened by the
fading memory of good times we had that got more and more distant
until they were nothing more than poems i once wrote.
i no doubt wrote poems for you, right? and those words probably
made you feel kinda special, right? please know this: even though
those words were recycled from old phrases in old poems about old
lovers, i meant every word.
i hope to meet you again someday, someday after the anger is gone,
maybe bump into each other in the supermarket and chat a bit by
the organic produce, you with your committed life partner, me with
whoever i happen to be writing poetry about at the time, someone
caught between me writing this letter and actually giving it to them.
but that probably won’t happen, since you probably still hate my
guts and have replaced my name in stories you tell your friends with
some cruel nickname i no doubt deserve.
i’m sure i think about you a lot. i must since i probably perform
poems about you all the time at the readings you no longer attend.
i hope every once in a while you play those mixtapes i gave you, the
ones you think i made especially for you, and i hope they make you
smile in spite of yourself.
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be warm.
p.s. i have to admit something: i fucked your sister once. i couldn’t
help it. we were so drunk that one time you were out of town, and
she smelled just like you.
p.p.s. i am so kidding about your sister. i don’t even know if you have
one… yet.
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thoughts on gay marriage (2004)
i don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry each other.
i think any gay people who want to get married should be banished
to a desert island with nothing but a remote control for a teevee, only
there’s no teevee, and even if there were, it wouldn’t matter because
there’s no electricity on the island and no batteries in the remote,
and it’s not even really a remote, it’s an old broken calculator, and
that would serve those gay people right for wanting to get married.
in fact, i think ungay people who want to get married should be
shot… out of a cannon on live teevee in front of a studio audience.
that would be so cool. if you had tivo, you could pause it when they
were in mid-air, then you could rewind it and make them go back
into the cannon, then you could forward it again, and go back and
forth and back and forth, and it would be so funny because it would
look like they were humping the cannon with their whole bodies.
oh, and the straight people, see, should be made to wear red, white,
and blue leather body suits like evel knievel, and it would be patriotic,
and every time someone was shot out of the cannon, the audience
would all rise to their feet and put their hands on their hearts and
sing the preamble to the constitution like on schoolhouse rock, and
after we shot them out of the cannon we could banish them to gay
island, with all the gay people, only they could never take the red,
white, and blue leather evel knievel body suits off no matter how
hot it got, and that’s the way you could tell the gay people from
the straight people because the straight people would all wear red,
white, and blue leather evel knievel body suits and all the gay people
would just be naked all the time and humping each other around
huge bonfires made of all those old broken calculators they’d have
laying around, only they’re so gay they don’t even know they’re not
teevee remotes, they’re so gay they don’t even call them remotes,
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they call them clickers, and the straight people find this so annoying
that they launch a big attack on the gay people and come into their
camps while they’re humping each other and pelt them with rocks
and garbage and the gay people would jump up and start throwing
flaming clickers back at them, and all of this could be broadcast live
on pay-per-view and it could be called battle for gay island, and they
would fight and fight and fight, then we’d cut to commercial, then
we’d be back and they would fight and fight and then godzilla would
come and kill them all by putting them on fire by shooting fire out
of his mouth on them and stomping on them and eating them live
on teevee, and you could always tell when he’d just eaten a straight
person because he’d spit out their red, white, and blue leather evel
knievel bodysuits and lift his head up and do that roar:
ROOOOAOOAOAOAAAWWWOWOOOOOAOAOAOAOOOOOORRRRR!
i don’t think gay people should be allowed to get married, because
this would be way, way cooler.
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i want to hold you (2005)
i want to hold you
like an audience holds its breath
when the trapeze artist lets go.
i want to kiss your knees so weak
the grassy arms of the world
wrap themselves around you
and press your head
to its loamy bosom.
i want to love you
like we’ll never be alone,
like we’re never gonna die,
like all that matters
right here and now
is that we can whisper
promises
on the backs
of our necks
and feel them
before we hear them.
carved on the roof of my mouth
in a language your tongue alone speaks
is one word:
yes.
i want to drink deeply
the beads of sweat that collect
in the hollows of your hips
and tattoo devotion on your ribs
with my lips in glistening script,
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etch a trail of tingles
with gentle taps of my tongue
from the base of your neck
to the tip of your spine
until your belly beckons me
in syllables of sighs.
i want to read psalms
from your open bible,
plant soul kisses
that blossom into heartbeats
on my tongue:
you taste just like god.
i want the river bend of your body to blend
with my ebb and flow and grow
to embrace us and engulf us and
send us cascading over
the edge of the bed to the floor
with the sheets and the blankets
as the cats run for the door.
i want to press my flesh so tightly against yours
our spines entangle and our blood commingles
and your heart
pounds marimba beats
inside my rib cage.
and then i just want to lie there
beneath the glow-in-the-dark stars
on the ceiling
and listen
to the cobalt blue sky
shushing against our window screen
as the first bird of morning
clears its throat.
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oh! canadian fedex lady! (2005)
oh! canadian fedex lady!
the way you giggled
when you caught me beat-boxing
to your hold music
after you tracked my customer’s package
made me want to forever renounce
my american citizenship
and emigrate to the great white north!
oh! canadian fedex lady!
if you are half as cute
as the entire city
of vancouver, british columbia, seemed
the last time i toured through canada,
then you are so very, very cute,
especially if you’re also short
and wear cat’s eye glasses,
because short cute girls who wear cat’s eye glasses
totally kick my ass!
oh! canadian fedex lady!
the fact that you mentioned
how cool it was that bob marley’s buffalo soldier
was playing on my hold music
when i had to talk to my stupid american customer —
who was rude and mean, as most american customers tend to be,
unlike most canadian customers,
who seem every bit as polite as you —
well, that makes me think you are cool, too,
because i like bob marley!
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only i hope you don’t like bob marley too much, as in not enough to
be a smelly, nasty, hippie who also likes crappy jam bands like moe
and leftover salmon and phish… and… fuckin’… phish…
oh! canadian fedex lady!
i loved that you said zed
for the last letter in the alphabet,
and i loved how you ended most of your questions with eh?
and i loved that you asked me for my customer’s postal code,
then giggled and apologized and said,
“oh, duh, you guys say zip code, eh?”
and i imagine when you said that
you shyly tucked your long hair behind your ear
and rolled your big anime eyes,
and i’ll bet those eyes are as blue
as the great hudson bay,
only deeper
and warm.
or, better yet, green
as calgary bluegrass
in the summertime,
only they wouldn’t make me sneeze.
or hazel with little yellow flecks orbiting your irises like
the lights of toronto winking from the surface
of lake ontario.
and even if your eyes are brown —
like mine,
and i hate mine,
canadian fedex lady —
i’ll bet they’d be the loveliest shade of brown since…
pudding…
and i love pudding!
oh! canadian fedex lady!
i love rush! i love neil young! i love joni mitchell!
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i love… uhm… canadian bacon…
although you probably just call it bacon…
unless you’re a vegetarian,
in which case fuck you, bacon! stupid bacon!
oh! canadian fedex lady!
i wish i had given you my website —
www.bigpoppae.com —
so you could check out my poetry
and see that i am witty, and i am charming,
and i have tremendous taste in books, movies, and music.
and we could’ve used your employee discount
to send each other mixed cds for free
that would’ve made us fall crazy in love with each other,
and the next time i was in canada
we could’ve met in a cafe
and gazed lovingly into each other’s pudding brown eyes
as bob marley played
over the coffeehouse stereo,
and we held hands,
and smiled,
and sighed.
but i didn’t, and now…
i will never meet you,
canadian fedex lady!
and i will never know
what colour your eyes are
when it rains,
or what you think of this poem
i just wrote for you
five minutes after we finished our call
as i kept my stupid, rude, mean american customer
on hold the entire time.
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closer to the heart (2005)
when i was in high school, the popular kids didn’t listen to music
simply because they liked it, no, the popular kids listened to music
to enhance their popularity. guys didn’t really like the music of
journey, but the cutest girls loved journey, so if you wanted to make
out back then, you had to at least pretend to like them.
but it didn’t matter what music my friends and i listened to, because
us geeks, dorks, goofs, nerds, poindexters, and neo-maxie zoomdweebies weren’t making out with anybody no matter what music
we listened to, and that freed us to listen to any damn thing we
wanted, and we wanted that righteous power trio from the great
white north, yes, we wanted rush!
sure, rush was girlfriend repellent, but so were dungeons and
dragons and black t-shirts with superheroes airbrushed on the front
and really, really bad bacne! we weren’t cool! our only possible
dating partners were non-player characters! therefore, rush made
perfect sense!
we didn’t just listen to rush… we worshipped them!
rush was led by gary lee weinrib, whose yiddish grandmother
pronounced his name geddy, who would grow up to become geddy
lee, the best bass player in modern rock history. he was cursed with
a high-pitched voice only a yiddish grandmother could love, but that
voice sang of things we could whole-heartedly endorse: princes of
darkness and necromancers and spaceships sucked into black holes,
lords of the ring and trees that fought each other. if goofy-lookin’
geddy lee could get laid with a voice like that — and we just knew he
gettin’ laid any time he wanted — that meant there was hope for us,
the voiceless masses who yearned to be modern day warriors with
mean, mean strides of our own.
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and those life-affirming lyrics were written not by the singer, but
by the drummer, neil peart, who ensconced himself in a fortress of
snares, tom-toms, double-bass drums, timpanis, timbales, crotales,
wind chimes, splash cymbals, crash cymbals, pang cymbals, and
not just one cowbell… but five cowbells! when you saw rush live
– which i did seventeen times between my freshman and senior year
– the only thing you saw of neil peart was the spray of splintered
drumsticks showering the stage like the perseid meteor shower.
and as geddy and neil laid down the beat of our pubescent hearts,
alex was right there with his cherry-red doubleneck gibson guitar
and camel-toed white satin pants. alex, who changed his last name
from zivojinovic to its english translation son of life and became
alex lifeson, whose fingertips furiously fretted six-strings and twelvestrings with surgical precision.
in our teenaged bedrooms that had never witnessed real live girls,
we silenced our loneliness by cranking the best record rush ever
committed to vinyl – 2112 – and wielding broomstick mic stands
and singing along not just to the lyrics, but to every guitar riff, bass
line, and drum fill like our sad, lonely, virginal lives depended on it,
which they did!
long live rush!
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muscleman (2005)
i never wanted a weightlifter’s body,
bulging biceps more granite boulders than meat,
carved by steel and syringes —
useless —
save for poses
and intimidation.
no, i always wanted a swimmer’s body,
perfect poetry in motion,
liquid made flesh,
hairless and streamlined,
muscles taut as drumheads
pounding rhythms on the surface of the water
in a syncopated symphony of grace and power and purpose.
but alas! alack!
obviously, i was graced with neither.
no water has honed these thighs.
no iron has etched these calves.
for i…
have a poet’s body.
hunched-backed and pot-bellied,
skin not bronzed and oiled
but pale and sallow
from basking in the radiation
of a computer screen
in a darkened room.
body fueled not by steroids and energy bars
but by coffee lots of coffee give me some freakin’ coffee
and make it dark and black as the devil’s asshole!
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you see, this body doesn’t pump iron…
it pumps irony
into poem after poem,
slinging sweat on reams
of bright white ink jet paper
and sumo-wrestling demons
by candlelight.
i’ve traded rock hard abs
for a rock solid vocab,
toned trapeziuses
for threadbare thesauruses,
a mountainous gluteus maximus
for a moth-eaten moleskine notebook,
and 20 reps at the bowflex
for the 20-volume set of the oxford english language dictionary.
oh yes, 151 pounds of pure definition!
give me a smoky poetry slam
in a dingy dive bar
over cleanin’ and jerkin’
at a gold’s gym any day!
my fellow slam poets may not be muscle-bound freaks,
but they are multisyllabic monsters,
lifting the spirits of the masses
with the strength of their convictions
and pulling down crooked regimes
with pen strokes.
my muscles propel
my fingertips across keyboards
at 86 truths per minute,
and my eyes
that flick
in the direction of every sigh,
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and my heart,
the strongest muscle in the human body,
that weeps and moans and gnashes its teeth
and fights and loves so hard,
it nearly bursts from my chest
every time it rains.
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napoleon (2005)
this poem begins with a quote:
height is not measured
from the ground up,
but from the sky down.
— napoleon bonaparte.
it always happens.
when i rock a microphone, i feel ten foot tall and luminous, steeltoed and bulletproof, but then i’ll walk triumphantly off stage and
inevitably some tall fucker walks up to me and feels compelled to
state the obvious:
“wow, big poppa e, you’re not very big, now are you?”
well, allow me to fashion a witty retort:
fuck all y’all tall motherfuckers! short… people… rock!
being short is not a shortcoming, it’s a strength! all it takes to turn
a tall person into a whiny little bitch is a roadtrip, but me? i’m
stretching out in the back and going to sleep!
if this venue were engulfed in smoke and flames, all you tall people
would fall to your knees trying to suck up all the good air, but us
short people? we just walk right the fuck out, ‘cuz it’s all good air
when you’re this short!
we short people are built for maximum maneuverability, dodging
through crowds like liquid mercury, avoiding knees and elbows with
acrobatic agility.
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question: if a tall person trips and falls alone in the forest, would
there be a sound? answer: hell yeah, there’d be a sound!
but me? i’m already so low to the ground that falling is like laying my
head on a pillow. and i never bump my head on anything! if i bump
my head on something, that shit’s too fuckin’ low!
and don’t talk to me about reaching stuff, oh hell no, that’s why the
good lord invented chairs and tall people. yo, michael jordan, get
me that tuna can off the top shelf now, bitch!
and yes, the rumours are true. us short guys do indeed have small
penises… that is if you think a throbbing purple eiffel tower of flesh
is small!
tall people are up to no good! all the truly innovative thinkers of the
modern age have been short:
einstein? 5’3”
ghandi? 5’2”
lil’ wayne? 5’1”
shigeru miyamoto?
the creative genius behind donkey kong
and super mario brothers?
4-foot freakin’ 9, bitches!
now, i don’t want you to think that i’m drinking haterade…
that’s not what i’m all about, with me it’s all love love…
(pause)
fuck tall people!
fuck tall people
who stand in front of you at concerts and movies!
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fuck tall people
who take up the whole damn bed like they own it!
fuck tetherball!
i fuckin’ hate tetherball!
whoever invented tetherball is a fuckin’ jackass!
and fuck basketball, too! the only good thing about basketball is
that the nba has corralled those who shall be shot first! oh yes, the
revolution is indeed coming! and the revolution will not be supersized, it will be minimized! and when the short people of this world
unite and rise up, you might not be able to tell…
right away…
but when steel-toed boot shaped bruises appear on long-assed shins
the world over, you will know that me, gary coleman, that kid from
webster, and mini-me and the oompa loompas and prince have finally
had enough of your shit and have begun taking over the world one
footstool at a time!
represent!
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dead horses (2005)
i was molested as a child… now give me a 10.
my mother had to raise me by herself while hooking on street
corners… give me a 10.
the government hates people of colour! and gay people! and
feminists! and ravers! give me a motherfucking 10!
and i’m not going to actually write a poem, oh no, i’m gonna slap
together the most unsubtle images and over-used similes stolen
from every high-scoring slam poem i’ve ever seen and use them
to paint my tragedies with such bold strokes and lurid detail you
will be both repulsed and proud of the strength it takes to admit
them… over and over… on stage after stage… a single tear rolling
down my cheek as my voice cracks with passion during the same…
pregnant… pause… pushing the same worn buttons and espousing
the same hackneyed emotions as every other motherfucker like me.
i dare you to disrespect my pain, because if you do, everyone will
know that you think i deserved to be molested — even if the story
i want you to believe is my truth is actually a conglomeration of
stories i’ve either overheard or made up.
give me a 10, because if you are against me, then you hate america
and the baby jesus, and what did the baby jesus ever do to you, you
fuckin’ heathen?
give me a 10 or every bad choice in my main character’s life will have
been in vain! give me a 10 or this audience will know that you think
watching my best friend die… in my arms… after i shot him up with
that eightball of speed… or dimebag of… heroin… or whatever…
is not fucked up.
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. .. . .
you see, i don’t want you to score my poem.
i want you to score my issue.
and when i come back here next week and drag my dead horse to
the corner of this stage and spend three minutes and ten seconds
beating the living shit out of it, then pass the mic to the next poet so
he can do the same, we can all abandon any pretense of poetry and
simply pit i was molested vs. i was discriminated against vs. george
w. bush is an asshole and force the judges to assign scores to these
ideas rather than the poems used to communicate and explore these
ideas, turning every truly moving human tragedy into just another
strategy to pimp our real or imagined pain for points.
and then we can pat ourselves on the back for rendering yet another
vital form of expression irrelevant by the very people who claim
to be its staunchest supporters, derailing our revolution by simply
writing about a revolution we’ll never have the courage — or writing
skill — to bring to fruition.
and let’s be honest… i don’t really want to change the world…
i just want you to think i do long enough to win.
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. .. .
not drowning, but waving (2006)
when zara cries
she withdraws into herself,
pulls fist-sized knees to her chest
and wraps slender arms tight
around them,
buries her face —
red —
in the tiny hollow she creates
with her whole body,
uses everything she has
to protect herself
from further hurt.
and i am so moved
by the sight of her so small.
i want to hold every bit of her,
whisper tears away,
tell her everything will be okay,
even when we both know it won’t be,
if i can only hold her tight enough
warm enough long enough
with all of me enough
until everything is okay.
i love her so much,
i can stop trains
with my upturned palms.
when we swam galveston bay
in a salty spray of inside jokes and smiles,
wrist-strapped to boogie boards on whitecaps,
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.
. .. .
.
i was always aware of the distance
between us,
aware of her narrow shoulders
pressed against those waves,
the rip tide tugging at my ankles
so eagerly sucking her from my grasp.
and i called to her,
beckoning her closer,
held her hand as the biggest waves broke
over our heads and battered us,
always ready to leap through the current
to grab her ankle
and save her
from washing out to sea.
once or twice
i found myself alone in the water to my neck,
tossed,
eyes blurred with salt and sand and sunscreen,
grasping in vain for my lover’s fingertips
only to look behind me
and glimpse her seaweedy head
pop up near the shore
having just caught the perfect wave
and smiling.
250
U
. .. .
scars, part two (2006)
momma always told me
never look into the eyes of the sun,
but momma
that’s where the fun is. *
there comes a time
in everyone’s life
when they must be allowed
to discover this truth:
the sweetest berries
are in the very heart
of the sticker bush.
it’s the scratches
that make them sweet.
if i’ve learned anything
about life it’s this:
a knee without scars
is evidence
of a life unlived.
children protected from playing in the dirt
grow into sick adults unable to fight
the simplest infections.
parents can’t possibly redeem themselves
for past bad choices
by forcing their children
into closets.
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.
. .. .
.
this will only make them blind
and afraid
and vulnerable,
and it will make them hate you.
you can’t protect me
from my mistakes.
i need them.
i need the protection of callouses.
i need the wisdom of scars.
so,
give me a life full of rope burns and splinters
and heartfelt advice i’m allowed to ignore.
give me shins scraped by pavement
and front teeth cracked by tree limbs
and elbows bloodied into stories worth telling.
at the end of my life
the last thing i want to see
is a long series of safe choices
and measured steps.
give me instead a life filled
with dizzying triumphs fueled
by countless lovely fuck-ups
and wonderfully painful bad choices,
with cockamamie schemes that sometimes actually worked
and stories so outrageous
people never stop sharing them
as their own.
please, god, let my last dying breath
be scented with gentle regret
for epic fails i had the courage to try
and none for things i dared not do.
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. .. .
.
mistakes
are the only things
that have taught me anything,
and i have learned…
a whole lot.
the only lessons worth remembering
are the ones that leave a mark.
* lyrics from “blinded by the light” by mannfred mann’s earth band,
which was a reworking of a bruce springsteen song of the same name.
253
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. .. .
.
ode to dwarf planet 134340 (2006)
there are few things in this life that are strictly black or white.
most issues float somewhere in the middle of a vast sea of grey, open
to a myriad conflicting interpretations.
but i am here to tell you there are such things as absolute truths,
undeniable facts that rise from that wishy-washy sea of opinions and
stand resolutely like venus in a clam shell for all to see.
i am talking about incontrovertible principles that are impossible to
deny, of which i will now list five:
1] the sun will rise, and the sun will set;
2] all who are born will one day die;
3] van halen with david lee roth was vastly superior to van hagar;
4] crunchy peanut butter is not only irrefutable proof of god’s
existence, but it also shows she loves us very much, and people who
like smooth peanut butter hate the baby jesus;
and 5] which is the reason i am here right now, and i am speaking of
the one remaining sterling truth no reasonable person can deny:
pluto
is a freakin’ planet!
so what, a bunch of self-important professors got bored one day and
decided to get back at all the cruel people who wouldn’t date them
in high school by knocking pluto’s standing in the universe down to
dwarf planet and renaming it 134340, and why?
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. .. .
.
because pluto isn’t like all the other planets, pluto’s smaller than
most moons, pluto’s got a bit of a strange orbit, wahhhhh fuckin’
wahhhhh! but really, who in this room has never been considered an
oddball? an outcast? special? let him that hath never been considered
a dweeb cast the first meteoroid!
pluto is like the chubby goth girl lurking at the edge of the solar
system and staring longingly at the cosmic dance floor filled with
all the popular planets. oooh, look at me, i’m saturn, look at my
freakin’ rings! oooh, look at me, i’m jupiter, i’m so deep, look at my
third eye!
all these planetary john lennons and paul mccartneys vying for
celestial attention while poor ringo gets pushed to the back of the
universal stage. and let me tell you… without ringo, the beatles
would’ve amounted to nothing! ringo put the beat into the beatles,
and without him, they would’ve just been the ‘les.
without chubby goth girls, gay high school boys would never have
bosoms to cry upon! i would’ve never had bosoms to cry upon!
pluto is the symbol for every kid who’s never fit in. we need pluto
as proof that no matter how small you are, how separated from
mainstream society, how abnormal, how weird you are…
you, too, can be someone worth looking up to.
you, too, can be a planet.
i don’t care what they say, i don’t give a goddamn about any socalled science, forget science, this is beyond science, this is about
belief, and i believe that pluto was a planet long before these bitter
eggheads were mewling and puking on their mother’s knees, and
when they are all dead and buried along with their hoity-toity ideas
and the universe has forgotten their blink of existence, pluto will still
be out there…
255
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. .. . .
watching over this tiny… blue… gay planet from afar like the
chubby goth girl best friend it always was. call pluto what you will,
but remember this…
a rose by any other name is still a freakin’ planet.
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. .. . .
incantation 4: redneck (2007)
i don’t want to wear
white anymore
give me that redneck
my great grandad wore
while earning a quarter an hour
working central californian cotton fields
twenty cents an hour for potatoes
two and half cents
for a box of peaches
collected
in the scalding sun
so his barefoot family of 12
wouldn’t starve
give me those rednecks
packed in the back of rickety model t’s
and mule-drawn carts
with every possession
a cacophony of hungry children
aunties, memaws, cousins
everyone who could stand on the runners and
hang from the rumbleseat
by the calloused tips of their fingers
as they crawled down the back
of the mother road, route 66
you see
white doesn’t remember
the acres of rich, black farmland laid waste
by shifting sands
evicting generations
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. .. . . .
and erasing histories
in the space of a season
white knows nothing of
border crossings in the silence of starlight
halted by los angeles police officers with shotguns
guarding every road, every bridge, every river
leading into the golden state
“okie go home,” they shouted,
“go back where you came from!”
“we already got ten men for every field job, now go home, okie,
and take your filthy, lice-ridden litter with you!”
newspapers warned of
migrant hordes invading kern county
and they weren’t coming from mexico
they snuck over the arizona border
from shamrock, texas,
and godebowl, oklahoma
my family
my white family
while signs on every store
announced the owners would sooner
serve dogs than okies
you didn’t just say that word
you spat it
then ground it into the dust
with the toe of your boot
redneck
recognizes the blood running through my veins
pumped from the hearts of the native american woman
and german fur trapper who began my family in america
blood
258
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. .. . . .
worked into the soil surrounding
california bergs like bakersfield and arvin and lamont
blood
that pulsed through hard-working families
forced to live in dirt-floored tent cities
and squatter camps that ringed towns like weed patches
redneck
remembers white schoolchildren
being taught
that okies
were filth
okies
were scum
okies
were not white
they were animals that bred like vermin
and over-ran your cities
and infected your children
and drove workmen’s wages
into the dirt through which they crawled
and yes
we were eventually allowed
the privilege of our white skin
through hard work and persistence
we were accepted
into a society
that even today
deprives people of colour
the right to live among equals
but white doesn’t recognize
the shared struggle to belong
okie and nigger are two sides of the same filthy coin
that is the need of a privileged society
259
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. .. . .
.
to find an other to blame for its ills
and push to its edge
and crush under the boot of prejudice
i have no pride in being white
that phrase assumes silver spoons
in the sepia-toned mouths
of the okies and rednecks whose sacrifice
allows me the freedom to be a poet
who writes about their struggles
rather than engages in them
yes, i benefit from white privilege every day
but do not forget
my neck —
as much as i’ve tried
to wash it clean —
is red
260
H
. .. . .
.
falling in like (2007)
you make me feel… goofy.
goofy like i blush when someone mentions your name.
goofy like i have a bzillion things i wanna tell you when you’re not
around, but face-to-face i just stare at my toe making circles on the
ground, like i’m all thumbs and no place to put them, like i just
wanna write you a note that says:
do you like me? ❑ yes ❑ no ❑ maybe
whatever random cool i’ve been able to harness leaps from my
grasp when you enter the room, and i feel old school, and by that
i mean grade school, like back in the day when the space between
wanting to touch someone’s hand and actually touching it could
hold lifetimes of passionate yearning.
girl?
i don’t wanna make out with you… i wanna make a fort with you,
right in the middle of the living room with all the sheets and all the
blankets and every chair in the whole house, a soft labyrinth scented
with fabric softener and hot chocolate with marshmallows, lying
on our tummies on the avocado shag carpeting and eating golden
grahams right out of the box.
we’d be the best spellers in all the sixth grade spelling bee, and we’d
spend our recesses in the library quizzing each other over dueling
dictionaries and encyclopedias and having cutthroat scrabble wars,
and you would always accuse me of cheating, but i still swear that
ishkabibble is a real word!
261
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. .. . .
.
i would trade my grape jelly sandwich for matthew’s fuji apple to
switch with mikey’s cherry fruit roll-up to swap with fat andy’s
peanut butter cup — even though i am allergic to peanuts — just so i
could trade your favourite candy for your grape jelly sandwich.
during art class, i would draw dr. suess landscapes of fire engine red
grass and royal purple trees just so you could use the green crayon
as much as you wanted.
people would talk about us… and we would let them.
and if you got the chicken pox, i would ride my 10-speed across
town on a saturday and climb in through your bedroom window to
hang out with you while your parents were shopping so i could get
chicken pox, too. then we could both stay home from school and talk
on the phone all day long and watch game shows and twilight zone
reruns together and take breaks only for dinner and the bathroom
until it was bed time and we whispered into the phone under the
covers in the dark until we got really sleepy. and i would say, “are
you asleep?” and you would say, “yesssss…” and a little while later
i would ask, “are you awake?” and you wouldn’t say anything, and i
would just lie there listening to the sound of your breathing.
on my homemade valentine’s day card, i would write i like you in
sparkles and glue, only my handwriting is so bad, all my k’s look like
v’s, but we decide that’s better anyway… i live you.
we’d make pinky swears while biting our thumbs, cross our hearts
and hope to die and make promises with words like always and
forever and never ever ever, promises you can only make when
you’re 11 and don’t know any better, back when three weeks at
summer camp was an eternity and a change of schools a disaster,
back before pimples, before underarm hair, before bra straps and
make-up, back before graduation and college and graduation and
real life, back before resumés and jobs and careers and mortgages
and marriage and divorce and debt and disappointment…
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. .. . .
.
back when summers… lasted… forever…
and our very first kiss… on the cheek… was the most awkward and
scary and wonderful thing in the whole wide world.
that’s how i like you… like… a lot.
so, which is it?
❑ yes
❑ no
❑ maybe
263
S
. .. . .
.
to the barista at the cafe down the street (2007)
it’s not that you called me ugly.
this skin of mine has draped my weary bones for two score years
and change, and i have become quite accustomed to its imperfect fit.
the simple fact that you don’t possess the eyes to see my instrinsic
beauty says so much more about you than it ever could about me.
and it’s not that you attempted to cast doubt upon my hygiene,
because i am very secure in my daily regimen — which includes at
least two teeth brushings, one flossing, a hot shower in the morning,
a liberal swipe of deodorant under each pit, and q-tip swabbings in
each ear. in addition, i wear clean clothing washed with hot water
and detergent and dosed with ocean breeze fabric softener.
now, while it is true i eschew perfumes and colognes, i do favour
scented oils. as a matter of fact, i was wearing a delightful mix of
ginger, amber, and sandlewood on the day in question, and several
people commented on the faint but unmistakable scent of nag
champa incense emanating from the fabric of my black hoodie.
and i certainly was not bothered by your reference to my height — a
remark clearly meant to be scathing, even withering — or by your
surprisingly vocal assertion that my sexual prowess was no doubt
hindered by my pitiful endowments — a claim that, really, only serves
to underline your laughable ignorance on that lengthy subject and
about which you should check with your sister for confirmation.
and i can honestly say that your observation about my thinning hair
was not only petty, but also entirely ineffective as an insult. as a man
who has been shaving his head since you were mewling and puking
on your grandma’s knee, i have come to grips with the fact that i am
and forever shall remain follically challenged.
264
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. .. . .
.
no, none of that bothered me, not even when you claimed that i
regularly had sexual relations with my mother — a claim i dispute,
by the way — and not even when you charged that i do not know the
identity of my biological father.
what did bother me was your absurd expectation of a substantial
tip for that lukewarm chai latte made with whole milk rather than
my requested almond milk, a lukewarm chai latte hidden beneath
three knuckles of foam for which you charged me $5.75 despite the
listed price of $3 plus 50 cents for the almond milk, the lukewarm
chai you made only after starting and finishing two conversations
with random cute boys in skinny jeans as i stood there waiting and
listening to the awful hipster metal you played over the loudspeakers
at pete townshend tinnitus shredding levels.
this, dear heart, indicates an elevated level of either arrogance or
ignorance on your part that i find extraordinarily grating.
in the future, i suggest actually fulfilling a paying customer’s order
promptly and correctly before loudly questioning the size of their
tip, and should that customer balk at relinqueshing a bigger tip
because you have totally screwed up said order, i would suggest that
screaming at that customer and calling him, and i quote, a fat smelly
balding needle-dick motherfucking ugly midget bastard is probably
not going to garner the hoped for additional tip.
i appreciate this opportunity to clarify this situation, and i wish you
the best of luck in life and love. i will not, however, be frequenting
your coffeehouse any time in the near future. or distant future.
sincerely,
big poppa e
p.s. it’s actually a good thing you didn’t make my chai very hot,
because i’ll bet second degree burns on your hipster asshole face
would have been much worse than the soggy myspace haircut you
got when i threw my drink in your face, you nasty skank whore.
265
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. .. . .
.
neurotika (2007)
fuck falling in love! i am so bored with love! from now on, if i’m
gonna fall at all, i wanna fall insane! fuck meeting for idle chit-chat
over coffee, dollface, let’s cut directly to the scene where we fornicate
like two rabid skunks right here on this stage in front of everybody!
i’ll write a poem about it called this skank i fucked this one time!
to hell with caution! let’s wrap the anchor of our love around our
necks and dive off the golden gate bridge and strangle each other all
the way down to the bottom of san francisco bay until we die! with
our eyes open! it will be romantic! like the titanic!
let’s write epic odes to each other consisting of nothing more than
the word fuck over and over again, then let’s tattoo them on our
backs with the sharpened tip of a guitar string dipped in burnt
styrofoam… like they do in prison… which is what our relationship
will be, a prison from which there is no escape! it will be just like
death row, only without the anal rape… unless you’re into that sort
of thing, in which case it will be exactly like death row!
i want us to file restraining orders against each other requiring 100
yards between us at all times, then i want us to stand at either side
of a football field and glare at each other as we masturbate furiously
in the end zones and shriek obscenities at each other: fuck you, you
fucking fuck!
i wanna sue you for mental cruelty, then i wanna spend my settlement
on a diamond engagement ring etched with the words i love you,
you filthy whore!
i don’t want to collect a shoebox full of mementos! i wanna stuff
a casket with every lawsuit, court order, summons, and concealed
weapons permit generated by this doomed relationship, and then
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. . . .. .
i wanna be locked inside it and buried alive… with you on top of
me… until we die of suffocation… with our eyes open… you filthy
fucking whore!
i wanna sever all connections with everyone i know the entire time
we are ruining each other’s lives, and when it’s finally over, i want
to crawl back home on my broken fingernails — all pale and holloweyed — and have people wonder… where the hell i’ve been… for
the past two weeks… and i’ll simply stare off into the distance and
rasp, the horror… the horror…
fuck love. love hurts too goddamned much. if you’re gonna bother
liking me at all, just fucking destroy me.
267
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. . . .. . .
mixtape genius (2008)
i am not an arrogant man. my tragically low self-esteem keeps any
delusions of grandeur in check. however, there is one thing at which
i am better than anyone in this room.
i am a mixtape genius!
i spin tunes like monsoon winds blow typhoons! make foolish DJ’s
like you look buffoon! when i brew my mixtape voodoo for you, boo,
you’ll swoon!
i mix melodies with memories that sway your bodies like coconut
trees in the ocean breeze. i blend heartbeats with drumbeats ‘till
fleets of bare feets crack concrete city streets with hard heel beats.
i twist turntable tornados with whirlwinds of spin and furiously flip
faders to and fro for surround sound that astounds.
i will conjure the bony ghost of a bebop bassman sliding all silverlike towards you, pure mississippi blues hovering inches from the tip
of your nose with gap-toothed gold-plated grin and luminous arms
that curl around your body like incense smoke around a long lost
lover, frozen fingertips furiously fretting up and down your spine in
a blur of raindrop-tipped arpeggios tracing the arc of your backbone
from neck to hip and back again with shivers coaxing marimba beats
from your ribcage in sultry samba tempos.
i be a rainy day audio renoir bending reverberations into melodic
brushes dipped in ella fitzgerald scatting blues and jimi hendrix
stratocaster blacks, then i go picasso throw michael jackson solo
with miles davis horn blow, paint the skies with billie holiday’s cries
with charlie parker flying by, krylon the sonic canvas with rakim and
outkast, slash it all with sharpened hooks by radiohead and talking
heads, then paint it red with portishead and the grateful dead.
268
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. . . .. . .
i am a connoisseur of cold cuts, a master chef of ghetto blaster
base clefs, tossing ballads like salads, chopping breakbeats like
sweetmeats. i’ll julienne jazz and flash fry it in funk, season it with
tribal drums and serve it up as crunk. i makes my mixtapes saucy like
emeril lagasse’s in my posse. bam!
i will blend a chunk of thelonious monk with a hunk of old school
punk, stir it around ‘till it sounds profound, make you see babies like
ultrasound! allow me to expound…
you will not play my mixtape… bitches, my mixtape will play you!
i’ll make you dance marionette on the ends of guitar strings, pluck
power chords from your hamstrings, tie ribbons of rhythms in
festoons from your heartstrings… ain’t nothing but a chicken wing!
and before you dare dismiss me as a point-and-click dj mouse clicking
mixes in itunes all day, typing love into search engines and dragging
megabytes of music across desktops and burning cds with simplicity
stop, remember this: when i say mixtape, bitches, i mean mixTAPE!
i mean old school 90-minute cassette tape, 45 per side, tdk all the
way, metal position with the tab clicked out so you can’t tape over it!
like back in the day when you actually had to listen to every song all
the way through! making a mixtape took all saturday afternoon!
and when you grace your stereo with my mixtape, strap on your
big fat padded dj ear goggles, press play, lay back, relax, allow the
divinci code of my mixtape odes flow slo-mo like molasses kisses,
you’d best remember this, missus.
that feeling you get? giddy in your midriff? that whispers of summer
skies and fireflies and bicycle tires and campfires down by the lake?
make no mistake! take whatever flights of synesthetic fancy you feel
and multiply them ten-fold! because when i molded my mixtape
voodoo for you, boo, i… was holding back!
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. . . .. .
.
mementos (2008)
free meals on airplanes.
smoking sections on airplanes.
smoking sections anywhere.
the avon lady.
tupperware parties.
s & h green stamps.
door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen.
encyclopedias.
elevator attendants.
gas station attendants.
full-serve pumps.
ethyl gasoline.
answering machines with mini-cassette tapes.
rotary phones.
princess phones.
home phones.
ten-cent phone calls from phone booths.
phone booths.
collect calls.
long distance charges.
anonymous crank calls.
telegrams.
morse code.
the smell of fresh purple mimeograph copies.
typewriter ribbon.
typewriters.
carbon copies.
wite-out.
erasable typing paper.
writing letters.
licking stamps.
saturday mail.
270
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. . . .. .
24-hour kinko’s.
kinko’s.
zines.
slide rules.
l.e.d. calculators.
computer punch cards.
cassette tape drives.
floppy discs.
zip drives.
firewire.
the sound of a 2400-baud dial-up modem.
the sound of a dot matrix printer.
library card catalogs.
microfiche.
drive-in movie theatres.
laserdisc movies.
vhs movies.
betamax movies.
mixtapes on actual cassette tapes.
cassette tapes.
cassette singles.
8-track tapes.
cd long boxes.
CDs.
45 rpm records.
records.
record stores.
record companies.
the walkman.
the discman.
grunge.
radio stations that don’t suck.
music videos on mtv.
black and white televisions with l3 channels
and rabbit ear antennas.
black and white film.
polaroid film.
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.
. . . .. .
.
110 film.
flash cubes.
developing your snapshots at the drugstore.
the television repairman.
the milkman.
the iceman.
doctors who make house calls.
daily newspapers delivered to your doorstep
by l2-year-olds on l0-speed bikes.
l0-speed bikes.
newspapers.
banana seats.
sissy bars.
roller skates with metal wheels.
lawn darts.
clackers.
marbles.
cap guns.
fully-posable g.i. joe with fuzzy hair and kung fu grip.
big wheels.
stretch armstrong.
easy bake ovens.
snoopy sno-cone machines.
saturday morning cartoons.
comic books for a quarter.
video games for a quarter.
pinball machines.
arcades.
candy cigarettes.
penny candy.
pull-tabs on sodas.
new coke.
crystal pepsi.
zima.
the brontosaurus.
the ozone layer.
pluto.
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the smell of the back of your neck.
the sound of your voice inches from my ear.
the warmth of your body pressed against mine.
the salty taste of your tears on my lips.
washing your back.
cooking you breakfast.
the last time
we made
love.
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the crush (2009)
the cute girl at the coffeehouse who serves you lattes every morning
is afraid of you. when you walk into the room, the soft skin of her
slender arms sprouts gooseflesh.
you think she’s shy, the way she lowers her gaze as you approach the
front counter. you think she might fancy you, the way she whispers
as she asks if you want whole milk or skim, foam or no foam, a stirrer,
a lid.
the sound of your much-larger-than-necessary tips sliding from your
calfskin wallet into the open mouth of her tip jar makes her think of
a stiff leather belt pulled through the loops of dirty denim jeans.
she has told her co-workers about you. they have assigned you
nicknames. they all keep watch and warn her when they spy your
loping gait, so she can slip into the back and hide behind the swinging
door of the storeroom until they signal your retreat.
that day you caught her leaning unawares near the bus tub overflowing with coffee mugs and asked her what music was playing over
the loudspeakers, she winced, hating the fact that she had lowered
her guard, loathing that she was obliged to tell you the name of her
favourite band. she has not listened to them ever since. she wants no
reminder of you hounding her day like dogshit on the bottom of her
pink converse hi-tops.
she purchased pepper spray on the internet and keeps it in the breast
pocket of her apron at all times, half-hoping for a reason to empty
the canister into your eyes, wishing you’d lunge for her throat with
spit on your lips as she butters a toasted bagel with a butcher knife.
but you don’t.
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you simply order your morning double-tall-soy-no-foam-decaf
latte, tip a few bucks more than you have to, and leave with a
smile, wondering absentmindedly if you should ask for her phone
number.
every morning.
while she.
holds.
her breath.
and waits impatiently for the sound of the front door snapping shut
behind you.
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she never really loved you (2009)
she never really loved you
not really
she only tolerated you
as long as her fear
of being alone
exceeded the bother
of leaving you
she stayed
biding her time
jobs
hobbies
favourite teevee shows
friends
you never knew
how she’d stare at you
and see right through
to the wall behind you
a mimsy memory haunting
her small apartment
you were unprepared
to come home that day
to find one less toothbrush
half-empty bureau drawers
indentations on the carpet
slightly paler squares on whitewashed walls
a postcard on the fridge
of a songbird
frozen in flight
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your friends all knew
it had been a long time coming
but you were taken off guard
and you mourned her absence
but she
felt free
you will think of her
as the one who got away
but she can’t wait
to forget your name
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beardo (2009)
i find myself looking at these times of economic hardships and
romantic disappointments, and i realize i have come to a point
reached by many a beleaguered man,
a point where the only appropriate response to all the bullshit is:
fuck it! i’m growing a beard!
my beard will be a statement: the struggle to please you is over!
growing a beard is a rite of passage, proof you’re not some girly
man capable only of some fussy little metrosexual chinstrap like a.j.
from the backstreet boys, no! i’m talking about an uncontrollable
wildman beard! a feral burly man beard! burly!
when you begin to cultivate a truly barbaric man-bush, you join a
long woolly history of beardos before you who allowed their facial
hair to fly unfettered and free!
walt whitman!
rubeus hagrid!
fat jim morrison!
the lunch lady in middle school!
and walker texas ranger himself… chuck norris!
chuck norris’ beard doesn’t hide a weak chin,
it hides another fist with which to pummel you!
my beard will not be some scratchy tumbleweed of a beard, nay!
my beard will be a welcoming luxurious fleece bathed in exotic
camel’s milk shampoos and smoothed by silken conditioners.
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come, my love, allow the lush tendrils of my beard to surround our
naked bodies with the scent of sandalwood and ambergris and warm
us to sleep as only a soft blanket of pubic-like facial hair can!
yes, sometimes i’ll get food caught in my beard, but it will only be
the finest cuisine.
last tuesday… pate de fois gras… here. (point to left cheek)
yesterday… fillet mignon… here. (point to right cheek)
last night… your mom… here! (point to mouth)
and to those women who say they don’t like guys with beards, i say
no! i will not trim my voluminous cookie-scraper mustache because
it tickles! i’m a tickly motherfucker!
no, i will not tame my wolverine-like mutton chops because they
chafe the insides of your thighs! if you’re gonna ride this cowboy,
you gotsta bring chaps!
in the end, if i can’t find a women strong enough to love me for the
hirsute man i am, well then fuck it! because the biggest fans of guys
with beards… are guys with beards! and i say bring ‘em on, all you
leather daddies and butch biker bears, let me be the cuddle cub of
your wildest furry fantasies!
let us press our bewhiskered cheeks together like two velcro-covered
teddy bears and whisper roughly into each other’s ears: breakin’ the
law, breakin’ the law…*
i’ll curl my pinkie around the belt loop of your tight moose-knuckle
inducing leather ass pants, and we shall mount your harley chopper,
and we shall ride into the sunset bellowing: beardos forever!
* lyrics from “breakin’ the law” by judas priest.
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how to make love (2009)
if i had a son, and he came to me as a young man for advice about
sex… this is probably what i would tell him.
l) buy condoms. buy them and keep them with you at all times, and
use them before you are asked to use them, and use them every
time. the peace of mind you allow your partner will free her to be
vulnerable with you, and that, my son, is exactly what sex is about.
condoms are sexy. in fact, call buying condoms foreplay.
footnote: if you’re too embarrassed to buy condoms, you’re not
ready to have sex.
2) kissing is not merely foreplay. spend entire evenings making out
on the couch while fully clothed. believe me, dry humping rocks.
3) sex is not just about friction; it’s about emotion. don’t worry
about trying to find her clitoris, find her heart, then she’ll help you
find her clitoris.
4) if you really want to know how to please a woman, ask her how she
masturbates. then do that. a lot. if she claims she doesn’t masturbate,
offer to take her shopping for a vibrator so you can both learn the
vocabulary of her body together.
5) don’t put anything in her butthole you wouldn’t want in your own.
footnote: try a pinkie finger; it’s kinda awesome.
6) when you go down on her — and you will go down on her, and if
you are my son, you will be amazing at it! — tell her how good she
tastes. stop in the middle and kiss her deeply so she knows how good
she tastes, and do the same when she goes down on you.
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7) a simple google search yields l,347 euphemisms for male
masturbation, yet only 23 for female masturbation. if guys spent
less time jackin’ off and more time jillin’ off, the world would be a
happier place.
8) everything you need to know about the importance of the clitoris
is in the movie star wars. your partner’s body is the death star, and
you are luke skywalker piloting your penis-shaped x-wing fighter
deep inside her trench. remember, 70 percent of all death stars
cannot be blown up through penetration of the trench alone. it must
be through focused contact with that little exhaust port at the top of
the trench, otherwise any explosions you experience will be merely
hollywood special effects.
9) just because you’ve cum doesn’t mean she has, so don’t you dare
cum before her. concentrate on pleasing on your partner. don’t worry
about getting yours. you’re a guy… you always get yours. your job is
to make sure she’s getting hers.
l0) if sex with your partner lasts no longer than this poem, you are
not making love… you are masturbating with her body instead of
your hand. shame on you! go back to step one! you have a lot of
learning to do!
love,
dad.
p.s. if you are gay, son, know that i love you and am proud of you for
telling me about it. i don’t know anything about boys, but i am sure
we can figure something out together.
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what i mean (when i say i love you) (2009)
wanna know what i hate? poets. wanna know why? erotic poetry.
because most of the happy horseshit being passed off as erotic poetry
these days is nothing more than lists of body parts and what they
intend to do with them, interspersed with endless repetitions of the
word love love love… as if it actually meant something.
that’s not sexy, that’s lazy. if you can’t write a love poem without
using the word love, then you are not a poet; you are a greeting card
salesman.
well, i’m here to take i love you back, so when i say it, it won’t be
some vague erotic notion, no, when i say i love you, i mean as long
as i’m around, you will always have someone to pick you up from
the airport. that is sexy!
and you will always have someone to help you move your heavyassed couch up three flights of narrow apartment complex stairs,
and you will always have someone to hold your hair back out of
your face while you regurgitate margaritas into the bathtub. and i
know it’s the bathtub and not the toilet because you think sticking
your face in a toilet is nasty, and i know this not because i love you
and this knowledge has magically seeped into my brain through love
osmosis, no, it’s because i pay attention!
you wanna know what love is? i will tell you what love is! i will go to
the corner store at 3 in the morning on my bicycle in the rain to get
you tampons! and i will remember to buy the pint of chunky monkey
you didn’t even ask for because i know you like ice cream when your
cramps are bad. and i know this because i’ve got your back! and by
that, i mean the little space between your shoulder blades you can
never reach when it itches really bad? i freakin’ got that!
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when i want you to know i love you, i won’t waste money on flowers
— oh look honey, here’s something beautiful you can watch die!
— no, i’ll sneak over to your apartment while you’re at work and
clean your kitchen. that’s sexy!
and i won’t allow our arguments to become fights because i will
spend more time listening than simply waiting for my turn to talk,
more time giving you the benefit of the doubt than picking at old
wounds to score points, more time learning from my mistakes than
repeatedly apologizing for them.
it’s easy to love you when we are so beautiful, but i will love you
even when things get really fucking ugly. i will love you even when
i fucking hate you.
and should the time come when it’s time to move on, i will let go.
and when you introduce me to your new boyfriend, i will tell you he
seems like a nice guy, and i’m happy for you… even though your
name is tattooed on the center of my chest so no matter how hard
someone else presses their body against mine, you will always be
closer to my heart.
and i mean that metaphorically…
because i ain’t gettin’ a fuckin’ tattoo…
when i say i love you, i mean it.
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pretty girls make me sad (2010)
mine is the art of the awkward pause, the comedy of mortification,
the joy of realizing you have no idea what to do next. i am the king
of unrequited love, the prince of crushes, the emperor of yearning
from afar.
i fall in love with everybody and scatter pieces of my broken heart all
over this country hoping one day i can follow their trail home, but
the moment they touch the ground, a poem sprouts, and birds make
nests in their leafy words. i have planted forests that pulse and throb
with the rhythm of my blood. i am johnny appleheart, and i am lost
amongst these trees.
and the wind whistles through the holes in my chest. if i twist just
right, it makes the most beautifully sad music, so painfully lovely, so
horribly alive, this symphony of sighs.
i spend more time looking at the tips of my toes than i do the face of
the moon, and i spend more time on both than i do looking people
in the eyes. i didn’t used to be this way. i used to wear my heart on
my sleeve, but it made my wrists too bloody.
now, i am clumsy around girls. i never know what to say. they just
smell so good. i flirt with mixtapes and poetry and have no idea what
constitutes a first date. i always have to ask: is this a first date?
it hardly ever is.
i hug every girl i meet so i can share heartbeats with someone…
even for a moment. i have fallen madly in love with 114 girls who
were absolutely perfect for me, except for one fatal flaw…
they didn’t love me back.
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i keep hoping for someone to cross a crowded room and stand
brazenly before me and reach out and hold my face in her palms
and smile with her eyes and say, “there you are! i have been looking
everywhere for you! now that i have found you, i promise i will never
let you out of my sight!”
but no one ever does.
i am a little kid lost in the mall and crying, clutching at the hems of
passing skirts and mouthing the name of someone i’ve never met.
are you my true love?
no, said the steam shovel, i am not your true love.
oh, my sweet heart-shaped girl, where are you? follow my poems
home to me, my scallywag, my succotash, my sweet potato pie.
i am so tired.
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my undying love (2010)
i have begun
strengthening my body
through strict diet and exercise.
i am mastering the arts
of hand-to-hand combat
and outdoor survival.
i have amassed an arsenal
of axes, baseball bats, and assault rifles.
i have arc-welded thick plates of steel
to the circumference of my van
and stockpiled enough canned food and medical supplies
to last
for months.
so,
should we become separated
when the zombie apocalypse strikes,
i will be prepared to plow through
the scuffling hordes of the undead
across this entire country
until i find you again.
i will camouflage my living smell
with the rotting viscera
of my undead foes.
so i can shuffle
shoulder to shoulder amongst the stumbling corpses
and scour abandoned cities for signs of you —
your hair ribbon
your locket
your left shoe —
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allowing my lovelorn wails
to blend with their soulless moans for brains.
i will prowl the radio waves
for hints and allegations
of your continued existence,
broadcasting your name over and over
into the crackling static,
begging you
to hold on
for one more day, bebe,
hold on
because i am coming for you.
i will visit every enclave of survivors
just long enough to replenish my supplies
of fresh water and biodiesel
and show them
your tattered snapshot,
your warm brown eyes,
your curls.
and should i find you
too late,
your soft skin gone putrescent,
your lovely smile twisted into rictus,
the dirty tendrils
of your lavender sweater
dragging behind your shuffling gait…
…oh my love…
i will fall to my knees,
tear open my flak jacket,
and expose my bare chest to you.
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and as you rip through my flesh,
crack open my breast bone,
and gnaw upon my beating heart,
i will rejoice
as my body
enters yours
one last time.
and as the dying embers of my life begin to flicker and smoke,
i will kiss your forehead
with the muzzle
of my sawed-off shotgun,
and i will gently,
lovingly,
release your soul from this hell on earth.
and then i will hold you
as long as i can
before finally
setting
myself
free.
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confessions (2010)
confession one
if every person i’ve ever wished dead were to burst into flames,
the entire planet would be populated solely by cute baristas, and i
wouldn’t be around to write poetry about them.
confession two
the last girl i tried to date kicked me to the curb because i toss and
turn in my sleep. the last two nights i spent at her apartment, she
ended up on the couch. she said it was a deal-breaker, then her jack
russell terrier bit my big toe. we have not spoken since.
confession three
i don’t really like poetry.
confession four
i recently discovered i might be a father… biologically. this girl i
dated for three months when we were 16 friended me on facebook
and told me her 24-year-old son has my nose. i looked at his photo
on her profile. there was my nose. this is disturbing to me, especially
since he also has three kids. i may have to update my stage name.
confession five
the girl i had a crush on when i was a freshmen in high school is
now a grandmother. my first love is a conservative christian who
campaigns against gay marriage. i hate facebook.
confession six
i kinda wanna find out if that 24-year-old kid is mine by doing a dna
test, but i don’t wanna buy one of those take-home tests from the
drugstore. i wanna go on jerry springer. i would tear off my shirt and
pace the stage while yelling at the audience: you don’t know me,
bitches! you don’t know me!
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confession seven
i sometimes steal spices from the supermarket. i’m not proud of this.
i pick the most expensive versions of the spices i want, because if
i’m going to jail for shoplifting, it might as well be for the organic
oregano. my ethics are suspect, but i can make a splendid spaghetti
sauce. this says a lot about me.
confession eight
i checked out the myspace page of the 24-year-old who might be my
kid. he says he likes drinkin’, fuckin’, and beatin’ up fags. i am quite
sure he would not appreciate me. i only like one of those things.
confession nine
when i can’t think of anything new to write, i make numbered lists
and call them poems.
confession ten
i knew the girl from high school for the summer of 1984. she was
a heavy metal chick with tight wranglers and feathered hair. our
favourite song was rock you like a hurricane by the scorpions. we
never used condoms. we were 16. the last time we had sex, she
asked me to cum inside her. i did. i thought it was reckless and sexy.
i’m not sure what she thought. i broke up with her two weeks later
because her redneck boyfriend skylar was getting out of juvie and
telling everybody he was gonna kick my ass for fucking his girlfriend
all summer long. that was august of 1984. her son was born april of
1985. you do the math.
confession eleven
if she had told me she had gotten pregnant and she suspected it was
mine, i’m sure the baby would never have been born. he’s 24 years
old and has no idea i exist.
confession twelve
i have no idea how to end this poem.
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the word (2010)
me and god?
we used to be close. we used to be buds. we used to talk, man, we
used to really talk. but we had a falling out, a big one, and we haven’t
talked much since.
and i miss it sometimes. i miss church. i miss going somewhere on a
weekly basis to gather with a community of like-minded people who
raise their voices as one and share ideas about life and death and
everything in between.
and that’s why i’m here in this cathedral of spoken word.
out there, the voice of god might be hard to hear, but at the poetry
slam, every poet’s a preacher ministering the gospel to congregations
of the faithful. we come to praise the power of the almighty word and
its ability to pry apart the clenched fists of our hearts and empower
us to wrestle nameless demons in our bellies and imprison them in
notebooks so we can own them and no longer be owned by them.
we pass the tip jar from hand to hand in the dark gathering tithes
while poets share psalms from the pulpit of the stage, proffering
poems as parables and sacrificing themselves to save our souls while
we anoint each other with whiskey, cigarettes and passion.
we don’t buy our bibles at the bible store, we write our own scriptures
and photocopy them on the sly at temp jobs, fold them in half and
staple them and offer poetry as sacrament.
we ask audiences to accept our words as their words, to place them
upon their own tongues, for these pages are our bodies, these tears
are our blood, and they have the power to heal.
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everyone is welcome to preach their pain and sing their suffering,
shout their joys and weep and moan and gnash their teeth to a hiphop beat. redemption is granted to anyone with the courage to speak
their truth, and the self-righteous among us who point heavenward
to justify their bullshit are judged harshly by five randomly-selected
judges and thrown off the pulpit until the next slam.
our touring brethren and sistren spread the good news like
missionaries in bars and coffeehouses from coast to coast, converting
open mics into old-time tent revivals, inspiring audiences to leap to
their feet and speak in tongues: spit poet! spit poet!
we are not here to praise one poet as better or worse than any other.
we are here because we believe wholeheartedly in the transformative
power of creative expression.
we all have our crosses to bear, and the poetry slam is where we
gather to shoulder that weight together for three minutes and ten
seconds at a time.
we are here… because this is our church.
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dear white people! (2010)
dear white people! you are embarrassing me! you need to stop doing
stupid shit that makes me look bad! for example…
just because you know all the lyrics to the theme song of the fresh
prince of belair does not mean you are down with hip-hop. will
smith has yet to prove he is down with hip-hip, so name-checking his
punk ass will not help you.
white people!
muslim is not a synonym for terrorist, just like christian is not a
synonym for abortion doctor murderer. you can’t judge an entire
group of people by their most radical elements, so stop!
and stop using the word ethnic to mean an ethnicity other than
your own, and stop describing beautiful non-white women as exotic.
parrots are exotic. beautiful women who are not white are simply
beautiful women.
white people! stop altering the way you talk to mimic what you think
are the slang and speech patterns of the person with whom you are
talking. yes, we can all tell when you’ve got a black person on your
cell phone. it’s the only time you use phrases like off the chain and
what up, dawg? i don’t think black people even say those things
anymore!
and don’t tell me you once had an interracial relationship to prove
you are open minded. this is not 1961, strom thurman! in 2010, we
just call them relationships. and just because you fucked a black girl
in college does not mean you’re open minded. it just means you
know how to fuck, and that don’t mean shit.
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and don’t tell me you feel uncomfortable around black people
because you once got beat up by one. if i beat your punk ass right
now, would you mistrust all short white poets who are kinda chubby
yet still kinda sexy? no? then get over it!
white poets! stop trying to prove you are down with the struggle. in
fact, you are not allowed to say the struggle ever again. just because
you can spell the word revolution does not make you part of one.
and just because you can write a poem making fun of other white
people does not mean you can distance yourself from…
(awkward pause)
white people! just… fucking… stop trying to prove yourself or
apologize for shit, and live your life and speak your truth and do
everything you can to help others do the same. if anyone demands
more than that, tell them to fuck themselves.
you don’t have to prove anything to anyone but yourself, and you
need to do that shit in private.
peace out.
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the burning bush (2010)
i ask you: how many casualties must there be before we stop this
war? and i’m not talking about the war in iraq! and i’m not talking
about the war in afghanistan!
we must stop this inhumane war… against female pubic hair!
women are denuding their privates on a scale akin to the destruction
of the amazon rain forest. no wonder they call it a brazilian wax!
coincidence? i think not! anyone who would insist their lover’s most
precious pajayjay be smooth as a baby’s bottom… wants to have
sex with a baby’s bottom. and i say, no more!
a bearded clam… is a happy clam!
pubic hair is there for a reason. it’s mother nature’s shock absorber.
it’s god’s way of saying, “i don’t want you kids getting all chafey
and red while you’re being fruitful and multiplying! so here’s a
little present for you. boo-ya! knock yourselves out! the bigger the
cushion, the sweeter the pushin’.”
sisters! put down your razors! i don’t need no damned landing strip;
i’m a jungle pilot. just fly me over the thickest deepest tangles, and
i’ll parachute in with nothing but a machete and a smile… and by
machete, i mean… my cock!
women of the world! throw away your weed whackers and bust out
the miracle gro! i’m your lamb of love, baby, let me graze! baaaah!
here’s the thing: women are human, and humans are mammals, and
mammals have hair, so when a woman has hair down there, mon
frere, i declare it’s the most natural thing she can wear.
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a shorn pudendum says, “fuck me with your gender norms.”
but a big ol’ gnarly bush says, “fuck you and your need to control
me! this is what a real woman looks like, and if you can’t handle it,
then you ain’t never gonna handle it!”
ladies! toss those tuna trimmers and never suffer razor burns on
your tender labia again just because some foolish lover can’t handle
the truth!
don’t look to depilated internet porn for your coochie-snorcher
imagery! go back to ’70s porn, where eager beavers frolic wild and
free… and look like my face!
when the good lord spoke to moses, it was not through some leafless
shrub! hell no, it was through the burning bush! now get on over
here, sister girl, and let me set that lush ill nana on fire and make
you hear the voice of god!
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caffeine (2011)
i understand you built these walls for a reason, nailed shut these
doors for protection, but you’ve been a voyeur through bulletproof
glass far too long, sister girl…
let’s tear them down.
i know you’re full of doubt, but do not mistake me for some demon
from your past. know this: i am determined to claw at the barricades
caging your heart until my fingertips sprout knucklebones.
if you’re too afraid to push from the other side, just stand back, and
i’ll chew these fucking nails you’ve driven so deep between us until
my teeth become gums become skull. i am coming for you.
let’s smash the fire alarms and burn these walls down, crack open
the doors and build a dance floor with their splinters. this flesh hides
the beauty beneath, so let’s be rid of it, strip off the scars and bruises
that make us flinch from touch and waltz bone-naked in the flames.
i wanna see you booty dance with only hip bones for ass. don’t hide
nothing. it’s all good: the fractures; the cracks; the bent spine; the
arthritic grip.
i don’t just want your dimples and pretty eyes, i want what’s beneath
them that gives them meaning. i want your ugly, i want your
disease.* and yes, goddamn it, i know i just ripped off lady gaga, but
i’m on a roll, so shut the fuck up and listen.
keep your backpack filled with misgivings. my backpack’s full of
poetry, but my arms are free, and my grip is strong. i might not be
able to shoulder your burdens, but i give great piggyback rides, so
climb on board and hold on tight: it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
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fear? fuck fear! let’s make fear our bitch and force fear to cook biscuits
and gravy for us every morning and pop our toes for us every night.
life’s too fucking short, and my fear of dying without ever having
loved trumps my fear of failure, and i’ll be goddamned if i’m gonna
die before i find out what it’s like to love you, so let’s do this.
what’s the worst that could happen?
okay, the worst heart-wrenching pain we’ve ever felt, granted, but
that kind of hurt is nothing compared to the pain of looking deep
into the reflection of your 70-year-old eyes and trying to explain why
you didn’t torch these walls back when you had the perfect match,
so let’s do this while we’re still young enough to do stupid shit like
trust the universe to guide us.
i bring you no fragile promises begging to be broken, but i do bring
you love, i bring you respect, i bring you growth and communication,
i bring you truth even when it hurts, my fierce loyalty, my bellyaching laughter, my unfettered joy, my healing tears.
i bring you me, all of me, the fucked up and transcendent, the tragic
beauty and brilliant shortcomings, the whole wide world inside me,
and i accept you wholly as you are, and that is more than any dumb
boy has ever offered you, and you fucking know it, so let’s do this.
let’s put a million pennies on a million railroad tracks and make
more lucky pennies than we know what to do with, and let’s spend
the rest of our lives spending them on us and leave the smoke of our
self-made prisons to fade behind us.
i have no idea what happens next, but i wanna find out. so let’s find
out together before we get the chance to talk ourselves out of it.
* lyrics from “bad romance” by lady gaga.
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embouchure (2011)
i don’t have childhood friends.
we moved too much.
two schools in two different states for third grade,
three for fourth grade, two for fifth.
my dad was in the navy.
by the time he was discharged
in my sixth grade year,
this once gregarious boy…
had grown silent.
when hormones hit,
the predatory peacocks in gym class
drew all the eyes
of the girls who wanted to kiss them
and the boys who wanted to be them
and away from me
and my bad posture
and shabby… college-level reading skills.
while they grew closer,
i grew inward,
replacing their affections with books, records, and movies:
things you can do alone.
who needs friends when you have the company
of 13 axe-wielding dwarves and a gaunt wizard
who drags you from your hobbit hole
and pushes you toward adventure?
in high school, the kids with friends
partied with jim beam and jose cuervo.
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but me?
i kicked back in my bedroom
with kurt vonnegut, richard pryor, and freddy mercury.
instead of doing my homework,
i pressed pencil points to temples
and splattered suicidal thoughts across notebook pages.
my dad grounded me for most of my junior year,
and i just laughed at him:
like i have some place to go.
this pissed him off,
so he confiscated all my books and records
and tore down my rush posters,
causing a rift that remains unfilled to this day.
here is wisdom:
you do not fuck with a lonely kid’s rush posters.
if there had been school shootings back then,
pointed glances and whispered accusations
would’ve shadowed me down the halls
with every bold-faced headline,
but as this was ’83 and not ’03,
i was simply ignored, utterly,
just another weird kid
with a backpack full of conan books
and a crown royal bag full of 20-sided dice.
no one is more surprised
to find me on a stage
in front of people
with a microphone clenched in my fist
than i am.
it took a long time
to unlock the chains that held me back,
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but poetry kissed me a key
houdini’d beneath my tongue
that set myself free
to bellow down jericho
with the trumpet of my voice
and nurture the connections
i never had growing up.
the shy kid?
the lonely kid?
he’s still here,
and he’s reaching out to your fat kid,
your pimply kid,
your nerdy kid,
your silent kid.
and he’s saying:
if i can do it, you can do it.
so, let’s do it!
let’s hang out
with charles bukowski and henry rollins!
forget the cool kids,
we’ve got george carlin and langston hughes!
we’ve got sylvia plath and jill scott!
we’ve got each other!
and that’s all we’ve ever needed!
so let’s slam our bedroom doors,
crank some moving pictures on the stereo,
and unleash our voices together!
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you (2011)
i had always known you,
our houses connected by the same dirt path
leading to the heart of our village.
our fathers joked around campfires
we
would one day
marry.
and even as we grew,
slender brown limbs clattering
like locusts though olive groves,
barefooted in our innocence,
i knew
you were mine
and i was yours
surely as the stars
belonged to the sky.
and early in the summer of our youth,
we knew each other,
lying amongst the reeds and rushes beside the river,
we became as one.
the next full moon
saw you scratching at my window,
begging me to join you beneath the starless sky.
you told me
the red seas that parted monthly from your body
had receded.
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i lifted your linen blouse
and caressed your honey belly
not yet swollen with child
as you cried,
we have disgraced our families.
i pulled you toward me
and away from our village,
pushed us toward the distant sea.
come, my love, let us leave this place
and raise our son to be a fisherman.
but you turned and ran from me
and disappeared into the darkness of cricket song.
the path between our houses went untrod for nine long months.
then whispers
begat rumours
begat stories
of stars in the east,
of wise men and miracles,
cluttering our olive groves with countless sandaled feet.
as our son grew,
i watched over grain tops,
watched
as the old man chosen
by your father
to be your husband
taught our boy to coax life from deadwood,
taught him
to become a fisher of men.
i watched
as our son
overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple.
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i listened
as he spoke of mustard seeds and lilies of the field.
i was there
standing amongst the shouting centurions
as he hung with bloody crown.
i witnessed
his last words
whispered silently through cracked lips
as he stared right through me:
father… why have you forsaken me?
i ran blind
into the hordes chanting epithets and gambling for his rags,
and suddenly
before me —
you —
33 years removed from our shared youth,
but no recognition sweetened your gaze.
i called your name
and shouted,
i knew you!
you were the stars,
and i was the sky,
and that is our son!
but you turned and ran from me
and disappeared into the darkness
of the weeping and moaning and gnashing crowds
clutching at your garments.
the next time i saw you
would be through the eyes
of an old forgotten man
staring into yours
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carved into deadwood,
shrouded in blue robes,
and surrounded
by candles, incense, and prayers.
tears
rolled down both
our cheeks.
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jara (2011)
sept. 11
will be forever remembered as the day
militant forces backed by a foreign power
committed violence on a sovereign nation
in the hopes of overthrowing its government.
sept. 11, 1973. south america. chile.
the day armed thugs trained by the cia
and funded by the nixon administration
surrounded the presidential headquarters
of democratically-elected salvadore allende.
as jackboots splintered his office door,
allende tongued the oily tip of his pistol
and resigned his position to renegade general augusto pinochet.
el derecho a vivir en la paz:
the right to live in peace.
gentle words from chilean folk singer victor jara,
who lifted his voice for the poor in his country,
who championed indigenous arts and education,
who sang the poetry of empowerment,
who sang for the re-election campaign of salvador allende,
whose socialist policies rejected nixon’s wall street cronies
and their plans to rob south america of its blackest gold.
jara’s words of peace became words of protest
in the streets of santiago, of puente alto,
of concepcion, of viña del mar.
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and pinochet heard them,
and he dragged the most vocal supporters
of allende from their homes
to a soccer stadium at the heart of the capitol,
victor jara and thousands of others.
on a stage in front of them all,
gunmen mocked jara,
throwing a detuned guitar at his chest
and shouting, “sing for us jara!”
and he sang: el derecho a vivir en la paz.
and they smashed the guitar across his back
and crushed his fingers beneath their boots
and laughed, “sing for us jara!”
and he sang: el derecho a vivir en la paz.
and they concaved his face
with the butts of their assault rifles
and shouted, “sing for us jara!”
and through broken teeth, he sang.
and they stitched his lips closed with 44 lead needles,
and they dragged his body through the streets of santiago
until it fell to pieces then left it to rot in the sun as a warning.
the rest in the stadium? they murdered them all.
pinochet’s thugs raided every music store
and recording studio in every major city in chile,
destroying every copy of jara’s recordings
and burning their master tapes so they could never be duplicated,
making the mere ownership of them
a crime punishable with prison.
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oh, how nixon ached
to do the same with john lennon.
when they came for jara’s wife, she was gone,
escaped into the night with exactly one suitcase,
not filled with clothes or food, but with records.
a vinyl lp spins at 33 and a 1/3 revolutions,
but joan jara only needed one.
she crossed into argentina and pressed copies,
thousands of them,
and smuggled them back over the border
to be illegally shared peer-to-peer
in the basements of bookstores,
in dormitories on college campuses.
meanwhile,
pinochet pinned the arms of jara’s stolen homeland
and allowed nixon to rape her of natural resources
as more than 30,000 chileans were tortured.
the revolution kept spinning by jara’s words
would take 17 years to unseat pinochet.
both he and nixon had the privilege
of dying as old men who never had to pay for their crimes.
but today the stadium
where 3,197 chilean voices were silenced
has been renamed estadio victor jara.
victor,
thank you.
even now,
in the land of free speech,
you sing for us.
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bread and butter (2011)
at nine years old, i decided i wanted a superstition.
and i found one while watching an old popeye cartoon.
he was walking down the street and allowed a telephone pole to pass
between him and olive oyl. he abruptly stopped, ran back around
the pole, and invoked bread and butter, as if the words were a magic
spell to heal the broken connection.
this made sense to me, the idea of a spiritual thread bonding two
beating hearts that should never be severed. i still do this… unless
i don’t like you.
at 14, i decided i was ready for a brand new superstition, so i started
looking for god. my hometown had no less than 200 churches
representing more than 20 denominations. with no saturday morning
cartoon to guide me, i simply showed up… to all of them… a
different steeple every sunday. gotta catch ‘em all!
i settled on a youth group at a mennonite brethren church near my
house. don’t ask me their doctrine. i never found out. i went… for
the camping trips. in fact, i won a swiss army knife for memorizing
all the books of the old testament in order, like so…
genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy, joshua, judges,
ruth, 1st & 2nd samuel, 1st & 2nd kings, 1st & 2nd chronicles,
ezra, nehemiah, esther, job, psalms, proverbs, ecclesiastes, song of
solomon, isaiah, jeremiah, lamentations, ezekiel, daniel, hosea, joel,
amos, obadiah, jonah, micah, nahum, habakkuk, zephaniah, haggai,
zechariah, malachi.
i got a knife for that! i still have it! it has a cross on it!
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and it was fun, but we never talked about belief. we only memorized
the rules and regulations. i got no epiphanies. no awakenings.
no rebirth. i got a knife. i tried… for ten years… in scores of
churches… to heal the disconnection i felt with god, whispering
bread and butter through clasped fingers every time doubt passed
between us, but i never found god. instead, i found one too many
people so focused on their one true way they wouldn’t allow me to
find my own, too many far too willing to re-interpret the word of god
to justify doing any godforsaken thing they wanted.
i took that swiss army knife and severed the spiritual thread
connecting my neck to their steeples, and i used it to carve my own
commandments from bits of buddha, jesus, mohammed, and krishna,
and i scribbled the margins with john lennon, bruce lee, and devo.
i became a one-man congregation. i like to think of it as the holy
church of not being a judgemental dick. now when i pray, it’s less
superstitious mumbo-jumbo and more acceptance of the pain we all
carry like a black stone between our shoulder blades, of the joyful
release of tears, how skin deprived of touch becomes lonely, how
humans share a need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
i believe in speaking your truth even when no one else believes it,
especially when no one else believes it.
i believe there are no such things as bad words, only some words
that are inappropriate for all occasions.
i believe farts are very nearly always funny… especially in church…
or at funerals… okay, they’re always funny.
i believe in life and death and everything in between that connects
us as human no matter what we choose to believe.
there’s no such thing as one true church. there are 7 billion churches
in this world, one for each beating heart, and that realization is the
bread and butter that bonds me to each and every one of them.
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molly (2012)
i may not be here right now as this poem’s being read.
i can’t be sure.
you might be reading this poem from the page of a book or a notepad
or a print-out or a computer screen or an ebook or some kind of
freaky futuristic holographic device yet to be invented in my lifetime,
and if that’s the case, you should read this poem aloud, even if you’re
alone, especially if you’re alone, put my words in your mouth and
breathe life into them because that’s what they’re for, and if you’re
reading them in front of an audience, step right up to the mic, put
your lips on it as you speak, and speak loudly and clearly.
you might be listening to this poem as a recording on a cd you
bought on the internet, a digital audio file you downloaded, a video
you’re watching online, in which case turn it up, crank it, blow out
the speakers and let my words wake up the whole neighborhood.
you might be listening to someone read this poem aloud, someone
standing on a stage or in a classroom or speaking through a phone or
a webcam, and if that’s true, be quiet when you are supposed to be
listening and get up off your feet and give a standing ovation when
it’s over, clap so loudly your hands chap, shout your excitement until
your throat bleeds, make anyone hearing the roar of applause freak
out and call the fire department, even if it’s just you and the person
reading it, especially if it’s just the two of you.
i might be reading this poem for you, and you might be sitting in
a dingy blackbox theatre shoulder to shoulder with a room full
of hipster assholes too cool to listen, or you might be in a school
auditorium surrounded by students hoping for extra credit, or maybe
you’re in a cafe and you just happened to be there the one night i
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came rolling through town on tour, and if that’s so, buy one of my
books, either now or later online at my website. i have to eat.
someone else might be reading this poem, some student i’ve never
met reading in a speech competition in front of judges — and if so,
yo, judges, give this kid an excellent score because they are bad-asses
of the highest order and will slash your tires if you don’t — or it
could be someone at an open mic or a poetry slam pretending they
wrote it (and if that’s the case, hey, don’t even worry about it, just
tell everyone you wrote it. fuck it. like they’re gonna know. oh, and
don’t read this part out loud. this is just between you and me.)
here’s the thing. once i put these words to paper or enter them into
a computer or speak them into a microphone, i have no idea where
they’ll end up or in whose mouth and in whose mind. these words
might last forever and live to rival those of shakespeare, or they might
be forgotten once i die and everyone who has ever experienced them
follows me into the great big dark scary hole that awaits us. it might
take a hundred years, but most likely these words won’t last and it
will be like they had never been written and that will be that.
but oh, while they are alive and breathing, whether on a page or a
stage, oh, how glorious, how amazing, how life-affirming, to have
something i wrote in silence be spoken out loud by a chorus of
voices all over the... what... country? world? universe? there’s no
fucking way i can know what will happen with these words or where
they’ll go or who’ll they touch in some meaningful way.
the only thing i am sure of is this: as i write these very words, it is
tuesday, january 10, 2012, and i am sitting in front of my 24-inch
imac listening to dubstep in my parents living room in wichita,
kansas. my parents are out shopping, and the dogs are asleep, and
my sister is at work, and i am utterly broke and have no idea what i
am supposed to do next or where i’m supposed to do it. i miss my
best friend. i miss having a poetry slam i can hit every week. i miss
being in a relationship. i miss a lot of things.
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i am 44 as i write this, soon to be 45, and i have no idea how much
time i have left, but if you are reading these words or listening to
them and watching them or whatever and you are fairly sure i am
still alive and kicking, please... do me a huge solid... tell me about it.
write me a postcard. send me an email. call me. visit me. reach out
and hold me for a few breaths. let me know that my life made some
kind of impact on someone outside of myself, however miniscule or
ephemeral, let me know that my life has meaning, that i was right to
make the choices that have lead me here, that you have felt me. that’s
how this poem becomes complete. it needs you. i need you.
and if i am dead by the time you get to experience these words, well,
shit... that sucks. can you... can you find out where i’m buried and go
there and sit cross-legged on my grave and read some of my words
to me, remind me — if there is a me left to be reminded — that i was
alive once, that my life had an impact, that my words lasted longer
than my breath? can you do that for me? it would mean a lot. i would
mean everything to me. it would mean the whole wide world.
thank you.
be warm.
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04.05.94 (1994)
An oddly-shaped key on a yellow key chain with the number 27
etched in white on the shaft. A black-and-yellow Tag-Heuer diving
watch with the initials D.A.C. engraved on the back.
I have these items spread on my ate-up friend Isaac’s bed, having
just dumped them from the package I removed a few hours ago from
my post office box downtown.
Isaac looks at them, snacking on the blunt end of a Gallo dried
salami. He breathes heavily as if he’s just run a mile, not from exercise
but lack of it. White chunks of salami fat stick out from between his
teeth. He smells of warm garlic and sweat.
I ask him what he thinks.
“You wanna know what I think?” He points to the stuff on his
bed with the salami. “I think opening someone else’s mail without
their permission is a serious crime, like maybe a felony. Didn’t you
see Scared Straight? Fuck that, dude. Fucka buncha that.”
He takes a too-large bite from his wad of meat, quaffs a swig of
I.B.C. root beer from the bottle in his other hand as a chaser, then
continues, smacking and breathing.
“But, then again, I see that watch smack-smack, and I think to
myself breathe, I say, ‘Isaac, how much you figure a watch like that’s
worth?’ and I answer, ‘Oh, well, as a matter of fact smack, your Uncle
Abe had a watch just like that, only different, and he was frontin’ like
a goddamned kike Donald Trump.’ I’m thinking we can pawn that
baby off and get at least a grand for it is what I think. Maybe two.”
Another gulp from the root beer bottle, and he’s done, looking
at me for what I have to say.
I reach up to my dog chain necklace and fiddle with the tiny lock
connecting the ends. I know I’m gonna regret this, but I’m thinking
about hocking this watch. I need the money. My car’s a fucking
hooptie piece of shit and needs a tune-up something awful, plus I’ve
got classes in the fall. I don’t know. I’m worried whoever used to
rent my mailbox might be real anxious to get his watch back.
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“Hey, don’t worry about it,” smacks Isaac. “He fucking deserves
to have his stuff opened up and sold off. Ever hear of a forwarding
address? If this…” — he cranes his non-neck to peep the name on
the package — “if this Dr. Patel dude was so concerned about his mail
getting to him, he should’ve filled out one of those cards at the post
office. Fuck it. Sell it. You want some of this salami before I wrap it
up and stick it in the fridge?”
I shake my head, so he trundles off to the kitchen. I flick on his
boombox, hit play on the CD player, and Automatic For The People
kicks off with the throaty guitar picking of Drive. I hum along.
I wonder what the key unlocks. It looks odd, like one of those
keys you get with a bike lock or maybe a freezer like the one my
father has in the garage to store dead animal parts. It’s a round tube
with teeth along the edge. I know I’ve seen a key like this before.
Just as Michael Stipe sings “smack… crack… bushwhack…,” a
dull throb pulses through the back of my skull. Ugh, I’m getting a
headache. I reach out for the corner of Isaac’s dresser.
Isaac kicks open his bedroom door with the tip of a red Chuck
Taylor, spots me, and asks, “Dude? You okay?” I wave him off, tell him
I’m fine, just a headache. He hesitates, then nods and presents two
frosty mugs of I.B.C. I take the one sans greasy lip marks.
He’s such a momma’s boy. Twenty-two, still lives at home, still
going to Cal State on the Mom and Step-Dad Grant Program, still
threatening to move to Athens, Georgia, once he’s no longer amongst
the funemployed and raises some dough. The R.E.M. poster over his
bed has hung there since Document. We met in Beginning Spanish.
We both failed miserably. He’s pretty cool. Sometimes. At least his
mom lets him run the air conditioning as much as he wants.
I show him the key again and ask what he thinks it opens,
rubbing the back of my head and stretching my neck side to side.
“Besides a jail cell? Give it here.” Isaac snatches the key with his
fingertips, eyeballs it, then lobs it back to me greasy from his salami
grip. He wipes his hand on his cargo shorts and squeezes behind the
drum kit nestled in a sacred corner of his room.
He brandishes a battered drumstick in the direction of his ghetto
blaster, wiggles it like a wand and nods at me, so I cut off Stipe as his
“tick… tock… tick…. tock…” joins the swell of violins.
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“Check this out.” He riddles the snare, then crashes the hi-hat
for impact. He stomps a steady 4/4 bass pulse, then says, “I’ll bet you
it’s some kind of locker key.”
He speeds the heartbeat throb and adds a hit to the crash cymbal
on the downbeat. “I’ll bet anything this key opens a locker with
something in it hella better than some tacky diver’s watch.”
He stoops long enough to snatch a foot-long dented aluminum
cylinder filled with BBs and shakes them back and forth, then adds
hits to a djembe with his other hand, laying down a primal groove:
dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom.
“And who’s D.A.C.? Maybe I’m just bored, but I wanna know
these things. I wanna find out.”
He cloudbursts a flurry of hits with his fists and his sticks, pounding
and smashing and whaling on his tom-toms and congas and splash
cymbals, his bass and his snares, exploring and abandoning odd time
signatures and rhythm changes. He’s a blur, a big fat shapeless blur in
a baggy Love Tractor T-shirt, flinging sweat and chips of drumsticks
in a warm gluey spray. How he can move so quickly and with such
precision and still be a good fifty pounds overweight is beyond me.
You’d figure he’d sweat off a couple pounds every time he even
thought of sitting behind a trap set.
He abruptly stops, silencing the last cymbal with a pinch.
“I think,” he says, twirling a drumstick between two fingers, “we
should find which box is opened by that key. Then, we’ll go from
there. You hittin’ Chaos tonight? Skrötum Traktör’s playing with The
Fates. Yet another benefit to keep the place open. Bekkah’s broke.”
I tell him yeah, I’m going.
“How many CDs did you sell?” he cracks. Bastard. “Just kidding.
I’m going, too. The sound guy’s hooking me up. Remember Joey
Fuckhead? With the neck tattoo? Him. He’s all into goth shit now.
Yee-ha. You want something to eat? I’m hungry.”
***
Whoosh it’s hot, sandpaper air scrubbing my skin as I barefoot
the asphalt to my puke-green Gremlin on the street outside Isaac’s
mom’s split-level. The swelter doesn’t help my headache at all.
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I hate this town. It’s fucking April and already the heat of the
vinyl seat is oozing through two layers of sweaty beach towels. I
imagine leaving molten bits of skin on the steering wheel as I start
the car with a prayer and limp off in a puff of oily smoke.
The traffic sucks in the daytime, especially near the mall where
Isaac lives. The heat numbs the area in everyone’s brain charged
with storing information from high school driver’s training courses.
Mister I Don’t Know What A Turn Signal Is cuts off Little Miss Driving
Daddy’s Pinto, and I flatten my brake pedal with both feet as each
innocent party curses the other and weaves all over the road.
This town is crammed tight with assholes, shitheads, dickwads,
and motherfuckers, and they’re all out to piss me off.
A plug-ugly presa canario tied to the roll bar of his hick
owner’s Ford pick-em-up laps at the air like he’s dying of thirst and
strangulation. The driver has a redneck meathead mullet, short on the
sides for bidness and long in the back for the ladies. He’s got angular
neon sunglasses with mirrored lenses, a straw cowboy hat, and a
stretched-out Mötley Crüe T-shirt. His stereo is blasting Bosephus,
cranking A Country Boy Can Survive so loud his windows rattle.
Hoss’s mere existence irks the piss outta me, him and his scary-assed
dog. At the stoplight before the onramp, he and his homeboy in
the passenger seat with the G’n’R bandanna pitch me 31 flavours of
stink-eye — “Look at that faggot over there! Nice dye job, faggot! Nice
earrings! Nice eyeliner! You wanna suck my cock, huh, you fuckin’
faggot? Huh? Huh? Faggot?” — but I shine the bastards and pull right
on the red light and become another steel corpuscle in the freeway
bloodstream of transplanted Okies and Limbaugh Republicans.
The hum of the road picks me up. I pop in a Nurse With Wound
cassette and listen to the rhythmic cacophony blend with the wind
tossing my ponytail and tickling my goatee and endowing the stray
Taco Bell wrappers in the floorboards with the momentary gift of
flight. I’m making sine waves with my left hand, carving through the
65 mph wind and feeling the hair on my arm ripple and tug.
Isaac’s right. I’m broke. I gotta sell some CDs if I’m gonna catch
the fund-raiser tonight. Shit. I hate that. My collection’s gap-toothed
grinnin’ like a 12-year-old hockey player. I leave the freeway at my
exit and head home for some losers Andy Noise Records will buy.
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My room. On the second floor of the house my roomies rent. A
single-serving futon mattress wedged in the corner with a tatty copy
of Factsheet 5 on the rolled up hoodie I use as a pillow. A threadbare
tapestry on my door swirls with zodiac symbols orbiting a radiant
sun. The pale salmon walls are hidden by a vast collage of xeroxed
gig fliers from rock shows featuring local bands like Cradle of Thorns,
Spike 1000, 2Lazy2Steal, and The Church of Morons and Latter Day
Skanks. The ceiling is festooned with sagging promo posters snagged
from the record store before they fired me for pinching CDs: old
concert one-sheets of Foetus, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry; vinyl
banners pimping Ritual de lo Habitual and The Downward Spiral.
A framed piece of corkboard over my rickety Ikea desk has ads for
alt-rock gigs and indie movies ripped from The Los Angeles Times.
A nearly year-old clip from L.A. Weekly has the cover of Christian
Death’s first album on it and the words Final Reunion Show across
the top. A note pinned to it says “Review for Morgan.” I smile.
Morgan is an old fuck buddy of mine, an achingly cute sliver of a
girl clad head to toe in black, a self-medicating waif all of 5’1” and 98
pounds, a shoplifting stoner/goth faerie rocking spidersilk stockings
and tattered Victorian lace dresses. Summertime goths are hardcore.
Her zine Dead Roses for Dolly is pretty good for a cut-and-paste.
Next to the yellowing reunion show advertisement is another
dusty note: “New issue! Now! Do it!” It’s been 11 months since my
last run of Dookie On A Stick. Maybe longer. I pull a ballpoint from
my pocket and bic new zine on the back of my left hand.
I cross my room and stand in front of my wall of CDs, which is
literally wall-sized, a wooden tabernacle cradling nearly 6,000 jewel
cases in strict order: alphabetical by names of bands or the first names
of solo artists, so Michael Jackson is after Manic Street Preachers and
before Mudhoney and My Bloody Valentine; solo artists who used
to be in a band go after the band, so Love & Rockets, Peter Murphy,
and Tones on Tail come after Bauhaus, and The Pixies come right
before The Breeders and Frank Black; albums by the same band are
arranged chronologically. I can tell when a CD is out of order simply
by spying the colour pattern of the spines. My shelves of LPs are
organized the same way, only I sold my turntable for rent money a
few months ago. Le sigh. My best licorice pizza is gathering dust.
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I drag my middle finger over the spines until I hit the D’s, then
pick The Soft Parade. Fuck that album. Definitely their worst. Fat
bastard. I hit the L’s and grab The Presence. Great cover, shite album.
Fuck Let It Be and High Infidelity, too. My fingertips waver over No
Pocky For Kitty, but then I snag Breakfast In America. I look around
the floor for a dry shirt to replace the sweaty one I’m wearing. I give
it all the sniff test and find a ratty Sex Art T-shirt behind a knot of
wobbly boxes in the corner. Cool. I decide to wash clothes some
time before Monday and bic wash clothes on my hand, then I scrawl
pay rent below that, think a moment, then pen pay phone as well.
Downstairs David and Karen are cross-legged in a swirl of Nag
Champa. They’re practicing a song about Joseph Campbell for a gig
next week at Chaos. They glance in my direction as I step over three
dogs, two cats, various amps and mixing boards and other sound
equipment on the way out. Karen says something from behind me
about the rent being a week late, but the shutting door cuts her off.
***
It’s the next day. My headache’s mostly gone, but my ears still
ring from the Marshall stacks last night at the pretty vacant fundraiser. Isaac’s kvetching about the wind. When I tell him to roll up
the window — he was there when I broke it the last time I locked my
keys in the car — he tells me to fuck my mother with a brick. I say be
cool, my mom’s dead, and he says it’s because he fucked her so hard
with the brick. I tell him to ask his grandma to stop blowing up my
pager, and while he’s at it tell his step-dad to pick up the riding crop
and polska kielbasa he left in my bed last night. He feigns offense,
mouth wide in a chubby capital O, then giggles. I win. Fucker.
We’re bound and determined to find what hole this key fits and
head for every fitness center, bus station, train depot, and locker
room in town, listening to Isaac’s worn-out R.E.M. mixtape that’s
been nearly listened blank.
When songs from Murmur play — or Mumble, as Isaac calls it
— we sing different words to the same songs and laugh that no one
knows the lyrics, including Michael Stipe. I mention the Stipe’s Got
AIDS rumour and sing a snippet from Endgame in Morrissey’s whine,
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and Isaac tells me emphatically there’s no way in hell Stipe and
Stephen Patrick Morrissey are plowing the fields of love, no matter
what Spin says. I just laugh and do my Morrissey Does Metallica
impression and hope for less alarming reasons why Stipe has looked
so damned skinny since Out Of Time.
We grab a 64-ounce Cherry Coke and four barbacoa tacos
from Circle K with the $5.17 we have between us, then we hit the
downtown Greyhound, key in hand. Before the first try, we realize
we’re in the wrong place because the keyholes are straight slots, not
circles. We’re told by some janitor with a dust broom mustache that
the train station across town has the same sort of lockers, so we’re
out of luck with public transportation.
The YMCA’s no good, and neither are any of the health clubs
or workout joints we try downtown because you have to bring
your own lock to all of them. I’m getting over this search, Isaac’s
bellyaching for another Cherry Coke, and the R.E.M. tape is starting
to drag in my player, so we decide to call it off for the day. I pull onto
the freeway, and Isaac starts tapping his fingers on the cracked dash
of my car. He’s following Don’t Go Back To Rockville with his beat,
then changes rhythm, reverting to some tribal pulse snipped from
his drum rampage yesterday.
dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom
“Dude, wait.” I ask him wait for what?
“Check it out, what about the airport?” he says, looking at his
hands as he pounds the dash. I ask him what about the airport? It’s
20 minutes behind us, and I thought we were done for the day.
dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom
“I’m sure they’ve got lockers,” he says, thumping his feet against
the floorboard and tapping his knuckle bones against the glovebox.
I tell him I’m done for today. I’m jonesin’ for frosty I.B.C. and
free A/C at his mom’s, but he whines like a little bitch, so I bail at the
next off-ramp and get back on the freeway in the opposite direction,
toward the airport, wincing in time with his dashboard tattoo and
the sympathetic vibrations shooting through my achy head.
By the time we get there, R.E.M. has been replaced with some
early ’80s mixtape of Isaac’s with Rock Lobster and Tainted Love and
Stand and Deliver, shit we were never cool enough to like in high
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school; Isaac and I first bonded over our mutual nerdcore love of
Rush and Dungeons & Dragons. I pull into short-term parking in our
city’s shitty little municipal airport, but before I come to a complete
stop in a parking spot, Isaac plops out and galumphs toward the
lockers he believes are near the baggage claim outside hidden
behind an ornamental brick wall. When I catch up with him on foot,
I can already tell there aren’t any fucking lockers, which pisses me
off since he practically forced me at gunpoint to drive all the way out
here and didn’t even offer to split the gas, the cheap fuck. I’m about
to tell him how much of a douche nozzle he is when he aims for the
sliding electric doors of the airport’s main entrance.
Whoosh, we’re swimming in blissful air conditioning, and Isaac’s
looking all around for these lockers he’s imagined. I tap him on the
elbow and say come on, man, let’s blow this joint, but he ignores me
and heads toward the lady behind the small ticket counter.
Whatever. Fuckin’ dunderhead.
I walk over to the gift store in the corner by the coffee shop
to see what kind of useless crap they sell trumpeting the name of
our redneck town. Beach towels and coffee mugs and pencil cases
and pleather golf club protectors and all manner of tacky tchotchkes
tagged with the motto of our fair city: Sun, Fun, Stay, Play. Pablum
meant to snare the eyes of visiting grandpas in short pants and black
stretch socks hoisted to their knobbly knees. I snatch a snow globe
encasing an oil derrick, shake it, and watch flakes of white plastic
float before a gaily painted image of my hometown. It hasn’t snowed
here since kindergarten. The flakes should be brown to mimic the
smog sepia-toning the sky and fading the ends of long streets in the
distance and masking the mountains surrounding us unless it rains.
When I lower the snow globe from my eyes, Isaac is a lazy haze
in front of me, waving the key and smiling. I pull him into focus.
“Dude, check it out, this place doesn’t have lockers,” he says,
beaming, his hands at his hips, arms akimbo.
No shit, Sherlock. Before I can tell him the next time he’s so
goddamned happy about wasting my gas, I’m gonna kick him in his
bloodshot eye, Isaac says, “But the skirt at the ticket counter used
to work in L.A.X., and she says this key looks just like the ones they
issue for lockers down there.”
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That’s it. That’s why it looked familiar. I picked up my zine friend
Sarah O. from Maine in the Los Angeles Airport when she flew in last
summer for the Independent Media Expo, and before we caught a
Possum Dixon show on Melrose, we stuffed her bags in an airport
locker so no one would break into my Gremlin and steal her shit.
I smile at the thought of Sarah O. insisting I take a picture of her
next to a tumbleweed for the cover of her zine. She couldn’t believe
they actually existed, and I told her we used to build forts out of
them when I was little. When a tumbleweed burns, it roars into a
huge bonfire that lasts half a minute at most then disappears. It’s
brilliant, the definition of the word ephemeral. I look at Isaac.
He’s all, “Dude, can you say roadtrip?”
***
Jesus, when will that fat fucker get here?
I’m at work, watching the clock like a beady-eyed vulture, waiting
for the day to breathe its last breath so I can pick at its eyes, waiting
for Isaac to get his ass here so we can roadtrip to Los Angeles.
Today’s been a long week already, and it’s only Thursday.
I always wanted to be the guy who narrated The Jungle Cruise
Ride at Disneyland, just like Steve Martin before he got famous.
What a great job: spieling scripted tourspeak for slack-jawed
rubberneckers in Faux-waiian shirts and double-knit reversible SansA-Belt slacks; spitting that same sing-song jive day in and day out;
cracking up whippersnappers with Eisenhower era knee-slappers
that cracked their parents up; getting friends in for free.
I remember this one Jungle Cruise guy when I was nine years
old, back when The Matterhorn was an E-Ticket Ride. He had this
dry way with words that was so hilariously apathetic. He sounded
like Droopy Dog and had the position of every waterfall memorized.
“And now to your left is beautiful Schweitzer Falls.” He called them
all Schweitzer Falls. When the animatronic hippo was about to lift its
head above water and angrily wiggle its ears, he chanted “Hiiiiippo
Riiiisin’…” like Jim Morrison in L.A. Woman.
And the girls, man, you just know he was bangin’ ‘em like kettle
drums. Jungle Cruise guy was the mack.
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“Now, nothing too fancy, okay? Just a basic business card with
my name and my title: Sales Representative. Okay? A little border,
some lines, but no frills, okay? And, I don’t know, maybe, like… No,
just my name. In bold. Italics. With a type style that’s… manly.”
I’m gaping over my Quadra 650 at this reject dickweed in a
tweed suit with circa-’76 Oscar Goldman suede elbow patches and
a beige knit tie. He’s a wee little tuber, like 5’4”, sporting a sunken
chest and a hairline retreating to the top of his woolly shoulders. His
comb-over is a majestic display of denial, swooping from one ear to
the other and pasted in place with fumy pomade. He’s parked his
two-bit pleather briefcase on the tarmac of his Tom Bombadil gut.
I pick up my Copy Warehouse pamphlet of typefaces and show
him a few I think will project his virility. Helvetica? Nope, too plain.
Papyrus, perhaps? Nope, too new agey. What about a newspapery
font like Palatino or Times? Nope, too newspapery.
I hate customer service. The worst part of this job. If I could just
sit at my computer all day and design business cards and letterhead
and flyers and brochures without dealing with wienies like Delvin
Schmeng here, I’d almost like it. Almost. Except for my boss. And the
annoying fact that I’ve been duped into trading 40 hours of my life
every week for $9 a pop. It would never occur to me to do this, like,
in my free time, like, for pleasure, so they have to pay me to keep me
from scratching out my eyes and dashing blindly into traffic.
Actually, I hate this job. I hate the concept of jobs. The only thing
worse than looking for a job is finding one. I so need a patron.
I show him Helvetica again, touting its classic lines and
understated yet powerful masculinity, but my old nemesis Comic
Sans catches his eye, and he squashes a pudgy sausage on my font
book. “That one,” he says, and he smiles importantly. He asks if I
can design a logo with an eagle in it, an eagle and an American flag,
asks if he can sit beside me and help me design it, says he’s got a
Macintosh at home, says it might be faster if he just does it, asks if he
can come around to my side of the desk. Oh hell no. This monkey’s
got a Mac, and he thinks he’s a graphic designer. I politely but firmly
redirect his focus to the tattered clip-art book I shove in his face.
Isaac bebops through the front doors, jiggling in a baggy
Guadalcanal Diary T-shirt and green & orange madras board shorts.
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Thank God, it must be 5:00. We’d planned to leave for L.A. as soon
as I clocked out, and my eight hours are over not a moment too
soon. Isaac’s sporting humid saddlebags after walking from the city
bus stop three blocks away, and he’s squeegeeing flopsweat from his
forehead with the back of his hand. I nod in his direction, smirk, then
eyeball the irritating customer as he thumbs through a collection of
panthers, cougars, and gun-toting sportsmen in puffy vests.
Isaac smiles, rolls his eyes, then signs go to… something… but
I don’t catch it all because Mr. Poopy Pants here wants my opinion of
the artwork he’s found. I form a peace sign with my right hand, slip
my thumb between my pointer and middle fingers, slap them down
on the open palm of my left hand, then point my finger at Isaac
across the room. He laughs and plops down in front of a self-service
PC in the lobby to play on my America Online account.
I peruse my customer’s find: a tattoo-lookin’ eagle with its talons
outstretched in attack mode. Yep, that says Sale Representative to
me, you fat bastard. He wants a font that says the same thing about
him the bird does. I assure him Comic Sans is just that font.
Ten minutes later, and we’re outta there, slugging I.B.C. from
the ice-chest cooled bottle and bailing for the City of Angels.
Forty-five minutes later, and we’re starting the steep, twisting
incline of The Grapevine, chugging uphill at 35 miles an hour
powered by the hamster wheel inside my babyshit-green Gremlin.
Neither of us has spoken since Frasier Park. We’re both in our own
worlds, bobbing our heads in time to the soundtrack of Singles.
Goddamned great soundtrack, so much better than the movie. I gave
the CD a rating of Devo in my zine; the shitty rom-com got Winger.
Apropos of nothing, Isaac says, “I wish I were a fat white girl.”
I ask why, and he says, “So black guys would wanna fuck me.”
Oh my God, I can’t believe he just said that, and I tell him so,
and he slaps his knee and guffaws. “You know it’s true!”
Isaac starts singing along to Waiting For Somebody and slapping
a rhythmic hand jive against his man-tits and pasty thighs. He croons
at me, then swivel-necks to sing at passing cars through the empty
passenger-side window, then swings back to me again.
Suddenly, he stops and says, “Hey, so how’s the whole girl thing
going with you?” He makes air quotes around thing.
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Where’d that come from? I tell him it just ain’t happening for me
right now. Frankly, it ain’t been happening for quite some time. The
last words of my last real girlfriend were: “Give me my key, take your
cream rinse, and get the fuck out.” Great closing line. I ran home
and wrote a poem about it. That was over a year ago. Since then,
it’s been nothing more than a few scraps of passion and false starts,
hardly more than fumbling body parts in the backseat of Gizmo or
on a ripped-up couch in the basement of Chaos Coffeehouse after
it’s closed and everyone else is upstairs smoking out to Bob Marley.
I change the subject, hoping his recent bout of I Wonder If I’m
Gay isn’t making him ask about my apparent lack of a love life. I ask
him how his sister is doing at that deaf college in D.C.
“She’s doing good,” he nods. “Seeing some deaf guy from Jersey.
She’s gonna be in a sign language version of a David Mamet play.
Should be good. Lots of cussing. You’d even understand it.”
Isaac’s sister is the one who taught me my first signed phrase,
fuck you, the one with the thumb inside the peace sign. “It’s like a
penis between two legs,” she’d said, her husky voice flattened by
deafness. “See?” I saw. She was so fucking cute. How they could be
brother and sister, I will never know. Isaac was found in some reeds
in a little woven basket floating down a river, I am sure.
Isaac’s been teaching me ASL ever since. We joke we’re gonna
start a sign language band that covers early R.E.M. songs, only we’d
wear ski gloves so no one understands what we’re signing. Isaac
doesn’t know it, but I wanna get up on his sister with a quickness
and figure learning how to sign might give me a chance.
“You should think about visiting her,” he says, shoving a small
handful of Chili-Cheese Fritos in his mouth. “She asks about you.”
He raises an eyebrow, smiles, and continues eating. Hmmm…
maybe he does know. I change the subject to the old standby:
“Dude, Jasmin, Belle, or Little Mermaid?”
Isaac strokes his nonexistent beard. “Tough call. Jasmin’s body is
sweet, but her nose is kinda funky looking. Belle is cool, she’s got a
great personality, and she’s smart, but Little Mermaid’s fucking hot,
dude. Yeah, she’s the one. I’d hit that. I’d split her tail right in half.”
“Oh, fully, she’s wicked — she’s like Alyssa Milano with a tail —
but she’s a little punk ass. Of the three, I’d take Belle. She’s literate,
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pretty, and doesn’t mind a guy with a hairy back, which I appreciate.
However, Belle’s not nearly as fine as the kindest of all hotties.”
“The red-haired chick on Josie and the Pussycats?”
“Nope.”
“Veronica on The Archies?”
“Nope. It’s Velma. She’s the one.”
“The little frumpy chick with the frosted glasses on Scooby Doo?
You’re smoking butt crack! No way!”
“Way! Beneath those book smarts and that thick sweater, Velma’s
a shameless hussy! She’d be all prim and proper when everyone’s
watching, but get her home, and she’d pull out that veiny black jelly
dong from her rucksack and make you squeal like a flaming piglet.”
“Yeah, whatever, but I still think Little Mermaid could kick her
bowl haircut-wearin’ ass on the way to my dick.”
“Dude, my dick’s so big, it’s got its own gravitational pull.”
“My dick’s so big, Stephen Hawking is trying to prove it exists.”
“Well, my dick’s so big, it’s got a Wookiee for a co-pilot.”
Isaac laughs and says, “Did it make the Kessel Run in less than 12
parsecs? Did it say ‘I know’ when Leia admitted her love for it?”
“Fuck yeah it did, then it shot Greedo in the cantina, and then it
fucked your dick and made it get an abortion.”
“My dick killed a bear.”
“Yeah, well, your mom’s addicted to what my dick did.”
“Yeah, well, your dick tastes like my real dad’s butthole!”
“You would know!”
“Only because I tongue-kissed your abuelita’s panocha!”
And on and on.
This line of thought continues well past the rollercoasters of
Magic Mountain and into the undulating smog banks of Los Angeles.
We hit all the major stops in a typical roadtrip chinwag, reminiscing
about our late ’70s youth. It’s My Mom’s Having A Baby, raspberry
Zingers, Six Million Dollar Man dolls, and poking Stretch Armstrong
with a fork to watch the red gooey stuff ooze out.
Most generations have world-changing events that brought them
together and defined them — the Good War, the launching of Sputnik,
the Kennedy assassination, Watergate — but me and Isaac were the
demographic caught between Woodstock and the US Festival. We have
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Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here and Afterschool Specials.
We were latchkey kids with Evel Knieval action figures and Battlestar
Gallactica bedsheets. We didn’t have babysitters, we had HBO, MTV,
and the Atari 2600. We weren’t outdoorsy, we were indoorsy.
Neither of us has watched teevee since we carted our sets to the
top of the Haberfelde Building downtown and sent them plummeting
to the alley below with a cathartic kuh-THWACK! Kill your television
before it kills you. Before it makes you kill someone else.
The frozen arches of L.A.X. materialize through green-brown
haze as Isaac pops in a grunge mixtape from three years ago called
Sonicgardenpearlhole. We make for the off-ramp and wheel into
short-term parking then walk through the crowds to the terminal.
I’m rolling the key in my pocket and surveying the scene for
anything remotely resembling a locker with a round key hole. We
breeze the security checkpoint, rabbit-earing our empty pockets to
show we aren’t smuggling guns, and we round a corner to find —
“Dude,” Isaac hisses, pointing with his chin, “by los baños.”
— lockers. I’m ogling the rows of pale grey metal boxes along
the pastel wall next to the men’s room, unable to shake a sudden
tingling of my spider sense. Isaac’s oblivious, of course, and marches
triumphantly past an orange-robed Hari Krishna to the lockers.
I can see him teetering on tiptoes trying to find the same number
etched into the key in my pocket: 27. His lips move, counting.
I hope he doesn’t find it. I hope the key doesn’t fit. I hope we’re
five minutes from revving my jalopy and driving thru an In & Out
Burger on our way back to The Grapevine as if none of this happened.
I toss a paranoid glance over my shoulder, then look back at Isaac.
There he is, waving to me, smiling and leaning against the wall
of rental lockers. He didn’t find it. He didn’t find it. He’s just going
to tell me the key holes are slots like the bus station.
I see the round key holes in the doors of the lockers, just like
the round tube of the key. Isaac’s got a pudgy dick skinner on the
number plate of the locker just above his head. I look. 27. Shit.
“Gimme the key, gimme the key,” Isaac hoarses, as if we’re
surrounded by hidden microphones, which we probably are. I hand
it to him and watch as he slides it into the keyhole, turns it clockwise,
and swings the locker door open with a slow creak.
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We look at each other. Isaac raises his eyebrows at me, I shrug
my shoulders back at him, and we slowly bring our heads together
for a gander inside the compartment.
A worn leather satchel, scratched from use, edges frayed, finger
grips worn into the soft handles. Most of the faux-gold electroplate
garnishing the metal hardware has been rubbed and flecked away,
revealing dull grey beneath.
Before I can think, Isaac reaches in and grabs the bag by the
handle, turns toward the public restrooms as the spring-loaded
locker door slams shut with a loud BANG! I flinch, then follow.
We shuffle past a troop of businessmen combing and grooming
and nitpicking their airported suits, then we cram into an empty stall
near the very end. I squeeze the door shut behind us, and we crowd
around the toilet, our knees pressing against the bowl, big-eyeing
the satchel with tense expectation.
“Open it,” Isaac whispers. I make a face that says, Don’t be so
fucking loud, ass! and push the leather briefcase toward him. He
hesitates, fingering the zipper at the top between the handles, then
opens it in a slow, dragging pull.
We look in, foreheads touching. Isaac whispers, “Fuck.”
The first thing we see is money, a buttload of money, packed
into bricks with rubber bands and haphazardly piled in a flurry of
dirty green. I can smell the money. It stinks like dirty fingernails.
The next thing we see is a yellowed plastic bag bundled like a
loaf of bread with black electrical tape. Inside, glowing bluish-white
in the fluorescent light, is a mass of frosty crystalline flakes, snug in
their nest of twenties, fifties, and hundreds.
Isaac whispers, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.”
We stare for what could be minutes, barely noticing the buzz
of cordless razors and the flush of urinals on the other side of the
locked stall door. Isaac finally licks his lips and croaks, “Taste it.”
Oh, like I’m gonna know how it tastes! I tell Kojak here to fuck
himself, I ain’t tasting jack shit, and how’s about we get the fuck outta
here before we’re thrown in the pokey for smuggling drugs into an
international airport. Hello, federal offense! Hello, faces splashed
across every major metropolitan newspaper between here and
Bangor, Maine! Hello, Folsom Prison! Hello, corn-holing cellmate!
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Isaac goes, “Smugglin’ nothin’. We just walk out.”
I remind this imbecile about the security guards and the x-ray
bag checker, and he rasps, “They only check you on the way in, you
pussy, not on the way out. Just play it cool like Fonzie, and let’s walk
nonchalantly the fuck outta here and back to Gizmo.”
No fucking way am I transporting what looks to be a fucking
pound of cocaine or heroin or what-the-fuck-ever through any
fucking airport. I tell him let’s flush the powder and dump the bag of
money in the garbage and forget we ever came.
“Fuck you,” he hisses, zipping shut the satchel and pushing his
way through the stall door. Isaac bumps into some random Willy
Loman waiting to use the head, and I shut the door as he tries to
barge in. I sit down on the toilet seat, my head in my hands, not
caring that I didn’t even wipe the toilet seat first.
I know he’s gonna get snagged. I know I’m gonna walk out there,
and that nincompoop’ll be spread eagle on the ground with a stupid
look on his face. There’ll be a shout — “Get ‘em!” — and Johnny Law
will snatch me bald-headed. That fucker, man. What am I gonna do?
After several long minutes, I stand up, wince at the double-barrel
blasts of my knees popping, open the stall door, peek around the
corner, then slink from the men’s room with my arms crossing my
chest and my head hung low.
***
I walk from the harsh white brightness of the airport restroom
and into the pastel blah of the main terminal fully expecting a cluster
of billy-clubbing stormtroopers to jackboot my ass into oblivion.
Nothing.
Nothing more than the usual drone of mumblespeak punctuated
by the rhythmic click-clack of luggage wheels across the hard-tiled
floor. A man in a booth handing out religious tracts. A rumpled
businessman smoking a stogie and craning his neck to check the
flight schedules. A woman yanking a spring-loaded leash that sends
her harnessed toddler skittering back within arms reach. A punker
boy and his pierced-face girl clip-clopping along in matching oxblood
8-hole Docs and rippy-kneed thrift store blue jeans.
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Isaac and his satchel of dope and money are nowhere to be
found, so I mosey on over to the revolving glass doors leading to
the outside — la de dah, just goin’ for a stroll — hands deep in the
pockets of my baggy 501’s. No need to worry about me, Bossman.
Feeling the tickle of a thousand imagined stares.
Outside. Taxicabs and baggage handlers, tourists and business
suits, momanddads herding their quacking broods into woodpaneled Oldsmobuicks and Family Trucksters. Not a single snarling
drug-sniffing dog or flashing siren to be found. No paparazzi. No
news crews. No SWAT teams. No black helicopters.
I pass a group of security guards gathered in a corner and
instead of avoiding them, I walk right up to them and interrupt their
confab about civil war in Rwanda long enough to get the time. They
reluctantly tell me — There’s the time, have a nice day, goodbye,
don’t get run over by a cab on your way out of my face! — and I
cross the street to the parking area, slowly replacing my abject fear
with smoldering anger. I leave dark, black smears on the walls of the
parking structure as I pass. I’m gonna pull that fat fucker’s card.
As I round a corner, I see the fat fucker in question lounging in
the passenger seat of my Gremlin with the leather briefcase in his
lap, a slick simper pasted across his porky face. He winks at me.
I don’t say a word. I don’t even look at him. I yank open the
driver’s side door, climb in, crank the ignition, and pull out of the
space with a jerk. I fish for some cash to pay for parking, hook a
wrinkled fiver, and reel it out of my pocket in time to see Isaac
holding a razor sharp Andrew Jackson.
I scream and slap his hand — ¿What are you, stupid or just
retarded? — and yank the satchel from his grip and send it flying to
the backseat. Before I can stop myself, I give him a short sharp shock
to the back of his melon for good measure. I crumple my five spot
and toss it to the attendant and speed off without my change.
I rifle through the TDKs in the middle console, pinch one called
Doomcorefuckyou, knock that conversation killer in the cassette
player and crank the volume. We head back home without a word,
both of us staring straight ahead for miles and miles.
We’re past Valencia and starting up The Grapevine before either
of us speaks again. I’ve been Bad Mood Guy the whole way, gritting
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my teeth and thought-shouting to the blackest Norwegian death
metal. As the tape clicks over and the soundtrack to The Omen
begins, Isaac clears his throat and licks his lips.
“Dude, I’m calling shenanigans.”
He cracks open an I.B.C. from the watery cooler in the backseat,
takes a deep drag, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then says, “You’re
pissing my shit off, man. What the fuck do you want me to do, huh?
You want me to dump this shit off at the next gas station dumpster?
We found a big-assed bag of money. Jesus Christ, who wouldn’t take
it and get the hell out of there?”
I just shake my head. What-the-fuck-ever, dude.
“And what’s up with slapping me back there like I was your kid
brother or something?” He takes another swig. “Look, you hatched
this caper, Scheme Boy, so don’t climb up my ass with a shovel just
because I don’t react exactly the way you think I should.”
He unlocks his lap belt and twists in his seat so he can face me.
“This money means I can move out of my fucking mom’s house,
finally, at twenty-two. I can pay for the rest of my college and maybe
even graduate by the time I’m twenty-five. I can finally buy a Vespa
so you don’t have to ferry my ass everywhere.”
Isaac points his finger in my face. “Shit, I’ll buy you a Vespa,
and we can be Mods and get a thousand rearview mirrors and wear
British flag shirts. This is fucking schoolbooks and CDs and clothes
I don’t have to buy on my mom’s Visa. This is goodbye to jockeying
cash registers and busing tables and sweating over toner pigs at the
goddamned Copy Warehouse. All in a leather bag so you can carry
it. This is the realization of every dream we’ve ever had of finding a
sack of cash at the side of the road, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna
throw it away, especially since we’ve fucking gotten away with it.”
I ask him how long he practiced that speech in the car while
I was sweating hamsters in the airport shitter afraid of sticking my
head outta the stall door for fear I’d catch a DEA bullet in my ear.
“Yeah, well, that didn’t happen, did it?” Isaac says.
Yeah, well, fuck you. I tell him it’s the loaf of white stuff that
concerns me. Whoever was supposed to get that package is gonna be
awful butt-hurt when it comes up missing, and I don’t fancy getting
a cap busted in my ass by a murder of apoplectic drug dealers.
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He pooh-poohs the notion with a wave of his hand, even as I
goggle the rearview mirror at all the lights following us. “They don’t
know who we are. They have no idea. How’re they gonna find us?”
I ask him if he’s ever heard of The Freedom of Information Act.
Isaac blanks, so I tell him just about anybody can get the name and
address of anyone renting a p.o. box. It’d take all of two minutes for
them to find who I was and how to get to me.
“Oh, bullshit,” he says. “That’s bullshit. That’s an invasion of
privacy or something. You’d have to be a cop. You’re just making this
up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Oh, sweet Jeebus. This sucks. This really sucks. Why didn’t that
asshole leave a forwarding address? Why’d I have to…
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“Ahh,” Isaac sighs, turning off the alarm to his wristwatch. “11:30.
Time for Letterman.” I spy the watch he’s wearing, and it’s the very
same Tag-Heuer diving watch that was in the package. This pisses me
off all over again. He’s begging anyone stalking us to notice we’re the
ones who fucked up and stole their shit. I’m about to give him what
for, but he shoves an open palm at my face.
“If you’re so fucking worried about it, why don’t we just
Freedom of Information Act this Dr. Patel guy’s address? If he’s still
in town, we’ll give him his stuff back, apologize profusely for the
misunderstanding, and be done with it.”
Isaac points the brown I.B.C. bottle at me and goes, “Would that
make you feel better? Would that make you get up offa my dick?”
He slurps down the last of the root beer and tosses the empty
out the window to shatter on the gritty shoulder of I-5.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
I don’t say anything. I just keep driving. Another 90-minute
TDK later, and we’re back in town. I drop Isaac off at his parents’
house, and as he’s reaching for the briefcase in the backseat, I tell
him firmly that I’ll be keeping it until we decide what to do. It’s
my p.o. box, so it’s my ass. He glares at me for a moment, whiteknuckling the leather handle, then eases up and lets it drop with “Oh
well. Whatever. Nevermind.” He slams the door, flips me twin birds
through the window, then stomps off to his mom’s front door.
I drive home, walk upstairs to my bedroom, and spy a folded
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note taped to my door. It’s got my name on the outside in all caps.
It’s my roomie Karen’s handwriting. I don’t even touch it, I just open
the door quietly, creep inside, and close the door behind me.
I walk to my closet and stash the briefcase in the back behind
musty secondhand clothes and hundreds of dog-eared zines, jewel
cases, cassettes, and empty cartons of clove cigarettes and wadded
packs of Black Jack gum. I dive onto my futon, pull the thin comforter
over my head, and I lie there listening to the house creak and the
still-warm wind whistling through the screen of the open window.
I can hear the money breathe in my closet, muffled by the leather
sides of the satchel. I’m ignoring it, tossing and turning and trying
to find the right spot on my lumpy mattress, but it’s too hot to sleep.
The sheets are greasy against my back and Saran-Wrapping me as I
toss and turn. Stupid broken ceiling fan. Stupid frugal housemates.
I roll over and look at the closet door.
It’s open — just a crack — just enough to let ghosts and monsters
peer at fright-eyed little boys trying to sleep, just enough to let me
smell that money and wonder what it’s doing.
I say fuck out loud.
I look up at the dust on the unmoving blades of my ceiling fan.
I say fuck again.
I throw off the cover and drunk-dance past the flotsam on my
floor to get to the closet. I plow through the dirty clothes doggy
style, shoveling underwear and sweat-stained T-shirts back between
my legs like I’m digging a hole in the dirt.
There it is. The briefcase. I hesitate just a moment, breathe
deeply, scared and excited and guilty. Then I unzip it and look at all
the money, spill the bills on my lap, feel their weight, smell the dirty
paper. And I begin counting, separating it into two piles.
Isaac’s, mine, Isaac’s, mine, Isaac’s, mine…
It’s a long time before I stuff the money back into the closet,
cover it up with unwashed clothes, and crawl back into my bed.
***
I’m at work the next day, and all I can think about is the money
and the people obviously trying to get it back.
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I’ve gotta cancel my post box. I’ve gotta quit my job and bail,
go to Portland like I’ve been threatening, or Austin with Morgan like
I’ve been promising, or Athens with Shit For Brains, or some random
college town to pull coffee in some random cafe, or cut my hair and
change my name and hide in my parents’ basement in Wichita.
I gotta figure out what’s what. Ditch the powder and skedaddle
with the moolah? Peddle the skag and quadruple our dinero? Who
would we sell it to? Neither of us know any drug dealers. We don’t
even know what the shit is: I’m straight-edge, and Isaac’s got asthma
and can’t swallow pills and is afraid of needles. Do we get rid of
everything and never speak of it again? Drive back to L.A.X. and put
it back in the locker and throw away the key? Should we…
“Excuse me, but do you have our brochure done, yet?”
It’s Emma Rose from The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of
Christ Church and Bible College. I don’t need this right now. I tell
her it’s the very next job on my list of things to do, and she curls
her wrinkled lip and informs me I’ve told her this before. I mumble
something about patience being a virtue — which clearly does not
amuse her in the slightest — and walk from my desk to the phone on
the counter. She stalks toward my boss as I dial Isaac’s number.
He answers after six rings. I tell him it’s me. He grunts.
I tell him we’ve got to resolve this situation before I go nucking
futs and ask him to meet me at Chaos Coffeehouse for lunch, my
treat. He hesitates, still livid from the gobsmack, no doubt, but then
he grunts his assent. I hang up the phone, ready to clock out and get
jetty, and turn to find Emma Rose and my boss all up in my grill.
“When can we have The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of
Christ Church and Bible College brochures done?” my boss asks, his
bony arms folded across his pigeon chest. Emma Rose peers from
beyond, self-righteousness pinking her powdered face. I tell him I
can finish it up as soon as I get back from lunch.
“Now. Emma Rose will wait while you finish the proofs.”
I tell him that I really am famished and need desperately to eat
before I tackle a job as big as the brochure. I show him my hand,
show him how it’s shaking, tell him it’s because I haven’t eaten all
day, then I turn toward the time clock. He grabs my arm, spins me
back around, and says, “No. Now. Right now.”
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I close my eyes, open them (they’re still there), and calmly tell
my boss he can stuff The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of Christ
right up his scraggy ass. I hear Emma Rose gasp, “Well, I never!” and
I snark that’s obviously her fucking problem.
I stomp toward the front door, and the boss shouts, “Pick up
your final check at five! Minus your bill for those damned magazines
from last year!” I pass a table stacked with 20# bond, give a cockeyed
tower some chin music with my elbow, and snatch open the front
door as a ruckus of reams tumbles to the floor behind me.
I catch police something shouted after me, but I don’t flinch.
I climb into Gizmo and tear out of the parking lot for the last time.
***
“Okay, we keep the money, ditch the drugs, and everything’s
fine. Where’s the problem?”
Chaos is uncharacteristically quiet, not yet thick with slackerslang
from too-cool hipsters smoking filterless Camels and shooting stick
and playing ancient board games borrowed from the shelf against
the wall. Now, at two in the p.m., it’s that shady lawyer guy spittin’
game at Bekkah as she pours another latte for Bob the Vietnam Vet.
Three angular skater grommets in thrift store flannel are grumbling
on the fat sofas near the front window. They look more pissed off
and emo than usual. Everybody looks pissed off and emo today.
I tell Isaac to shut his fucking pie hole, then I lead him to the
back of the coffeehouse. We slip beneath the Employees Only sign
guarding the staircase and scuffle to the basement, then we crash on
an old couch and love seat downstairs. Boxes are stacked around
us. There’s a wobbly ping-pong table against one wall and two dusty
futons lining the other. I don’t even wanna know how many people
have fucked on those futons. I know I have. I lived here for three
weeks back when I got kicked out of the dorms. I probably still have
stuff here. Discarded clothing, maybe. Notebooks. Used condoms.
I tell Isaac we should find where Dr. Patel works or lives and hand
over everything, just wash our hands of the whole thing and move
on. He wrinkles his nose, sings “Hey! Wait! I gotta new complaint!”
with the coffeehouse sound system above us and nixes the idea.
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“Like I said, I’m not giving up the money, and I’ll fucking fight
you if you try to make me. If you wanna find out who used to rent
your p.o. box, fine, that’s your thing, but you’re fucking mental if
you think we can just give it back. ‘Oh, hey, we took your stash. Sorry
about that! Namaste, bitch.’ No, I don’t think so. Let’s split the lucre,
dump the smack or whatever the fuck it is, and forget about it.”
I hate this movie. I fucking hate it. I wanna fast-forward to the
part where I get the girl and raise a kid and make a living by doing
something I love, something that doesn’t require decisions like this.
Isaac’s itching to get his hands on that money, and I’m getting a
rash just thinking about it, but I hold firm. I tell Isaac I hit the post
office on my way to the coffeehouse, and he was right, they won’t
give out information about p.o. boxes to just anybody, so we’re outta
luck there. I suggest The Yellow Pages, and Isaac grudgingly agrees
to check for Dr. Patel’s office address, so we elbow past Vietnam
Bob and ask Bekkah for the phone book. She reaches beneath the
counter then hands it me, rolling her eyes as Bob launches into
another conspiracy theory about Nixon, the C.I.A., and Chile. The
lawyer guy just sits there leering at Bekkah’s free-range titties.
Thirty-four seconds later, we have the address of the suspected
former occupant of my p.o. box: Dr. Vipul “Benjamin” Patel, foot
surgeon. His office is downtown, just a few blocks from the hospital
and walking distance from this very coffeehouse.
“Let’s scope his digs, brother,” Isaac says. He’s got his Secret
Agent X-9 look on his face. “I’ll bet we can ease a window open and
go through his shit without anyone ever knowing.”
This Patel guy has obviously gotten mixed up in some shady drug
deal, and we’re getting deeper in shit the more we stick our noses in
his business. I should slap an -ed to the end of this whole situation
and make it past tense. I can totally see Isaac promising not to spend
the money conspicuously then hitting some Skrötum Traktör gig
with a fuckin’ yellow zoot suit and gold chains. I should totally walk
away from this bullshit money and our bullshit friendship.
I tell Isaac yeah, that sounds like a plan, let’s do it, why not?
We decide to meet behind the doc’s office at 11. Isaac leaves out
the back, and I walk out the front. As I pass the skaters, one of them
says to another, “Nevermind is overrated. Incesticide is way better.”
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I get into my car, crank the engine and pull out, and rifle through
my cassettes until I find one marked Bleach. I pop it into my cassette
player. Negative Creep starts somewhere in the middle.
***
I arrive early on my roomie David’s $2,000 mountain bike I
snatched from the garage, and I use the extra time to survey the
contents in my duffel: crowbar, gloves, black beanie, keychain Maglite.
I put on the gloves and beanie and hear a distant squeakawocka
coming up behind me. I turn to spy Isaac on his sister’s ancient
orange Huffy 10-speed arriving in a flutter of clanks and rust. He’s
covered head-to-toe with sweat, his black hoodie soaked from the
six-pack of hotdogs serving as the back of his neck to the voluminous
crack of his ass, which glistens in the bright moonlight.
“Hey,” he says. I nod and say hey.
We stash the bikes in the bushes behind the good doctor’s office.
A darkened sign topping a tall pole advertises Painless Foot Surgery
as his area of expertise, with bright red letters proclaiming his use
of The Latest Laser Technology. One side of the sign is a sad foot, all
bent out of shape and patched with Band-Aids. The other is a happy
foot, radiating happy little pink squigglies. The sign probably spins
when the office is open: happy foot, sad foot, happy foot, sad foot.
We try a few windows, checking for ease of entry while keeping
a lookout for the po-po. After the fourth cursory attempt, we find
what looks to be a narrow bathroom window of pebbled glass. I
whip out the crowbar and give it to Isaac, telling him to go for it. He
sneers, “Otay, Massuh,” and slips the edge of the bar into the seam
between the steel bracket holding the glass and the window frame.
The window slides open without a pop. It’s unlocked. Wicked.
Isaac sticks his head inside, looks around, then asks me for a
boost, so I proceed to stuff his doughy ass through the window.
“Ow, be careful! Dude, dude, watch the glass! Hey, hold it, push
my leg! No wait, there’s a rail on the wall, lemme put my foot on it!
Ouch, fucker, don’t let me fall…”
I let him fall in a flump of elbows, knees, and curses. Isaac calls
me a dick from the tile floor, gathers himself up, then takes the duffel
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bag from me and stares through the window. I stare back. He raises
his eyebrows. I peer over my shoulder at the deserted alley, look
down at my shoes for a moment, take a deep breath, then lift myself
through the window and close it behind me.
The only sounds in this tiny room are Isaac’s breathing and
the slight clink of the crowbar against my keys in the duffel. We are
indeed inside a bathroom, sanitized and tiled, a handwritten sign
taped to the mirror telling people to wash their hands. We creep to
the door and slowly slowly slowly open it and look into a hallway
empty save for potted plants and a bottled water dispenser.
Isaac signs something, but it’s too dark, and I can’t make out
what his hands are doing, so he grabs the fabric of my shirt sleeve
and pulls me after him as he tip-toes into the hallway. I don’t resist.
After a few tries, we find what appears to be the doctor’s personal
office. Isaac tries the doorknob, it’s unlocked, so we open it and
slink in. I set the duffel down, tighten the gloves on my hands, take
the mini Maglite from my pocket, and searchlight the surface of the
desk. Isaac opens a file cabinet in the corner by a couch.
I sort through papers and assorted doctor’s things — pens,
insurance forms, prescription tablets, business cards, a coffee cup
hawking some anti-depressant — and stop as I find a black vinyl day
planner in a side drawer. With this in hand, I lounge in the fat, highbacked chair behind the desk hoping to find something interesting.
Isaac’s rummaging through files while I look through the phone
number section. He sees a fax machine on a small table and cracks in
a whisper that we should steal it, but I shush him and wave my finger
in the direction of the file cabinet.
Suddenly, there’s a noise. Shit.
Isaac freeze-tags in place. I hold my breath. The ticks of the
watch around Isaac’s wrist pound like hammers on nails.
The sound of the lobby door opening followed by muffled
voices sends us into an ecstasy of fumbling. I dive under the desk
while Isaac squeezes under an end table near the couch. Just as we
get situated, the door kicks open and the lights flare to life.
“Goddamn it, you dot-head motherfucker, I want my shit, and I
want it now, or I’m gonna blow your fucking head off!”
The door slams shut as do my eyes, hidden in the palms of my
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hands. Two people are now in the room besides us, and one of them
is pissed. A voice different from the first, with a slight Hindi accent,
shouts, “I told you I don’t know, I don’t know, I never received it!”
“Yeah, I know, you told me,” the first voice yells, followed by a
slap and a panicked moan from the second man. “And I’m telling you
I’m gonna cave in your face unless you tell me where my shit is!”
I look out from under the desk, and I can see two sets of shoes,
a pair of white Adidas shell-toes and some brown leather wingtips.
Brown Shoes kicks White Shoes in the shins as the first voice shouts,
“Tell me, you prick, or I’m kicking your vindaloo-eatin’ ass!”
I look toward the end table and see Isaac’s face, and he’s actually
smiling. I raise a finger to my lips and narrow my eyes at him, and he
grins and double-guns me the bird.
White Shoes says, pleading, “Daniel never sent me a package,
I’m telling you! I have received nothing!”
Brown Shoes says, “He didn’t send you shit! I sent it! I did! Post
office box 1476, motherfucker, right off your business card!”
Oh snap. My box is 1467.
“All you had to do was get my shit, come back, and give it to me,
and Chandler would’ve been fine, but, no, you had to fuck it up!”
Another couple of slaps from Brown Shoes and a “son of a bitch!”
I look at Isaac again, and he’s covering his mouth like he’s stifling
laughter, like this is some teevee show he’s watching, and this is the
scene where White Shoes gets the shit beat out of him. I can’t believe
this fuckin’ idiot. I look at my watch. 11:28 p.m. We’re gonna miss
Letterman again if we don’t hurry up and…
…oh Jesus. Letterman. It hits me that Dolt Boy’s watch is set to
go off in a minute or so. He’s toast. I start frantically waving at Isaac
from under the table, trying to sign A-L-A-R-M. He just smiles at me,
making jerk-off hand motions and flipping me off.
“Here are the facts. One: I sent you the key. Two: my shit is
gone. Do the fucking math!” Another kick, another slap, followed by
a moan from White Shoes. “You wanna end up like your friend, huh?
I splattered his brains from here to White Plains, and now his body’s
soaking up ground water six feet under some farmer’s field right this
very second. You wanna see if reincarnation is real? Let’s find out
right now, yeah? Let’s see if you come back as a fucking cockroach!”
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I’m terrified, shaking my head at Isaac and trying to remember
the goddamned sign alphabet. I get him to pay attention to me as
White Shoes gets slapped again and again.
I form the letters… A… L… A… How does R go? Isaac’s finally
realizing shit’s about to get real, and he’s looking at me with worried
interest. He’s mouthing, “What? What?”
“Look, Doctor Feelgood, where’s my fucking shit!?”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
All action stops. All noises. All voices. I watch helplessly as Isaac
fumbles with the wristwatch and kills the alarm.
“What the fuck was that?” Brown Shoes hisses.
Isaac eyeballs me with a pitiful face completely devoid of the
humour of a few moments ago. He signs A-L-A-R-M.
Brown Shoes shuffles around the room. He rips open the office
door, pauses a moment there, then races over to the closet in the
corner and yanks that door open. He whips around, then heads right
at me, toward the desk under which I am prostrate. I squeeze my
eyes shut and clench my fists.
“What the fuck is this?”
I open my eyes and see the end table hiding Isaac toppling over,
and I hear Isaac’s porcine squeal. He’s snatched up by Brown Shoes,
and now all I can see of Isaac is his dirty red Chucks.
“Who the fuck is this?” yells the first voice.
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him!” says the second voice.
“Oh yeah? You never seen him? You never seen him? What the
fuck is that? Huh? Where’d you get that watch, you fat prick? Huh?
Look familiar, Doctor Patel?”
I hear the sound of Isaac’s body slamming into a wall, and Brown
Shoes screams, “You look me in the eye, right in my fucking eye, and
you tell me you don’t know where my shit is, and this fat fucking jagoff is wearing… the fucking… watch!”
A moan from Isaac.
“You see this, Patel?”
The cocking of a gun.
Isaac, “No, no, no…”
White Shoes, “I don’t know him! I don’t know him!”
Brown Shoes, “Reincarnation!”
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BLAM!
The protesting screams of White Shoes. The sliding of a body
along the wall and onto the floor.
“You see that, huh? You think I’m fucking around, huh? Look
at me! Look at me! I get my shit back tomorrow night!” More slaps,
more kicks, more moans from White Shoes. “Understand?”
The door slams shut. The glass in the frame shatters. A moment
later a door muffled by distance slams shut. A car engine roars. Tires
squeal. White Shoes whimpers, then he walks to the office door, flicks
off the lights, and closes the door behind him. Another door further
away opens and closes. A car door opens and slams shut. An engine
kicks to life. Tires spin on gravel. The engine fades to silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
I put my face in my hands and cry.
***
Wet sticky prickly vibrations rattle my entire frame. I am reduced
to thin tissue blown and shaken by rainwind.
…jesusjesusjesusjesus they’re gonna come back and kill me too
they’re gonna come back and kill me too they’re gonna come back
and kill me too jesusjesusjesus i gotta get the fuck outta here i’ve
gotta move oh jesus isaac’s dead he’s dead and now they’re gonna
come and kill me too i gotta get the fuck outta here…
Moments moments moments come and go and I shake and
shake. Asthmatic slivers of breath claw my throat raw to mingle and
mix with the hot stench of the doctor’s office and the cramped air
under the desk. I’m a greasy puddle, a river, a lake.
Silence.
I’ve gotta get outta here. Now. It hits me clench-fisted in the
stomach. I gotta get outta here now right now! Someone is going to
come back to get rid of the body, and they’re going to find me, and
they’re going to kill me and hide my body, too. I’ve gotta get the fuck
outta here. I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here.
RIGHT NOW!
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I back out of the space beneath the desk and scoot the leather
chair out of the way with my ass. No thinking no thinking no thinking
no thinking. My eyes are still squeezed shut as I rise and flinch at the
blast from my stiff knees.
…the smell, oh jesus, the smell the smell it’s isaac it’s isaac he’s
shit his pants he’s shit his fucking pants i’m gonna vomit…
I open my eyes. Isaac’s slumped against the red-splattered wall, a
drunkenly splayed sack of ragdoll arms and legs. His head lolls to the
side, his mouth a stricken capital O, his half-lidded eyes rolled white,
his left hand balled into a hard fist. I see half-moon cuts gouged into
the chubby palm skin beneath his fingernails. The watch ticks.
…ohgod ohgodohgod ohgodohgodohgod…
I’m slumped in the broken glass and gritty asphalt of the alley
behind the doctor’s office, holding my poor belly in my arms and
björking for God, Christ, and all humanity. I’m empty. Sour electric
bile trickles from my lips. My guts are hanging outside of my mouth,
intestines drooling from my nostrils and dangling in the dirt. My
arms are on fucking fire.
…they’re everywhere, they’re gonna get me, what am I gonna
do what am i gonna do i can’t go home they probably know where
i live they’re probably there right now waiting for me…
The shuddering stops long enough for me to remember my
roomie’s mountain bike stashed in the bushes. I stumble to my feet
and drunkwalk to the flowerbed. The bike is gone. It’s fucking gone. I
stare at the blank area between the wall and the bush where a $2,000
mountain bike had once been, then I turn and see Isaac’s sister’s
Huffy on its side in the dirt. I heft it up and ready myself to bolt
from the bushes — one two three go go go! — and I’m pedaling like
George Jetson on the treadmill, I’m fucking gone, down the street in
a streak, and I ain’t stopping for nothin’, not even for Buddha.
***
Downtown. Streetlights. Empty sidewalks.
No traffic, just me and Isaac’s sister’s 10-speed sticking to
parking lots and alleyways and residential areas as much as possible.
The only sound is the scrunch of gravel beneath my wheels, the rusty
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squeakawocka of the cranks, the tick-tick-ticking of ball bearings
when I coast, the random scrape of tumbleweeds wandering aimlessly
in the wind looking for a spark to catch.
I’m running down a mental list of places I can go, couches I can
crash on. It’s a short list, buddies and girlfriends who’re now mostly
ex-buddies and ex-girlfriends. Ryan and Itchy Dave’s crib? There was
always supposed to be a place on their floor. No. Can’t deal.
Morgan’s? We haven’t been fuck buddies for a minute, not since
she’s been fucking Joey Fuckhead. She used to be like Domino’s.
Make a call. 30 minutes or less. Hot and freshly baked.
Jesus, who else? Tracy? Yeah, right. She still lives with her mom.
Jonathon vamoosed when he joined Korn and got signed by
Sony, and Marcus stopped being a SHARP and joined the Navy, and
Gretchen’s a phone sex operator in East Bay, and Isaac…
I decide to hit Dara’s pad. She’s darkened my doorstep in tears
before, and I’ve taken her in, so she owes me. As long as her hipattachment jazz beau isn’t around, she’ll let me crash. She should.
It’s been a long time since she threw me and my cream rinse out.
Half an hour later of steady pumping and keeping to the shadows,
and I’m at the doorstep to Dara’s apartment. Her little Jeep is in the
parking space marked with the number of her pad, and Sax Boy’s
Nash Rambler is nowhere to be seen.
I ready myself to knock on the front door, then think better of
it and go around to the side near her bedroom window. She was
always a heavy sleeper. I rap on the glass several times with my
knuckle and whisper her name. I stand there in the warm air with
my arms crossing my chest, holding myself.
Nothing. I knock again, louder this time, and I hiss her name.
I hear something. The venetian blinds flutter. I knock again,
say her name. Fingers appear between the blinds and pull down
the aluminum slats, then Dara’s nappy head peeks from edge of the
window. There are sleep-boogers at the corners of her eyelids, and
pillow creases wrinkle her face. Her eyes are baby blue.
She stares blankly, her brow furrowed, then her eyes widen.
“Adrien?” Her voice is muffled through the glass.
She wipes the crusties from her eyes with the back of her hand
and slides the window open. “You okay, man?”
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I nod, but the instantly familiar smell of her sultry bedroom
wafts through the window, and then my throat swells shut and my
eyes blur. I look down at my checkerboard Vans.
“Meet me around at the… uhm… around front.” She disappears
with a snap of the metal blinds.
The door’s open when I get to it, Dara’s bushy head poking out
from the blanket wrapping her shoulders. She closes and locks the
door behind me, then grabs my arm and leads me to her bedroom.
She flops on top of her oak four-poster and groans dramatically.
“So, what’s up, Chicken Butt? Some pretty girl got you down?”
Her room is warm and humid and littered with wrinkled big girl
blouses and executive slacks. A pair of lacy red panties embroidered
with Thursday lies crumpled in a corner. I bought those as a joke.
My hand rises to cover my face, and I’m crying again, just
bawling. Dara makes a sympathetic coo, whispers, “Oh, pobrecito…
Pretty girls are mean.” She pulls me down and into her arms.
We rock back and forth for a long time, listening to ocean waves
playing through her clock radio.
When the tears finally dry up, and we’re looking up at the ceiling
fan, she asks, “You wanna talk?” Her foot rests on mine, her hand in
my hair. A faint trace of stale Teen Spirit wafts from her underarm.
I tell her no, I just need to crash for a while.
She sighs. “You sure? I’m awake. You might as well tell me while
you have the chance is all I’m sayin’.” She sounds so redneck when
she’s too tired to hide the Dust Bowl in the back of her throat.
I slowly shake my head, tell her no, really, I don’t have the energy
to talk about it right now. I just need some warmth.
She looks at me for what seems a long time, then shakes her
head, pats my chest and says, “Same ol’, same ol’. I don’t know about
you, but I’m goin’ back to sleep. I gotta motor to Hollyweird for my
intern thing in the mornin’.” She rolls over to give me a hug. As she
does, I kiss her neck just beneath the ear, and she stiffens and pushes
me away with one hand on my chest.
“Don’t,” she says. “I love you to death, man, but don’t even start.
I’ll kick your narrow ass right back into the street.”
I stare at her in the dark, feel the warmth of her open palm against
my heartbeat. Her hair is longer. She’s dyed it reddish-brown.
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“Go to sleep, fucker. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Dara smiles and
plunges her head deep into her pillow. She yawns and stretches and
rolls away from me then pulls the blanket over her shoulder.
I watch the rise and fall of her breathing long enough for it to
slow down and become a steady rhythm, then I turn over and pull
the thick comforter to my throat and stare at the wall.
***
I’m startled awake in the morning by the nasal bleat of Dara’s
clock radio. I slap at it, once, twice, three times, trying to find the
goddamn snooze button, but the fucking thing is still buzzing, so
I pick up the radio and give it a yank, but the cord’s too long, so I
pitch the whole fucking thing across the room and wince when it hits
the far wall with a great THWACK! followed by the tinkle of broken
plastic. Great. Just great.
I peel open my eyes and see a yellow Post-It Note on the bedside
table beneath the spot where the clock radio sat. “Good morning,
Sunshine!” It shouts in ironic spirally letters. “If you’re reading this,
the alarm is now lying in a heap near my chifforobe.”
I sit up and look, and yes, right at the foot of her antique armoire
are the shattered remains of her Realistic clock radio.
I continue reading. “You owe me another clock! Again! You
bastard! Now get the hell out of my house (smiley face) and call me
when you get the chance and tell me the name of that triflin’ whore
who made you cry so I can smack her senseless! Later!”
Another Post-It next to it says: “Pretty girls are mean! Always date
ugly girls! They give better blowjobs! Didn’t I prove that to you?”
I collapse onto her bed and bury my face in her feather pillow.
She still uses the same hair conditioner. I take a deep breath and
hold it, then I let it go. I roll onto my back and stretch my arms over
my head and point my toes. My knees and elbows snap like thick
branches. My calves fucking hurt, too. What the hell?
And then I remember the bicycle ride, and I feel something sting
on my forearms. I bring my hands to my face and see scratches all
over my palms, then turn them over and see my knuckles crusted with
dried blood and torn skin. I sit up and stare at the deep lacerations
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etching my forearms. An angry red gouge plows four or five inches
down my wrist, and a leathery flap of elbow skin curls away from a
deep wound. What the hell happened?
The bathroom window. It must’ve been from scrambling out the
doctor’s bathroom window. It must have broken on my way out.
Isaac. Isaac’s dead. Isaac’s dead, and I still have the drugs and
the money at my house, and what the hell am I going to do, and how
long will it be before the guy in the brown shoes finds me and kills
me too? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
On the bedside table is a paper plate covered in toast crumbles
and smears of marmalade and margarine. Underneath is the local
newspaper. I lift the plate, snatch up the paper, and check the date.
It’s today’s. I open the thin local section.
Heroin invades Kern County.
Los Angeles street gangs recruiting locally.
County’s teen pregnancy rate highest in state.
I toss the local section and grab the front page. The main headline
has been circled in red crayon. The headline reads Kurt Cobain dead
at 27. A Post-It Note tacked next to the photo has three exclamation
marks in red crayon. I read the whole article, then I read it again.
They found his body yesterday morning in his house in Seattle. Why
hadn’t anyone mentioned this at the coffeehouse?
He was born less than a month before me. Holy fucking shit.
I roll off the bed and onto the carpet, then I slowly stand straight
and stretch. Everything pops. Everything hurts. I limp to the living
room and Dara’s hurricane of a computer desk, grab up her scuffed
pink Princess phone, and call Isaac’s home number. After two rings,
his mom answers with a perky, “Hello, Kornberg residence!”
I can hear the cockatiel squawking from its cage in Isaac’s mom’s
living room. Isaac hates that fucking bird.
“Hello? Hello? Well, suit yourself.” She hangs up.
I dial 411 and ask for Dr. Patel’s office number. It rings three
times, then an answering machine kicks in, confirms the address,
and says the office hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through
Saturday. It says to call back during those times or leave a message.
I hang up and look at the clock on Dara’s microwave. It says
2:47. I look at the calendar pinned to her wall. Today is Saturday.
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I pick up the phone again and call my house. It rings three times,
four times, five times — the answering machine is off, so they must
be home — and is finally answered on the seventh ring.
“Hello?” It’s my roomie Karen. She’s out of breath. I tell her it’s
me, and she sighs loudly.
“We’re out back with the dogs. What do you want?”
I ask her if I have any messages, and she harrumphs and says,
“Actually, you know what? Pay your phone bill, and you can get
your own phone reconnected. We told you not to give anyone this
number, and… Oh, hey, did you take David’s bike again?”
I ignore her and say this is really important, did anyone call for
me today? Or stop by? Please just tell me.
She shouts, “No! Nobody called! Nor should they! Ever! Did you
take David’s bike or not? He’s freaking out!”
I tell her I don’t know anything about the bike, and I ask her if
she’s sure no one’s called and no one’s come by. She doesn’t say
anything. I can hear music in the background.
I say her name. I ask if she’s still there.
She says, “Some guy came by early this morning. Woke us up.”
Shit. I ask her who it was. I ask her what he looked like.
“I don’t know, some sketchy older guy. He was rude. I told him
you weren’t here. He didn’t leave a message, and he said he’d try
back later. I have to go, we’re washing the dogs in the back, and now
I have to call the fucking police about David’s bike. Are you sure you
didn’t borrow it again without asking?”
I ask if she remembers what kind of shoes the guy wore.
She says, “What? How the fuck should I know? He woke us up.
Why are you fucking asking me what kind of shoes he had?”
I ask her to please just answer me. It’s important. Were they
brown wingtips?
She grunts with frustration and hangs up the phone.
I slowly place the handset back onto its cradle. That’s it. He
knows where I live. What the fuck am I going to do? I can’t go home,
get the stuff and leave town because he’s probably watching the
place or having it watched. I can’t just leave town right now, because
I don’t have any cash and my Gremlin’s almost out of gas. Besides,
where would I go? Fucking hell.
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I reach into my pocket for my duct tape wallet, search around
until I find a dog-eared scrap of notebook paper with phone numbers
scrawled on it, and I find the number for my parents’ house in
Wichita, Kansas. I dial the number.
“Hello?” It’s my mother.
I don’t say anything.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
I hang up the phone, stare at it for a moment, then I pick up the
handset again and dial 911.
***
My thumbnail is bitten and gnawed to the pink.
White slivers of dead skin jut from each side of the cuticle, places
my teeth have nuzzled and picked and grazed. Dirt shows through
the splintery tip, dirt and dried blood from chewing too close.
Wood grain. The tabletop is covered in wood grain substance,
some kind of brown-on-brown screen-printed plastic veneer. Lines
loop and fold and stretch beyond my thumb. Shapes emerge. Patterns
and figures, little wood people, little wood cars, little guns.
“So, this is our situation.”
I look up at the blur across the table from me, the blur in the
beige I’m Not A Cop suit. His voice is loud, louder than it has to
be, loud like my father waking me up for school or a principal
administering schoolyard justice. I rub the blur from my eyes, and
the fuzz coalesces into Lieutenant Dwayne Goettel, who’s a dead
ringer for a bald Gene Hackman.
“You say this kid’s dead, but there’s no body. You say you broke
into the doctor’s office with this dead kid, but Officers Thirlwell and
Jourgensen found no sign of a break-in, and no sign of broken glass,
and no sign whatsoever of blood or bone fragments or any other
sign indicating a fatal head wound.”
He leans forward and points a finger at me. He’s chewing gum.
“Have you ever seen what happens when someone puts a gun
to his own face and pulls a Hemingway? Have you? Look at me. This
is real life, so look at me when I’m talking to you. Engage. Have you
seen what kind of mess is left behind after a gunshot to the head?”
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I look up. His eyes are brown, like mine. I tell him yes, as a
matter of fact, I have seen the result of a gunshot blast to the head.
The reason I’m sitting here is because I’ve seen exactly what happens
when a gun is pressed to a forehead and the trigger is squeezed.
Goettel sucks his teeth and chews his gum, then he says, “It’s
nasty, I am telling you. You can’t just clean that up in the middle of
the night and have it look pretty by morning, not unless you hire
a crime scene clean-up crew at, what? You say it was around 11:30
Friday night? You called us around 3 the next afternoon? We made
the doc’s office by 4:30 and found… What? Guess what we found?”
He hits the table with the meat of his balled up fist.
“I’ll tell you what we found: diddly-squat. How do you explain
that? Sometime between midnight and 4:30 the next afternoon, the
crime scene was erased? A little over 16 hours later, and not a smudge
of brain, not a speck of skull, not a teardrop of blood?”
He shrugs his shoulders and lifts his palms to the ceiling, raises
his eyebrows, juts out his chin and holds it there with his eyes wide
open. I look back at him without blinking.
“I am telling you,” he says. “It takes a professional to clean up a
crime scene where there’s been a head shot, and no one’s gonna do
it at midnight. Plus, oh, and this is rich, the doctor’s secretary says
he’s been back East at a medical conference for the past week. Your
missing friend’s mother confirms he’s been scarce for the past two
days, but the last time she saw him, he told her you two had some
kind of lover’s spat. She hasn’t seen him since supper on friday when
he went for a bike ride, so it’s possible we have a missing person.”
He eyeballs me a moment, chewing his gum, then he rises slowly
from his chair, extends his 6-foot-or-more aging linebacker cop body
across the table, points his entire cop frame at me, at my face.
“And here you are with a bag of money and a batch of what our
lab suspects is a metric shit-ton of crystal meth. You ever hear that
phrase before? Metric shit-ton? My son says it all the time. It’s a unit
of measurement. It means a whole lot. You wanna know what else it
means? Don’t answer. It means felony trafficking. It means get tough
on crime. It means San Quentin with an Aryan Nation cellie named
Cletus selling your virgin ass for cigarettes to his ace boon coons for
15-30, depending on your priors. You got priors? Don’t answer.”
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He points his chin toward a piece of paper on the table then
snatches it up and holds it at arms-length, squinting.
“Criminal mischief. Class C misdemeanor. You kicked the side
of a pickup truck with a steel-toed boot and caused, let’s see, $600
worth of damage? A day in county and anger management classes?”
I tell him he tried to run me over in a crosswalk.
“Aaaaaand another one for shoplifting?”
I tell him that was never proven. I quit before there was an
investigation. I didn’t steal anything from the record store. The
assistant manager just didn’t like me.
“Interesting. This was for a candy bar from Safeway. You were,
let’s see, 12 years old? The arresting officer shares your last name.
You related to this guy?”
I nod. My uncle. My dad caught me snagging a Baby Ruth and
called his brother to come and arrest me and make me spend a few
hours in jail. I didn’t realize he had seriously put that on my record.
“Your uncle, huh?” He strokes his chin, staring at me, his eyes
flicking up and down. “He was a good cop. Damn good cop. Knew
him for years. You Billy Ray’s son, or Ernie’s?”
I sigh. I tell him Ernie’s.
He smiles and says, “He used to be my insurance agent. He lives
in Kansas now? Tell him I said hello the next time you talk.”
Greeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaat.
Lieutenant Goettel struts around the table and pulls a chair
behind him and sits down inches from my knees. He’s so close to my
face I can smell his three-pack-a-day dirty menthol habit, can almost
feel the tentacles of his tapered mustache scrape against my forehead.
Dow Scrubbing Bubbles crackle at the corners of his mouth. His
lips are chapped, and his butter cutters are stained nicotine yellow
except for one slightly whiter than the rest.
I look down at my hands folded in my lap and slouch in the
molded plastic chair like a delinquent. He’s staring me down
fucking Popeye Doyle stylie. If he asks if I’m still pickin’ my feet in
Poughkeepsie, I’m gonna vomit my spleen.
I’m so tired of this gulag bullshit. How many hours since they
escorted me home and grabbed the satchel from the back of my
closet, and they haven’t found dick? Everything at the doctor’s office
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is gone. Some fucking excellent spic-and-span job, I gotta hand it to
the good doctor. He must know some people.
I scratch the stiff cut in my arm, look up at Gene Hackman’s
doppelgänger, and he’s still staring at me with a slight smirk on his
face. I look back down at my hands. I gotta pay my phone bill.
I want to go to sleep so bad, just curl up in my great aunt Johnny’s
quilt on my futon and drift off for a couple of days, forget all about
this fucking French Connection asshole, dickhead, fuckwad, jerk,
fascist, fucking prick bastard.
“Well, I’d like to hear what you think about all this,” he says,
nostrils flaring slightly. Goettel spreads his arms wide to pop his
elbows, then he presses his palms to either side of his head. He
cracks his neck to the left with a quick snap and twist. It sounds like
an office chair rolling over bubble wrap. He smooths his ugly Sears
rack jobber and leans back in his chair. He clasps his hands behind
his head and points his toes. His ankles crack.
“I can wait all day,” he says, his eyes fixed on mine. “I’m getting
paid to be here, and I don’t mind making me some overtime.”
I cluck my tongue and look up at the light tubes and acoustic
tiles. I wanna throw a sharpened pencil into the ceiling real bad and
see if it sticks. I tell him I didn’t kill anybody if that’s what he wants
to imply. I’d never been in the same room as a gun. Until now.
“Yeah, you told me that, you told me like five, six times. Now
tell me something I don’t know.” He takes a sip from the coffee I
declined earlier when he started this lovely interrogation.
Prick. I tell him I don’t know what he wants me to say that I
haven’t already said five or six times. He smacks his gum at me, so I
ask him what he’s going to do about the drug dealer who’s probably
looking to snatch me up like a dingo after Meryl Streep’s baby.
“Who, the guy in the brown shoes? I wear brown shoes. Did I
kill your friend? Officer Thirlwell wears brown shoes. Half the police
department wears brown shoes. Are you telling me the whole police
department killed your friend? If you were to look in every closet in
every house in the whole city, chances are you’d find, among other
things, a pair of brown shoes. Did they all kill your friend?”
He pulls out a pack of Kools, tamps it down on the palm of his
hand, and draws out the last cigarette with his cracked lips.
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“Let me tell you where I stand on this.” He whips out a scratched
silver Zippo with a police department shield etched in blue on the
surface and lights up. He puffs once, twice, three times, then blows
the bluish smoke from the side of his mouth.
“How am I supposed to know you’re not the guy in the brown
shoes? Metaphorically. You know what a metaphor is? Don’t answer.
It’s something that symbolizes something else. Suppose you and the
dead kid went into this deal as partners, and when you got the cash,
you whacked your pal with 165 grains through the brain bucket.”
I ask him why in the world I would come here if that were the
case. I ask him why I’m not on my way to Pago Pago or something.
He ignores me.
“You dump the body in a ditch somewhere,” he continues, “but
now you’re afraid you’re gonna get caught, so you come to me with
this story to weasel out of a murder charge before we come and lock
your ass up and throw away the key.”
He takes a long drag, sucking his Kool until the cherry glows
red hot. Slow plume out the side of his mouth, dragon breath, then,
“Why should I believe you?”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
I shake my head and look back down at my thumb again.
I tell him I don’t know what he wants me to say. I’ve told him
everything, now it’s his turn to tell me something, something that
hopefully rhymes with: “Here’s the Witness Protection Program
handbook. Your new name is Lew Megonigal, and you’re a firefighter
in Cape May, New Jersey.”
And we sit there, him fellating his coffin nail and me looking
at my thumb as if it’s the most interesting thing God ever invented,
which, if you think about it, is one of the best things God ever gave
us. Where would we soft-skinned humans be without our big brains
and these nifty opposable thumbs? We’ve got no claws. We’ve got
no teeth. We’ve got no armor or camo. Without these thumbs, we’d
be sitting around waiting for some lion to eat us up like wiggly pink
bonbons with crunchy centers. And brown bonbons. And black…
Goettel butts his Kool on the heel of his beige oxfords and says,
“Aaaaand scene.” I look up as he’s rising from his chair, his hand
motioning towards the door as he opens it.
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I ask him what he means.
He says, “I meeean you’re free to go. I’ve taken your statement.
I’ve got your phone number. I know where you live. Now it’s time to
say goodbye… au revoir…. adios… auf wiedersehen.”
I feel like I’ve been dismissed without my year’s supply of
chocolate. I ask him where I’m supposed to go?
“Well, you can start by finding a place where you feel safe and
spending the next few days avoiding drug dealers with brown shoes.
Just make sure we can get a hold of you. Other than that, have a nice
day. Don’t forget your pillow at the front desk.” He’s holding the
door open, his other hand scooping me out of the room.
There’s nothing more to say. I stand up and leave the room.
***
“…manna points something something motherfucker something
goblins something.” Laughter.
“Eata bagga dicks, bitch!” More laughter.
“something fireball, damn!”
And I’m awake. I’m on a fusty couch, head buried in the feather
pillow I snagged from Dara’s, arms folded around my ears.
I sit upright, rub sleep from my eyes, and look around. I’m in
Chaos. It’s half full. A group of six heshers by the door are playing
Magic, plunking down cards and shouting in triumph or groaning
with defeat. Another small group slouches at the front counter
chucking slammers into piles of pogs, chatting up one of the waify
mannequins Bekkah hires to push caffeine. Tom Waits is on the stereo
rasping about how the earth died screaming. In the back of the room,
billiard balls clack. The warm air swims thick with smoldering sage,
clove cigarettes, coffee, and a hint of kind bud in the background.
I look at the sunlight streaming through the front windows, dust
motes dancing in harsh light. I turn my head toward the Elvis clock
with the tick-tocking hips nailed to the wall behind the counter, then
shake my head. I’ve been asleep on this raggedy-assed dumpsterdived sofa since 7 this morning, and now it must be… I look back
at the Elvis clock. It says 11:57, but that can’t be right. No one’s ever
bothered to set it. They must just like to watch it move.
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I unfold myself from the smelly cushions, bones creaking, joints
cracking, and slump to the counter with Dara’s pillow under my
arm. They’re talking about Kurt. They’re wondering if Eddie’s next.
“Yo yo yo, you get enough sleep, loco?”
It’s Louie, chilling in hard-core gangsta baggies and a blue
bandana. Shameless Snoop wannabe. Probably thinks a Crip uses a
crutch. Red hair and sunburned freckles. Fucking wigger.
I lob a groan in his direction and ask the raccoon-eyed coffee
wench for something strong. I lean hard on the counter with my
elbows, my head hung low. She suggests a Hairy Legs. Triple capp
with a shot of Nawlins. I tell her I don’t do chicory, ask her to hook
a brother up with a triple espresso, a shot of Jack, and a shot of
Bailey’s. Bekkah still owes me for the menus I designed months ago.
I ask the barista’s stabby elbows to put it on my tab.
I’m beat, and I still don’t know what I’m gonna do or where I’m
gonna do it. I’m out of crash pads. There’s no one left, not even a
cousin with a couch at this point. I put the pillow in my lap and press
my forehead against the countertop and close my eyes tight.
There’s always Wichita.
Oh hell no. Been there, done that, swore to never do it again,
did it again anyway, regretted the whole damned thing. My parents
still look at me and see the 15-year-old malcontent they hauled to
the psychologist. They still talk to me as if my hopes and dreams are
the same blank-eyed shit dribbling from a teenager’s mouth. They
wanted me to be an insurance agent. I wanna be a writer. My dad
pictures me haunting alleyways in a cummy trenchcoat peddling dirty
limericks to school kids. Hey kid, wanna do a line… of poetry?
At my age, my father had a job that supported two kids, a wife,
a house, a mortgage, a motorcycle, a dog, and a car. Me? I’ve got a
music collection that could choke a whale shark comprising CDs and
LPs I mostly stole. A computer my parents bought me. A student loan
I’ll never pay off. A shitty credit rating that will haunt me until I die
utterly penniless. A trail of ex-girlfriends who no longer speak to me.
Boxes full of shit that never get unpacked before I move again. A bed
that’s just a bare futon mattress on the ground. A best friend I can
barely tolerate, but I do because he is the only one I can find who
will tolerate me. Was…
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“Odelay, vato, you’re lookin’ muy malo, homes.”
It’s Louie again. I tell him to piss off, I ain’t your homes, and I
keep my head buried under my clasped hands on the counter.
He acts like he doesn’t hear me, but drops the Spanglish. “You
hear about Kurt Go-Bang? They just fuckin’ found his body rottin’ in
his house. Offed himself with a fuckin’ shotgun. He wasn’t fuckin’
around. Dude wanted to die. What the fuck? It was fuckin’ Courtney,
man, I am tellin’ you, it was that fuckin’ skanky-ass cooz.”
I can feel the fine scratches of the cool Formica surface against
my forehead. I roll it like the ball of a thumb across a pad of ink.
Back and forth.
God, this cafe used to be packed. Where is everybody?
Back…
and…
forth.
Fuck it. I’m just gonna go home. They can’t watch the fucking
place 24/7. All I have to do is walk in, get my duffel and a change of
unders, and I’m outta there. Brown shoes can kiss my ass, and so
can the police department. As a matter of fact, this entire lame-assed
town can kiss every inch of my pale white ass.
***
There it is. My house. It looks as dark inside as the night nuzzling
its windows. Not even the porch light is on. David’s Citroën Snail is
parked in the driveway. Karen’s rickety Peugot moped leans against
the side of the house near the garbage cans. My Gremlin is hugging
a curb on the street. The garage door has a shiny new lock on the
clasp. I wonder if the front door does, too.
It can’t be much past 7 or so, and it looks like everyone’s home,
yet all the lights are out. What’s up with that?
I’m straddling Isaac’s sister’s 10-speed and holding Dara’s pillow
under my arm. I’m hiding in the shadows of a huge cottonwood in
the front yard of a neighbour’s house down the street.
It seems too risky to go in front. He could be anywhere, watching,
waiting. I decide to pedal around to the street behind ours and climb
over the neighbour’s fence into our backyard.
Hide the bike in some bushes. Hop the fence into the backyard.
Press my face against the kitchen window.
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.
Nothing. Just containers of flour and sugar on the counter. The
toaster. A stack of my dirty dishes in the sink, a pink Post-It adorning
one of the plates. Sound equipment in the living room. No roomies.
No dogs, either. Where the fuck are the dogs?
Through the sliding glass door. Slowly.
Creep through the kitchen, Dara’s pillow shielding my chest.
Tiptoes. No sound. Up the stairs on all fours, looking, listening.
My room. Door’s open a crack.
Silence.
Silence.
Slowly poke my head through…
…to see my dirty room, same as it ever was. I start to breathe a
sigh, but first go to the closet, peek inside for the duffel. Is it…
…it is.
I sit cross-legged on the corner of my lumpy futon mattress on
the floor, smile, sigh, and feel relief drip to the tips of my toes and
puddle beneath me on the goldenrod shag carpeting.
Everything seems fine. I’m so out of here, it’s not even funny.
I plop my head onto the feather pillow and look up at the sagging
posters and banners on my ceiling, watch the way they billow like
clouds. My hands are clasped behind my head, my feet are kicked
back, and I’m thinking about what I’m going to do once I leave for
good. I can still smell Dara’s hair conditioner on the pillow case.
I close my eyes and think of a song I wrote last year with Bryan
and Itchy Dave. I never see them anymore, not since I fucked Morgan,
who was Itchy Dave’s girl back then. We were gonna start a band.
this is the last time
i’ll ever say goodbye
i’ve got no more bridges to burn
i’m gonna cut my hair
and change my name
i’m moving back to wichita
The next thing I know, I’m waking up to someone tapping on
my forehead. Without even opening my eyes, I know I’m fucked.
“Hey, kid,” a familiar voice says. “Wake up. We gotta talk.”
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.
I hold my breath. I’m about to meet Brown Shoes face to face,
and it will most likely be the last thing I ever do.
I am a fucking idiot.
***
I open my eyes.
Hovering over me is a black blur that can only be the muzzle of a
pistol. Beyond the blur, a hand and wrist poking from a white sleeve.
Behind that, a face, haloed by my red lava lamp. Brown Shoes. A
warm tingle washes over me. Peace at the mouth of a gun. Or piss.
And I stare at him, frozen there, just an arm’s reach away,
crouching. He looks like a mechanic. Like nobody, or anybody, just
some guy. He doesn’t look all that mean or cruel or evil, he’s just
some guy who’ll fix your car or sell you tires or check your plumbing.
Just some random guy. The top button of his collared shirt is missing.
He’s sweating, not from nervousness or exhaustion, I suspect, but
from the heat of this room without the fan helicoptering overhead.
Brown Shoes is just some guy with a gun pointed at my face.
“You awake, or what?”
He pokes me in the forehead with the cool tip of the gun.
“Shake your head or something. I’m tired of fucking around.”
I lie there, staring up at him. I slowly exhale.
“Look…” He puts the shaft of the gun to his lips and clenches it
between his teeth, then he grabs my shirt with both hands and yanks
me to a sitting position in one swift tug. He takes the gun from his
mouth and cracks me in the temple with a THUNK I can hear deep
inside my head. His other hand lets go of the fabric of my shirt with a
push, and he crouches with both of his elbows on his knees and sort
of studies me with a strange smile on his lips. He tilts his head.
I can’t speak. My mouth’s too dry, all the way down to my guts.
He keeps looking at me, his eyes darting all over my face. He presses
his lips together and sighs, then he leans in close and smiles.
He smiles wider, baring his teeth — he’s got one silver canine
— and he cocks his head to the other side like a dog when you
whistle and hum at the same time. One breath, two breaths, three.
He inhales, holds it, then says, “I just need you to give my money
back. And my crank. That’s all, and then I’ll go. We real cool?”
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His eyes are unblinking. I don’t know what to say.
He clears his throat, brings his face so close to mine his eyes
merge into one floating iris at the tip of my nose, and he says,
“Brother, I don’t wanna get mean on you, but I need my shit, yeah?”
I say nothing.
He withdraws his face from mine and says, “Open your mouth.”
Nothing.
“Open your mouth so I can put the tip of my Glock 17 into it.”
Blank.
His left hand streaks around the side of my head and grasps the
back of my neck while his right shoves the mouth of the gun into my
lips, then he vice-grips his hands together. Hard. My lips are pressed
so tightly against my teeth, they ooze apart, and the oily metal clinks
against my incisors. The pain is ferocious. I’m clenching my teeth
shut, clenching as tight as I can, but I can’t hold it, and the tip of the
pistol grinds past my teeth and into my mouth, deep, all the way to
his warm trigger finger. My whole body is an earthquake. His hand is
not. His hand is cool like Luke.
He holds the gun in my mouth, his other hand at the back of my
head. He’s crouching there, staring at me in silence as I try desperately
to squelch my gag reflex. Drool is sliding down my chin.
He finally clears his throat, pulls the gun from my mouth with
a moist pop, and says, “Sorry about that, but you need to make a
decision. You need to choose one of two paths. Behind door number
1 is you giving my shit back. It’s not yours. You had no right to take
it. I simply want what’s mine. It ain’t rocket science.”
Brown Shoes clears his throat softly, then continues. “Behind
door number 2, however, is me shooting you in the fucking face
and going downstairs and doing the same to your roommates, who,
by the way, just so you know, are in the kitchen pantry with their
hands duct-taped behind their backs. Shame about the dogs. I love
dogs. I love most animals, except ferrets. Ferrets are fucking nasty.
Even when you demusk them, they stink. Dated a girl once who kept
ferrets. Her whole house smelled like shit. Kind of a deal-breaker.”
He pauses, licks his lips. He hasn’t blinked once.
“It’s up to you, brother. I’ve got no preference. Door number 1’s
quicker, but we’ll open door number two if you insist.”
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.
.
He smiles again. “Capisce?”
I swallow hard and dry, slowly nod my head, swallow again, and
somehow manage to croak something about the cops.
“Cops? What cops? What’re you talking about, cops?”
I tell him I gave the money and the meth to the cops.
“You what?” he says. “You gave my… You gave it to the cops? Just
like that, you just gave my shit to the cops? Who the fuck are you,
you gave my shit to the cops? Huh?”
He stands up, one hand clenched around the collar of my shirt,
the other around the gun, dragging me to my knees as he rises.
“Who the fuck is this kid?” he says to the ceiling fan. “What I ever
do to him? He couldn’t just leave my shit alone? He felt compelled?
It was drugs and money in a fucking airport, for Christ’s sake. Why
didn’t he realize it would be a bad idea? Who does that?”
I’m on my knees, still on my futon, with Brown Shoes towering
over me and gesticulating at the ceiling with his pistol.
“Why couldn’t he have given the fucking package to the fucking
postal clerk and went about his fucking business? Huh? That’s what I
woulda done. What, is he so fucking bored with his own goddamned
life he’s gotta mess with mine? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
He scratches his chin with the back of the gat, shakes his head in
silence. The hammer crackles against the stiff bristles of his days-old
shave. He looks back down at me and points the Glock at my face.
“Motherfuckers like you, my friend, got no goddamned life of
your own, so you gotta create drama in order to feel alive. What you
need is a hobby. What you need is a purpose in your life. You need
direction. You need to get off your ass and make a plan.”
He punctuates his lecture with juts of the gun toward my
forehead. “You have no idea what brand of fuckery you’ve gotten
yourself into, do you? ”
I look down at my knees pressed into the quilt on my futon.
“Of course you don’t.” He scratches his ear with the sight of his
gun. “You’re just bored. Nothing’s on television. I’ve been there.”
He looks up at the ceiling, shakes his head slowly back and forth,
and softly says, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” He nods his head, smiles,
then cracks the butt of his pistol hard across the bridge of my nose
with a nauseating crunch.
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.
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“What about now, you bored now?”
He cracks me again with the gun, this time in the temple.
“You like this station? Huh? You gettin’ a clear signal?”
He hits me again and again, in the nose, in the mouth, in the ear.
Blood is spraying from my face, and I’m trying to lift my arms to ward
off his blows, but he jerks me around and keeps hitting me.
Chunks of my teeth are breaking off and spitting across the room.
My nose is a bubbling mass of pain. My arms are losing strength and
dangling limply at my sides. I’m sobbing, trying to tell him please,
please stop, please stop. I don’t have a single shit left to give. I’m
sorry. I’m sorry. Please stop. Please.
“Where!” he screams, crashing the gun into my eye socket.
“Is!” butt to the temple.
“My!” shaft to the chin.
“Shit?”
He grabs the slide of his gun and yanks it back with a chickCHICK, stabs my ear with the muzzle and shouts, “Door number 2!”
And then bright light shatters my bedroom window and scatters
shadows across the walls. Brown Shoes throws me down, leaps at
the window, and empties his gun through the glass.
He’s a blurry silhouette on fire.
The whole wide world explodes.
I fade.
***
I’m blazing down a highway lit by nothing but the Milky Way.
It’s just me and Otis and Stevie, me and Marvin and Aretha,
me and Gladys Knight & The Pips singing at the top of my lungs
about leaving on that midnight train to Georgia at 75-85-95 miles an
hour. I’m streaking past marching lines of robot cat electrical towers
connected with wires by their ears, playing ski rack or cop car in my
rearview since Barstow 300 miles behind me.
I’m on the open road and more alive at this very moment than
any other in my entire life. The world beckons as I tattoo the sticky
black ink of my tires across the asphalt belly stretched between my
shitty hometown and my parents’ house in Wichita.
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.
It’s been two months since meeting Brown Shoes face-to-face in
my bedroom. Two months since police and FBI and federal marshals
and sheriff ’s deputies and seemingly every law enforcement official
within spitting distance filled my room with more badges than a renta-cop convention and filled Brown Shoes with enough lead to sink
100 Jimmy Hoffas straight to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
I barely remember the light and sound of molten air before I
passed out. I woke up three days later with bandages on my face
where Brown Shoes cold-cocked me and more where friendly fire
had pierced my skin. Three bullet holes in all, two in my right arm
and one in my foot. All minor. Three broken teeth. The cops say
they didn’t know I was there. The doctor says I’m lucky. Dara says I
should be a rapper now that I’ve got bullet wounds to brag about.
Brown Shoes, that motherfucker was Swiss cheese. His real
name was Marco Ricci, and he was indeed a bad-ass drug dealer.
He had entered into some kind of deal with the financially-strapped
Doctor Patel and his fellow podiatrist Daniel Alvin Chandler — hence
the D.A.C. — but Patel wussed at the last minute, so Brown Shoes
kidnapped Chambers as ransom. He sent the diving watch to Patel’s
p.o. box to stress the seriousness of the situation, but the package
mistakenly wound up in mine. Such a random boner, a boner
Chambers paid for with his life. And Isaac. Fucking Isaac.
The fruits of the transaction were in a locker in the L.A. airport
waiting for Patel to pick them up while Brown Shoes held a gun
to Chamber’s head. Little did they know, 5-0 was onto them and
clocking the locker. They were quite surprised when Isaac and
I showed up. They figured we were small fish and so followed us
back across The Grapevine and waited for Brown Shoes to show up.
That’s why Lieutenant Goettel at the police station let me go. They
were tailing me, watching me, waiting. The rest is front page news.
There are so many plot holes, I don’t really understand or believe
it all, but I am ready to suspend disbelief and just go with it.
What the headlines didn’t shout in capital letters above fullcolour photos is sitting on a feather pillow in the passenger seat of
my newly tuned up Gremlin: the duffel bag I kept in my closet, the
duffel bag that was still at the house when I got released from the
hospital, the same one I filled with $270,000 in drug money and
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buried under a pile of dirty boxers and socks before handing the rest
over to the police along with the meth. That’s $10,000 for every year
I’ve been alive. My share. The cops got Isaac’s cut.
It’s not nearly enough compensation for getting pistol-whipped
by an irate dope pusher then shot by a gaggle of flatfoots, and it won’t
resurrect Isaac’s hidden corpse, but I’ll take it. Gizmo’s sporting new
steel-belted radials and a killer sound system with massive bass, and
the cracked windshield has finally been replaced. The passenger side
window’s still missing, though. I’ve gotten used to the roar of the
wind. I don’t know what I’d do with silence.
Patel got nabbed in the Vegas airport with a ticket to Belgium in
his hand. His trial would have started in a few months, but he offed
himself in county lockup. They found him hanging from the left pant
leg of his orange inmate jumpsuit, the right leg tied to the top bunk
of the double-decker in his cell. He left a note. The papers didn’t
report what it said. He had a pregnant wife and five kids.
They never found Isaac’s body, so his mom and step-dad had a
closed casket funeral for him. I suppose he’ll be buried in it should
they ever find him, right under a headstone engraved with He moved
to Athens, Georgia, to play drums with R.E.M.
Isaac’s sister gave me a warm hug after the service and thanked
me for coming. Her long hair smelled of strawberries and sea salt.
I asked her about school, and she said she was gonna be a lawyer.
She touched my arm and asked me about school, and I said maybe I
would return someday, but not now, not for a while. I was about to
ask for her TDD number at that deaf school in Washington, but then I
got bashful, shoved my hands in my pockets and stared at my toes.
A few awkward sentences later, she waved goodbye and turned
to rejoin her family, all of them adorned with black armbands, the
men wearing yarmulkes. I watched her walk away, watched her
ebony locks flit in the breeze, watched her calves flex as she capered
across the green green grass and vanished around the corner of the
synagogue. I looked down at her footprints in the moist lawn, her
toes less than a foot from mine.
I am a fucking idiot.
When I got out of the hospital and discovered the duffel amongst
my shit piled in David and Karen’s garage, I threw a couple fistfuls of
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clothes into my old sea bag and bailed. Karen and David were livid I
wasn’t taking everything they’d cleared from my room, but I FedEx’d
them a package with two grand and four months in back rent, so I’m
not sweating it. They can sell what they can and trash the rest.
There’s nothing left in that shitty town worth wasting another
year. Chaos Coffeehouse finally closed after their fifth fund-raiser
tanked, and the only indie bookstore in town that sold my zines shut
its doors the next day. Both are being turned into sports bars. The
day I left, I saw the couple who owns Andy Noise Records posting
fliers for their second benefit concert.
Cradle of Thorns signed to Triple X Records right after Korn went
with Sony, and both groups relocated to Los Angeles. Spike 1000
ditched one of their lead singers and moved north to San Francisco.
2Lazy2Steal bailed for Seattle in a van about five years too late. The
only all-ages venue in town booking local bands is becoming an
over-21 dance club spinning techno and house, and the bands left
homeless are either breaking up or getting hooked on heroin.
Oh, and Morgan’s pregnant.
Aaaaaand Dara’s getting married.
I hate everything.
I don’t suppose I’ll find anything different in Wichita besides the
parents who only take me in because our last names happen to be
the same. They don’t even know I’m coming and are clueless to this
past month. I have no idea why they relocated to Wichita out of all
the shitty towns in America, but they’ve been there since I graduated
high school. They hate my hometown as much as I do.
I figure I can hang out in their basement for a while, at least
until I stop limping. Then, maybe I’ll take classes at WSU. Maybe not.
Maybe I’ll just hide out for a while. Get fat. Grow a beard. Watch a lot
of cable. Maybe I’ll write all this shit down and try to figure it out.
There are a million stars streaking above me, and it’s so dark
my high-beams suck into the void and reflect nothing back but the
endless inky yellow ribbon disappearing beyond the horizon.
An occasional tumbleweed bumbles across the blacktop, frozen
for a moment in the blaze of headlights, then disappears into the
nothingness at the side of the road.
Man, those fuckers burn out fast.
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p.o.v. (1994)
My hand hurts really bad.
It hurts so bad my eyes water, but I don’t scream in pain. I don’t
even flinch. I withdraw my hand from between the frame and the
heavy wooden door and tuck the poor thing calmly into my trouser
pocket as if nothing happened. I just know it’s broken and will
probably swell like a rotten melon, but I turn from the door, smile,
and greet my co-workers.
I say, “Good morning!” to Jim, and he smiles and bids “Good
morning!” back. I look at his secretary Trish, smile, and say, “Good
morning!” She gives me a smile and wishes me the same. I slowly walk
toward my cubicle with my limp hand in the pocket of my wrinkled
khakis, smiling and wishing those I meet “Good morning!”
The co-worker who shares my cubical is a large black man named
Jeremiah. He’s already at his terminal, dirty brown jacket stretched
tightly across his enormous back, waiting for the bells to ring. I look
at the wall clock and see we still have ten minutes until 0900. Ten
minutes until the bells ring, and Jeremiah is already staring into the
terminal with empty eyes and slack jaw.
I carefully remove my beige tweed jacket, place it on the hook on
the cubicle wall, and sit in my threadbare brown office chair. There’s
a thick layer of dust caked on my viewscreen, which should seem
odd since I just cleaned it yesterday, but doesn’t since I know the
ventilation system blows more soot into our biosphere than it does
fresh air. I should get one of those black market nose filters they
whisper about, but I never seem to find someone who’s got one.
With a minute and a half left before the bells, I blank my eyes
and let my chin droop to my chest. Without looking, I know all the
people on this floor — all the Johns and Josephs and Jeremys, all
the Tanyas and Tiffanys and Terris — are in their office chairs facing
their monitors, hands on keyboards, eye unfocused, head bowed.
The silence is complete save for the buzz of overhead fluorescents
and the ever-present hum of unknown origin that surrounds us.
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At precisely 0900 GMT, the bells ring and are answered by tens
of thousands of keystrokes clattering off the dun-coloured walls.
Those with working viewscreens mostly type garbage,
meaningless and jumbled letters and numbers that will never
spontaneously result in a Shakespeare play no matter how many
millions of years they type. Those without terminals type with the
same stone-faced determination. Some ram their fingertips on the
surface of their desks inside empty cubicles with such force they’ve
worried furrows into the wood and split their nails bloody.
My terminal works most of the time. I type the same sentence,
something I learned a lifetime ago, an exercise from typing class: Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
I’ve typed that line of letters so many times, I don’t even have
to think, they are stored in the muscle memory of my hands and
forearms. I could easily finish each sentence in a little over four
seconds with pinpoint accuracy, but I can’t with my crushed hand.
Even the most gentle of movement sends electric shocks from my
forehead to my toes. One letter at a time.
CLACK!
We are running naked through illicit hallways broken and
entered through pried windows, giggling, wriggling naked into thick
down sleeping bags and hoping we don’t get caught by the security
guard or passing cops.
CLACK!
We are puddle-slapping through midnight sprinklers in the
grassy park barefoot, backpack button activists, laughing-happy and
sticky with young love made on the itchy sod.
CLACK!
We are camping in the back of my pickup truck, all arms and
legs and lips and rats-nest hair and pillows and blankets and whiskey
bottles and the wind and the wind and the wind.
CLACK!
We are sitting around a large table surrounded by laughter, and
we are tossing dice into a box and reading questions from cards
and shouting answers en masse and eating popcorn from bowls and
dancing rhythmically in our seats to music from a stereo.
CLACK!
365
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.
.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their
country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the
aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all
good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for
all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the
time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
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country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the
aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all
good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for
all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the
time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their
country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
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aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to
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the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all
good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for
all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the
time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their
country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the
aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all
good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for
all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the
time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now is the time for all god help me come to the aid of their
country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the
aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all
367
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.
The bells sound. It is exactly 1300. My vision clears, and I look
at my page count on the lower-left hand corner of my monitor. I am
on page 112. I could have easily filled 500 more on a good day, but
I must pace myself.
Jeremiah’s voice croaks behind me, “Good afternoon, Jonathon.”
I think of desiccated leaves crushed under foot. I smile and wish him
the same. I flex my hand, and I am shocked at the intensity of the
pain that arcs up my spine. I hadn’t noticed it as I was typing. There
are ugly purple welts from my wrist to the second knuckle of all my
fingers. The swollen flesh throbs with each heartbeat.
I follow Jeremiah from our cubicle to the door of the commissary,
and I am thankful when he holds the door open and nods me
through. He lets it slip from his fingers as I cross the threshold into
the harsh white light. The thick metal door is corroded with layers
of rust, but the handle has been polished by the grip of countless
hands. I catch the briefest reflection from the corner of my eye.
I see Jeremiah, the large man grinning, his blue and purple
necktie loosened around his crisp blue shirt, his navy blazer slung
over one shoulder. I see the work center behind us, a soft blend
of pastel greens and salmons and eggshell whites. I see co-workers
talking and smiling amongst themselves as they walk in groups of two
and three toward the break room. I see my face, haggard, unshaven,
dark-eyed with fatigue.
I flinch away, my free hand rising to rub the rust from my eyes.
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doug, cale, and the closet king (1994)
“Camper Van Jim Morrison.”
We were sitting on our raggedy-assed couch, my roommate Cale
and me, watching teevee and playing Camper Van. It was the fall of
my sophomore year, and this was the first apartment I’d lived in since
getting kicked out of the WSU dorms.
“Camper Van Janis Joplin.”
The game we played was called Camper Van, after the defunct
college rock band Camper Van Beethoven. Cale and I spontaneously
invented the game one drunken evening, coming up with other
composers for the name of the band — Camper Van Chopin, Camper
Van Liszt, Camper Van Stravinsky — back and forth until one of us
couldn’t think of another composer. Now we do other lists. If one
person balks and the other can then name just one more, he wins.
“Camper Van John Lennon.”
The game that particular night was Camper Van Dead Rock Stars
Who’s Names Began With J.
“Camper Van… Uhm… Camper Van John Belushi.”
“I don’t know if he’d count, man,” I said. “He was an actor, not a
rock and roll star.”
Cale retorted with, “What about The Blues Brothers? It was a side
project, but they put out albums and toured.”
He had a point. Besides, the shots of Early Times whiskey were
beginning to take effect. I didn’t care. It was Friday night, I didn’t
have homework to ignore, and my rent check hadn’t bounced yet.
Life was good.
“Okay, fine,” I said, “How’s about… Camper Van… Camper
Van… Oh, wait, Camper Van Jimi Hendrix.”
“Damn!” Cale was burnt. I’d ripped his next answer right out
from under him. He slammed another shot of whiskey and thought
for a moment, his eyes on the teevee screen. Jeopardy, with shitty
reception and the sound turned all the way down.
About this time, we heard someone come in through the front
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door. The wiggle of the doorknob. The jingle of keys. The creak of
the door opening. The climp-clomp of boots down the hallway. It
could only be one person: our other roomie Doug.
Cale and I exchanged amused looks, then counted slowly to
three. One, two, th… We heard the jingle of keys as Doug unlocked
his room door, opened it, and closed and locked it behind him.
Odd duck, that Doug. I had never actually seen him, not even
once, even when he answered our Room For Rent ad in the local
paper and moved in two months before. Cale had met him and let
him move in while I was out and about, but that was the last time
Cale saw him in person. Besides that, we hadn’t spoken to him, and
he hadn’t spoken to us, mostly because he was gone in the morning
before either of us got up and went straight to his room at night.
Cale and Doug communicated via notes on the front door. Cale
would leave a Post-It saying rent is due in Sharpie, and the next day
there’d be a 7-Eleven money order for the amount taped to a page
from a laser printer saying Doug’s Rent. Same thing for the power
and trash. No phone, though. Doug had his own phone line installed
two days after he moved in, then Internet two days after that.
He had his own personal refrigerator in his room, so he never
had to worry about sly roomies drinking his milk or scamming his
cheese. The only reason I knew this was because Cale saw a moving
guy take one into Doug’s room when he first moved in.
Doug also had his own car, a Chevy hatchback like the kind they
gave away on The Price Is Right in the ’70s that cost $4,000, and
since Cale and I hated television and refused to buy cable, Doug
had his own hook-up in his room. You could sometimes see a pale
light oozing from under his door at night, but never any sound. We
figured he must listen to it on headphones.
In fact, he must’ve listened to everything on headphones because
no sound ever came from his bedroom. Ever. Not even breathing.
Cale was sure he saw an IBM clone computer and a component
stereo system with Doug’s pile of stuff when he moved in, but we
never heard a peep from either of them.
He also never got any mail, at least not from our mailbox, so he
must have had a post office box somewhere in town. Or maybe he
had them sent to his work. If he got mail. If he did work.
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“Camper Van Brian Jones,” Cale trumpeted, smiling proud and
knocking back another shot of Early Times. He winced as it went
down, then pumped his arm in triumph. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Maybe Doug was a trust-funder like Cale, whose parents were rich
beyond belief and paid all his bills. Rent. Food. School. Car payments.
Gas. Electricity. Insurance. Cale didn’t even need roommates and
could’ve been styling in some nice condo, but he chose to live here
in this funky townhouse two blocks from the university.
Cale’s father had made a fortune inventing things. Not really
impressive things that changed the world or saved anyone’s life, but
little stupid shit that he’d patent and manufacture in China.
His first invention was the little green tab that keeps the plastic
bag gathered on a loaf of supermarket bread. They’re everywhere.
His E-Z Lok jobbers replaced the twistie-ties on most brands because
they cost half as much to produce. Cale’s dad raked in crazy dough
every year just on those little plastic tabs.
The next big idea was a replacement for those plastic packets
of ketchup you get at fast food places. His Mess-Free Condiment
Dispenser had two small containers of whatever needed dispensing
that were crushed together, splooching the product through an
opening in the top. What made these special was you didn’t have to
bite a triangle of plastic from the corner of the packet anymore. The
mess factor was, as his father put it, virtually eliminated.
Cale’s dad had been hard-selling the idea to fast food corporations
all over the country, and McDonald’s and Wendy’s were test marketing
his thingamajig in Denver, Seattle, and San Diego.
Dude made millions on these convenient bits of plastic,
and he hadn’t even been to college. Cale said his father’s biggest
disappointment growing up was that he hadn’t invented Silly Putty.
Maybe Doug was a trust-funder, too. Maybe not.
As for me, I had worked as a line cook at a greasy spoon ever
since I escaped my shitty hometown earlier that year. The diner was a
ten-minute drive from our place, so I rode the bus to work. I bought
a shitty bike for $20 from a classified ad and pedaled places too far
for walking when I missed the bus. I only used my car for rock shows
in Lawrence, so I left it parked at the curb under a huge live oak. My
car would remain smothered in grackle shit for the next year.
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The townhouse was only a two bedroom, so I slept in the closet
beneath the stairs. It wasn’t so bad. The closet was huge, like eight
feet long, with a sloped ceiling at least seven feet high at the door
and three in the very back. I had enough room for a narrow futon
bed, a lamp, and a couple of boxes for my clothes and some books.
I had abandoned all my possessions when I bailed for Wichita, and
I’m sure my old roomies sold everything they could. All my CDs…
I had planned on staying in my car when the dorms kicked
me out for a variety of bullshit offenses that were all true, but Cale
offered to rent his closet to me for $50 a month, plus a share of the
utilities. For some reason, it never really seemed strange that I was
living in somebody’s closet. It was actually kind of cool.
“Uhmm… Camper Van… Shit… Camper Van…” This next one
was going to be tough. Brian Jones was my wild card pick. I didn’t
expect Cale to think of last names beginning with J. Who else? Kurt,
River, Elvis, Karen Carpenter… No Js… What about the chick from
7 Year Bitch, the chick who was murdered? Fuck, fuck, fuck… And
that other chick from Hole? Didn’t someone in Hole die?
Before I could speak, the sound of a door opening wafted down
the hall. Cale and I exchanged curious looks again. Doug? Out of his
room before the morning? Impossible!
And yet, there was the unmistakable shuffling sound of his feet,
the jingle of his keys, and they were heading for the front door. He
was breathing heavily, too. Like he was carrying something. All I
could see was the shadow Doug cast on the wall from the porch
light. Cale and I stared at each other with big eyes and smiles.
Cale arched an eyebrow at me, then lifted his head slightly and
shouted, “Hey, Doug! You outta here, man? You going to the store
or something?” he looked to the almost empty bottle of Early Times,
then at me and smiled. “We’re almost out of Squirrely Mimes. If
you’re going to the store, can I give you some cash to pick up some
more? And a frozen pizza? And some toilet paper?”
We waited. All we could hear was Doug’s breathing, bouncing
off the walls from the entryway and into the living room. After a
moment, his shadow set down whatever he was carrying, something
that sounded heavy, and said, “No, I’m not going to the store. I’m
going to visit a friend of mine for the weekend.”
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Cale and I exchanged quick double-takes, mouths agape in
shock. A weekend trip? With a friend? Our Doug? Unprecedented!
His shadow hesitated again, then picked up his load and shuffled
out the door, locking the deadbolt behind him.
We waited for the sound of his car taking off down the road, then
jumped from the couch and into the entryway. Cale pointed to a set
of four indentations in the carpet.
“You see these? Wheels from the bottom of a suitcase. Our boy’s
going somewhere, and he’s packed a suitcase. Wow! And do you
smell that?” Cale pointed to his nose, then sniff-sniffed.
I sampled the air. Nothing at first, but then the unmistakable
smell of Drakkar Noir made its presence known. Our boy was
powdered and rockin’ like Dokken.
“Dude, you don’t think old Iggy’s found himself a girlfriend, do
you?” I asked. We’d been referring to Doug as Ignatius since he moved
in, after the mama’s boy in A Confederacy Of Dunces who lived at
home with his mother until he was, like, forty-four and stayed locked
up in his room all day.
Cale shrugged his shoulders and pooched out his lips, then said,
“Alright, you ready to admit defeat?”
“Quit what?” I asked, then I remembered it was still my turn at
Camper Van. Damn… I was blank. I am so much better at Camper
Van Fast Food Restaurants.
Oh, oh, oh! Zed Leppelin! The, uhm, the drummer! I blurted
out “Camper Van John Bonham!” and Cale started jumping up and
down, slapping his knee and yelling “Damn!” over and over. Yes!
We finished the rest of the whiskey. Cale couldn’t think of
another dead J, and I couldn’t think of just one more to clinch it, so
the game was a draw. Cale said he was off to bed, then ran upstairs
to use the bathroom before I had a chance to move. The bastard shut
the door laughing, because he knew I’d have to pitch a whizz, and he
always took a fucking week on the toilet. The downstairs bathroom,
the one we considered Doug’s, had been stopped up for the past few
weeks, so I had to take a piss again outside in the bushes.
The crab apples had been used as a latrine so many times I’m
surprised the poor things didn’t shrivel up and die. It was nice
outside. A cool breeze blew through my buzz cut, kissed my bare
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face with the scent of trees and grass. Autumn was in the air, and I
was taking a nice, fat piss against the building. I closed my eyes and
enjoyed it immensely.
When I opened them again, I was looking at the window behind
the bushes. Iggy’s window. I pushed aside the bushes and tried to
peer through the glass. Nothing but the reflection of my eye staring
back at me. He’d covered the inside of his window with something
like construction paper or blackened aluminum foil. It made me
think of the crackhouse down the block with all its boarded up
windows and graffiti covering the porch.
Hmmm… Queer bird, that doug. Odd duck. I went back inside
the townhouse and squeezed into my closet, slipped inside my down
sleeping bag stretched across my futon. I reached above my head and
clicked the power switch for the black light on the wall and stared
at the glowing velvet posters on the ceiling, watched the cheesy ’70s
panel van dragons breathe pink fire. The toilet flushed upstairs and
the gurgle of water rushing through pipes passed over me. I heard
Cale’s footsteps, heard his bedroom door open and close, heard him
turn on his stereo. Peter Gabriel’s Passion. Brilliant choice.
After about an hour, I rolled over and went to sleep.
The next afternoon, Cale and I were bored, so we dialed 1-800
numbers at random, seeing what kind of businesses we could find.
The adult entertainment lines were by far the easiest. 1-800-Fuck-You
was phone sex, obviously, as were 1-800-Big-Tits, 1-800-Hot-Hole,
1-800-Wet-Lips, and 1-800-My-Pussy. In fact, they were the exact
same company, as if some enterprising smut baron reserved all the
best numbers at once in one big porno power play.
1-800-Dick-Boy, however, was a Chase Bank Business Line in
New York, which cracked our shit up. So did 1-800-Nut-Case, which
was some sort of workplace crisis hotline, and 1-800-Hi-Jerry was
Jerry’s Chevrolet in Mobile, Alabama.
We tried to find devil worshippers for an hour, like 1-800-Lucifer
and 1-800-666-Hell, but it got old, so we just sat there on the couch.
The teevee was on as usual, one of three staticky channels we got.
Some talk show with the sound turned off. Overweight women with
big hair and shirtless men with mustaches screaming at each other
and pointing fingers like pistols into each other’s faces.
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Cale suddenly turned to me and said, “Dude, wanna break into
Iggy’s room with me?”
I pulled a whiskey spit take and goggled him like he was insane.
“Are you fucking insane?” I laughed, choking. “He’s practically a serial
killer! He’ll behead us in our sleep! Besides… his door’s locked.”
“We’ll jimmy it. C’mon, I am beset with ennui.” Before I could
say a word, Cale was off to the kitchen to fetch a butter knife. We met
in front of Doug’s room. Cale knelt in front of the door and wedged
the blade between the jamb and the door, near the knob. A wiggle, a
twist, and the door was open. Cale winked at me.
A warm push of stagnant air billowed from the room and
engulfed us both in the humid stank of soiled underwear and dirty
socks. It smelled like being trapped in a closet with two wheezing
wet sheepdogs. Dirty clothes were everywhere, on the floor, on his
bed, hanging from his closet door. He couldn’t have vacuumed even
if he wanted to because the carpet was so cluttered with shit.
And then there was his computer desk. Immaculate. Not a scrap
of dirty clothes on it, not even dust, and all the books and cables and
computer things were arranged just so.
He had a bad-ass computer chair with gray upholstery and
futuristic hydraulics that neither of us remembered Doug bringing
in. A sheet of hard plastic beneath the casters protected the almond
shag. Lights flashed from under the humming desk and clicks spat in
time to the blinks.
Cale cat-walked to the computer, choosing his steps like a land
mine defuser, and looked over the computer trying to figure out
how to turn on the monitor. After a few seconds he ah-hah!’d and
flicked the power switch.
“The main part of the computer is already on, and the disc drives
are humming,” Cale said. “Iggy’s got some shit going on. Maybe he’s
hacking the Pentagon. Little bugger’s gonna get us…”
“Dude!” I said, pointing to the monitor’s full-colour display. On
the screen was a slender column of text and a large graphic of a
nekkid lady spreading mad beavage like a Hustler centerfold. As we
looked in mock horror, the text scrolled up from the bottom as more
words were added to the column of text. It appeared to be some
instant messaging conversation of the worst sex talk bullshit variety.
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“This sick fucker’s online to some sex talk thing,” I said. “No
wonder he had that Internet connection installed.” Neither of us
even had email addresses at this point.
Cale pointed to the hard drives under the desk. “I think those are
networked, and look at all the modem-lookin’ thingies he’s got under
there. There’s like twelve of ‘em. I don’t think Iggy’s subscribing to
some sex line, I think he’s freakin’ running a sex line. He’s into some
cyberfreak shit. Yuckin’ fucky. No wonder he locks his room.”
Cale opened a desk drawer, then jerked his hand away as if a
viper had sprung up with its head cocked and ready to strike. He
screamed, “Dude dude dude! The beast with one back!”
I peered into the deep drawer and saw a collection of rubber
gloves and sex toys, cock rings and pumper things and squeeze tubes
of K-Y Jelly. The gloves had globbers of schmeng on the tips and little
curlicues of pooby hairs stuck in knuckle cracks.
Cale made deep-throated gagging noises like he was about to
retch. His hands were held high in the air like he didn’t want to get
anything on them. “Let’s get outta here, man, this is fucking gross!”
Cale squealed and headed back towards the door.
I closed the drawer, switched off the monitor, and turned to
leave when I spotted a sheet of computer paper in the laser printer
on the floor. I bent to pick it up.
“Wait a second, Cale, c’mere.” I read the print-out to him.
It appeared to be a transcription of some conversation through
Doug’s cybersex chat room. Two people named GREYWULF and
BRIGHTEYES were talking shit back and forth, and they appeared to
be setting up a meeting place.
“Look! It says they’re going to meet at some pizza place in
Lawrence near the campus,” I said. “Iggy’s met some digital dish,
and now he’s driving all the way to K State to dip his wick. And look
at this shit they’re spitting. ‘The wulf is hungry, he needs to tell, he’ll
give you inches and give it well.’”
“Ewww!” cale said “Rock You Like A Hurricane?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So… fucking… gnarsty… Let’s vacate. I’m
gonna need a Silkwood shower to wash all these cooties off me.”
I placed the paper back into the printer just the way I found it,
and we both left, locking the door behind us.
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Doug’s shadow came home that Sunday night, toting his luggage
and huffing. Cale and I were slumped on the living room couch,
watching teevee with the sound turned off and playing quarters. We
heard Doug’s bedroom door open and shut, and we tensed, ready
for the inevitable shout of “Who’s been in my room!”
After a few minutes, Doug’s door opened again, and we heard
his footsteps scuffling down the hall. We both hunched down in the
fat couch, burying our shoulders in the cushions.
I saw Doug’s shadow on the wall and heard his breathing. He
cleared his throat and said, “Cale? I need to talk to you.”
Cale gave me a pained expression like he’d just swallowed
something sour, got up and walked to the hallway to speak with
Doug. I couldn’t decipher their mumbles, but it didn’t sound angry.
Doug’s shadow seemed to gesticulate a lot while he was talking,
something I had never seen it do before. Usually, it just clung to the
wall like a water stain. I didn’t know if this meant he was agitated or
what, but it meant something.
A few minutes later, Cale came back and sat down next to me
on the couch. The shuffling sound down the hall told me Doug was
returning to his den of iniquity. I shrugged my shoulders at Cale.
He smiled and said, “He’s moving out. And no, it’s not because
we were in his room. I don’t think he realizes he was violated yet.
Anyway, he says he’s moving out by Tuesday. He wants me to give him
the current power bill so he can figure his share, and he says I can
keep the security deposit since he can’t give me a month notice.”
I shook my head. “Maybe he knows, or suspects…”
Cale cut me off. “No, man, I think it was BRIGHTEYES. You
should’ve seen him. He was grinning this big toothy Hamburglar
grin the whole time he was talking to me. I think he’s convinced
himself he’s in love, and he’s moving to Lawrence to be with her.”
Cale laughed to himself, then he said, “He’s lost a lot of weight. I
think he might have been working out this whole time. I totally didn’t
recognize him. If I had seen him on the street, I woulda walked right
past him and not even known we lived in the same house.”
Cale asked if I wanted Iggy’s room once he was gone. He offered
to keep the rent at $50 a month. He’d just tell his mom to send
enough money to cover the rest.
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I thought about it. It would be nice to have more space, but the
thought of living in the same room as Doug and his Internet nooky
dungeon gave me the heebie-beegees. I decided to stay in the closet.
Cale kept the room empty the rest of the semester. In fact, he kept it
locked the whole time and told people it was cursed. He got hold of
some yellow police barrier tape and crisscrossed the doorway.
On the teevee, some Star Trek Next Gen thing was on. Captain
Jean Luc Picard’s face was blood red from a blinking emergency light,
and the camera’s view jerked all around like an earthquake.
“Dude,” I said, tapping Cale’s knee. “Camper Van Jerry Garcia.”
Cale yelled “Damn! Damn! Damn!” and slapped his knee.
Yes!
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the girl on the bus (1994)
She rides your bus every morning. Sits in the very front, in the
old people section.
She’s pretty. Knit gloves, corduroy jacket, sandals with thick
socks. Long light-red hair. Young, maybe 19, 20, long and slender as
a willow branch.
You don’t know what colour her eyes are, but she smiles your
way almost every time she gets on the bus. It’s a Yes-we-ride-thesame-bus-and-I-see-you-every-morning smile, but it’s friendly. She
never shows her teeth when she smiles, but you bet they’re straight.
And white. You bet she smells like ivory soap and flowers, with a hint
of patchouli oil and clove cigarettes.
She gets off two stops before you do, at the university, she and
her backpack. She almost always pauses just before leaving, her hand
curled around the silver rail along the wall, and flashes you a quick
I’ll-see-you-on-the-bus-tomorrow smile.
Then, she’s gone.
You work during the day. The bus drops you off a few blocks
from the restaurant. You’re a line cook. 8-3, weekdays. You don’t
talk to the other cooks much. You just listen to their music — their
banda, their salsa, their cumbias — and fry and flip and mix and
stir and scoop and hand the waitresses their orders on greasy plates.
During the winter, the owner overcompensates for the cold outside
and cranks up the heat. In the dining room it’s nice, but in the
kitchen, with the grill and the fryers and the ovens, it’s miserable.
In no time, you’re sticky with sweat, greasy balls of warm
moisture crawling down your back.
The orders are all the same, variations on a theme: Eggs, bacon
or sausage, hotcakes or toast, maybe a hamburger steak or a ham
steak or a T-bone steak. You don’t have to think about it much. Your
hands know what to do. Your eyes, too, taking in exactly what is
needed from the scribbled orders ripped from the waitresses’ pads.
Your mind wanders.
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.
You wonder what she does. Probably lives at home, in the same
bedroom she’s lived in forever. Maybe she lives in an apartment with
roommates, two to a room to cut the rent in smaller pieces. Maybe
she lives on her own, with cats. Tapestries and beaded things on the
walls. A hand-me-down couch and love seat to match in the living
room, a mattress on the floor in the bedroom. Blue lights to replace
the bright white ones. No television, but a nice birthday present
stereo system. Maybe she buys all her CDs used.
Does she work? Maybe she’s a counter girl at some shop. Maybe
she works at a clothing store. Not an antiseptic mall store, but a
funky vintage Delano clothing store on Douglas. Maybe she works at
the S.P.C.A., caring for animals, or at an old-folks home. Maybe…
…cheese on their eggs…
Marti’s talking. She’s 7-3 today, 3 tables in section 2 and 4 in 3.
She’s holding a plate at you, her arm sticking through the window
between the kitchen and the dining room. You ask what kind of
cheese, she says cheddar, and you grab a handful and sprinkle it on
top of her 2-egg scramble.
Thanks. She smacks her gum and walks away.
You look at the wall clock. 10:30. 90 minutes before your 15minute break. 90 minutes before you can wash some of this grease
from your hands and face, before you can put your head under cold
running water and pat your buzz-cut clean again. Cleaner, anyway.
You can’t imagine this job with long hair. Like hers.
You get an order for a breakfast sandwich, no yolk. It’s for Liza,
10-4, section 5, near the bathrooms on the side. Crack the egg, slop
the yolk back and forth in the two halves of shell and let the clear
white ooze into the metal Mason jar ring on the grill that fries it
in shape. Open-faced English muffin half and a slice of American
cheese. Egg on top with a spatula. Ladle the thick gravy, lumpy with
sausage, but not too much. Slide the plate of food onto the stainless
steel shelf in the window, under the red heat lamp, with the order
slip sticking from under the plate like a tongue.
Order up.
Later, 6:15, and you’re walking the long city blocks to the
university, the collar of your blue workshirt still wet from soaking your
head. You’re running a late for your 6:30 class, Child Development, a
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general education class. You like to get there a bit early to finish the
reading you’re usually behind on. Plus, it allows you to sit in the very
back, away from everyone. You’re sure the sponge bath in the deep
sink does little to hide the fry cook smell.
It’s dark outside and cold by the time class ends. You walk to the
bus stop two blocks away. Get onto the bus. Go home.
And you read. Do homework. Watch teevee. Shower. Go to
sleep. In your single bed, wedged against a wall under the window,
you look up through the venetian blinds at the trees. At the trees. At
the moon. At the stars.
The next morning is full of rain and cold. By the time the bus
comes to your stop, you are soaked to the skin, shoes bleeding cold
water and mud. You slosh over to your usual seat, in the middle, next
to a window, and pull out a book from your dripping backpack.
Two stops later, at her bus stop, only two high-schoolers get on.
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sorrow, part one (1994)
Harold had been rising slowly through the clouds for several
hours. The edges of his pant legs and the back of his flannel shirt
billowed and flapped in the breeze of upward movement.
He glanced at his wristwatch, then at the unseen earth beneath
his red hi-top sneakers. He pulled the brim of his baseball cap closer
to his eyes and looked upwards, toward the sun.
The thick hush of moist air within the cloud bank began to thin,
and, after a few moments, dissipated as Harold rose up and out. A
wide panoramic view of fluffy cloud tops below and the darker cloud
bottoms above spread 360 degrees around Harold, extending into
blue forever.
Harold slowed to a stop just above the cloud floor and scanned
the far reaches of the horizon, looking left, right, all around. He floated
forward slowly as he looked, his dangling feet kicking up white tufts
of vapor as he changed direction. The zig-zagging path of his sneakers
etched a ski-run trail through the clouds.
Momentarily, Harold stopped, taking off his ball cap and wiping
the cool moisture collected on his brow with the back of his hand.
The air was wide-wide open up here, fresher than any Harold had ever
tasted. It was crisp, ripe Red Delicious apple crisp, and it prickled his
skin like a blast of cool air from a refrigerator in summer time.
He breathed deeply, took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped
them with the tail of his shirt, then replaced them on his freckled nose
once they were clear.
Harold checked his watch again, bringing its face close to see
through the beadlets of water built up on the inside of the glass case,
then proceeded back and forth across the softly undulating cloud
terrain. Searching, left and right, all around, his body angled slightly
forward as he moved.
Harold brought both hands to his mouth, cupping the word he
shouted between them.
Chinook!
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He stopped abruptly again, his hands opening and closing,
opening and closing, his head angled slightly.
Chinook!
He spun his body to the left, moving forward a little faster,
following his voice. He stopped again, right hand reaching into his
trouser pocket and pulling out a yard-long jute rope, one end tied into
a fraying loop and the other sporting a chipped metal clasp. Harold
slid his right hand through the loop and allowed the rope to hang
down beneath his feet, carving a rat-tail trail in the milky froth.
Chinook!
He stopped again, kicking up cloud as he skidded to a halt. His left
hand cupped his ear as he slowly rotated, his eyes panning. Suddenly,
harold jerked his head around, leading with his ear.
Nothing. Nothing but the wind. He moved slowly forward, his
face pinched with concentration.
There — way, way in the distance — a sound so slight it could be
imagined, yet just above the shushing wind. Harold’s eyes pinched
tighter, his body angling towards the sound, his right hand clutching
the worn rope.
There it was, for sure this time, faint but distinct.
The far-off bark of a dog.
He moved faster now, cupping his hands to call out, Chinook! His
call was answered, this time closer, just over the next hill of clouds.
Faster and faster, his arms spread in greeting, his face split into a toothy
grin. Harold’s whole body shook, his kicking feet leaving a rippling
wake behind him.
Faster, faster, up and over a cumulous rise, Harold flew,
disappearing behind a mountain of white mist.
The clear sounds of laughter, of joyous barking and excited shouts,
filled the space between the clouds.
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my very first real live nekkid lady (1996)
The first job I ever had was in the seventh grade.
I answered some sort of ad at my junior high school in my shitty
hometown, some photocopied flier push-pinned to some bulletin
board asking for boys around 12 years old to sell subscriptions for
the shitty local newspaper.
I guess this guy Mike Dewey, a fat guy with a beard and a sketchy
white panel van, was hired by the paper to increase circulation
around the county. He’d pile about ten of us seventh-graders into his
van on a Saturday and drive us to some tumbleweed town, drop us
off at residential street corners in pairs, then pick us up at designated
spots some time later. We made a greenback for every subscription
we got. On good nights the best of us would make $12 or so, plus
Mr. Dewey would always throw in fast food at the end of the night.
The job sounds shady, and I wonder if that shit would fly
nowadays. I picture Dewey as Tom Waits smoking a stogie, but he was
more Newman from Seinfeld sporting an impressive molestache.
I’ve never been involved in organized sports, but I imagine the
dynamic between the kids in that rape van was similar to that of any
team of sweaty boys on the brink of their teenaged years. As we’d be
driving off to some no-name town on the edge of our county map,
we’d make fart jokes and fag jokes and sex jokes and harass each
other with a mixture of playfulness and viciousness.
I was a fey little milksop and so was very often the butt of jokes,
but I had a quick wit and a big mouth so I could hold my own most
of the time. If I could keep the big guys just this side of wanting to
beat my ass in a show of swelling manhood, then I was doing fine.
Sometimes I’d carry a Yo Momma’s So Fat wisecrack a bit too far
and suddenly have a snarling, huffing 12-year-old boy in the throes
of prepubescence in my face, but generally I was tolerated. Not
respected, but not reviled. I was funny, so I survived.
I remember this one kid — who probably wasn’t any older than
the rest of us, but who was surely more genetically advanced than
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the rest of us — showing off his newly-acquired bush of pubic hair.
I don’t suppose I had any, nor did any of the rest, so we were all
suitably impressed by the guy’s bush sticking over the top of his
short pants. I don’t remember when I got my first pubic hairs. You’d
think it would be a momentous occasion, but I was just suddenly
bushy as that oaf guy in the van and have been ever since. Could I go
back and do it all over again, I’d light a candle or something.
We had clipboards with worksheets displaying our spiel about
how the prospective customer would save up to $200 a month with
coupons alone, which would more than pay for the subscription!
Plus, we would tell them, they would help us kids earn points towards
trips to theme parks like Six Flags Magic Mountain and Disneyland.
We never knew of any point system and often doubted the existence
of future trips to amusement parks, but Dewey actually took us to
Knott’s Berry Farm once and even bummed us money when we ran
out, so I guess it wasn’t all a lie.
We’d prattle our spiel in a practiced monotone, show our
clipboards with graphics of coupons and roller coasters, and ask
disinterested rednecks to subscribe. No money was exchanged, just
signatures and sometimes a drink of water or a bathroom visit.
I once asked a creepy homeowner who already got the paper
for a drink of water. He apparently thought this was an odd request,
even though I was a 12-year-old kid stranded in some fetid cowtown
30 miles from my own shit-brown burg on a sizzling-hot summer day,
but he eventually presented me with a Mayor McCheese collector
cup of lukewarm tap water. The bastard waited for me to take a big
swig, then asked nonchalantly why I wasn’t afraid of being poisoned.
I froze, cheeks bulging with water, and stared at him wide-eyed. He
said something about how many crazy people there were in this
world, people who wouldn’t think twice about slipping cyanide into
some kid’s Happy Meal and watching as his face turned black and
his tongue puffed up like a sick pink marshmallow. I shook my head
vigorously, the unswallowed water sloshing against the insides of my
bulging cheeks. And the man stood there looking smug at the idea of
fucking with this hot, sweaty, thirsty 12-year-old kid, then he turned
and walked back into his house and shut the door behind him. I spat
the water into his azaleas and took off running down the street.
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We all had stories about fuckers yelling at us or slamming doors
in our faces, so we devised a way to repay them: We’d steal their
peepholes. You know, those little peepholes in front doors? They’re
made of two pieces that screw into each other, one from the front
and one from the back. If you had strong fingers, you could unscrew
the half facing the outside and look through it like a telescope. Some
nights, we’d end up with more peepholes than orders, and whoever
got the most at the end of the night was declared not a fag.
I don’t remember what I did with all of mine, but I must’ve had
a shoebox full by the end of the summer, each one representing
some mean person who’d done me wrong or just a knock that went
unanswered. We probably chucked them at passing cars.
The very best opportunity this job afforded me was the chance
to see my very first real live nekkid lady. I had seen pictures before,
whether from a ’70s Playboy swiped from the back of my dad’s closet
or movies on HBO or some rain-soaked porno found in tatters in a
field, but I had never seen a real live nekkid lady before.
I was in some town, some nameless town on another scalding
hot Central California day, and I was working with another kid who
was across the street delivering the same pitch I was. I came to a
house with a fence around it and trees in the yard. The front door
had little windows at eye level plus tippy-toes, and I peeked through
a gap between the miniature blue-and-white checkered curtains. My
hand froze just inches from knocking. From where I was standing,
one eye pinched closed and the other wide open, hands cupping out
the glare, I was granted a gorgeous view of a real live nekkid lady.
She was in a bathroom with the door ajar, and she was washing
her long chestnut hair in the sink, and she was just as nekkid as
any nekkid lady in the history of nekkid ladies. And I could see
everything… long slender legs, tight heart-shaped ass like two
teardrops dangling from her spine, perky titties with pointy pink
nipples, side-view of luxuriant light-brown bush.
I stood transfixed for a full minute, then I ran off the porch and
across the street to get my partner. After all, what good is seeing
your very first real live nekkid lady if you don’t share your good
fortune with someone else, someone who could vouch for you and
say, “Yeah, huh! Yeah, huh! We did too see a real live nekkid lady!”
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I must’ve been something to see, rushing at my little partner,
cheeks flushed with discovery, and babbling something like, “Dude,
dude, a nekkid lady, she’s all buck-assed nekkid, and she’s right over
there! C’mon!” We ran back across the street and took turns sneaking
glimpses at this achingly lovely nekkid lady washing her hair.
After ogling for a couple of moments, we were suddenly filled
with the desire for greatness, to share this ultimate of preteen
experiences with as many of our horny comrades as possible, so
we raced down the street to find more of our buddies. We spied
two, waved our arms and shouted, “Hey! Hey! There’s a nekkid lady!
C’mon!” In under a minute, the four of us were clustered on that
little porch, kicking and clawing for a peep at the naked lady.
Just as she was finishing her cream rinse and drying her
voluminous locks, a truck pulled into the driveway of the very house
into which we were spying. Without hesitation, we scrambled out of
that yard and didn’t stop until we were safe behind a dumpster in
an alley several blocks away. I wish I could’ve seen the nekkid lady’s
face when she was told a clot of 12-year-old boys was peering into
her window. I hope she wasn’t mad. I hope she kinda smiled.
Of course, we were the center of attention when we hooked up
with everyone else later that evening. We gave intricate details from
four different points of view and related moment-by-moment playby-plays, and I was declared a hero for sharing my discovery. Even
Mr. Dewey was proud and patted me on my back.
After that, nekkid ladies started appearing like magic, often
inviting the lucky 12-year-old horndog into their velvety boudoirs
for further pleasures of the flesh, but none of these sightings was
confirmed by more than one person and so were suspect.
It was some time before I saw a nekkid lady again, but I did get
invited into a lady’s house for Oreos one day late in the summer. I
hoped she would take off her clothes and wash her hair in the sink,
but she demured. We just small-talked and ate cookies.
By the end, after a whole summer of being dropped off at shitty
street corners in equally shitty towns, I finally got sick of it and quit.
My mother says I used to come home crying because I hated the
job and hated the other kids for fucking with me so much. I don’t
remember why I quit. I just did.
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how I escaped my shitty little town (1997)
My friend Brady was a bone-hard daddy with a mile-long dick
and a wallet so thick with old porno movie tickets it took him a full
minute and a half to pull it outta the ass pocket of his acid-washed
jeans. Brady bragged he’d slept with more women in high school
than I’d sat next to, but the only woman I’d ever seen in the company
of Brady was the 99DDD Dungeons & Dragons wet dream tattooed
on his arm with stainless steel coffee cup titty armor sitting astride a
snarling white polar bear and waving a 13-foot long battle axe in one
hand and a bloody Viking head in the other. Brady had an encyclopedic
knowledge of every porn star who had ever stepped off a Greyhound
bus in downtown Hollywood looking for a big break and ended up
in movies like Edward Penishands and Star Whores and Das Booty.
His collection of Hustler and Playboy and Penthouse and Fat Nasty
Nekkid Biker Babes On Crack lined every free bit of wall space in his
room and spilled out into boxes and crates and bookshelves in his
garage. Brady said he would never get a hot-lookin’ chick to work his
wienie like a performing seal works a bicycle horn without the cash,
Slash, without the mean green, Jelly Bean, so he was itching, he was
ready, Brady was primed for some shit to go down.
And then there was Tony Baloney, but everyone called him Grape
Ape, but not because he was big, because Tony Baloney was a little
scraunty bastard with big-assed radar ears — had more ears than a
methamphetamine addict got no teeth — and the funkiest looking
head, looked just like a grape seed, so we called his goofy almondhead shaped ass Grape Ape. Tony had been fucked his whole life and
ignored by girls and teachers and his parents — hell, everybody except
for me and Brady — and he was ready to kick the dust of this shitty
town off his Kangaroos and see the world. But, he was poor, and he
was stupid, and the only job he could find was sweeping the parking
lot after the minor league games out at the baseball diamond at the
edge of town, and he never had enough money to get ahead. Tony
was itching, he was ready, he was primed for some shit to go down.
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.
And then there was me, Plan Boy 2000, with a fistful of Martin
Scorcese videos and a head full of bad ideas. I was always the smart
one who was gonna work my way through two years of community
college as a teller in the very same bank where my dad was the CEO.
The very same bank that had big oil paintings of my granddad and my
great-granddad on display in thick old fashioned mahogany frames.
I was the one with the pretty girlfriend already picking out china
patterns and planning backyard barbecues and looking forward to
squeezing out spawn like a wild salmon. I was the one who had it
made in the shade, Roller Blade, had my future all planned out long
before I was a twinkle in my momma’s eye, only I didn’t want any
of it, because I hated my parents, and I hated the banking business,
and as a matter of fact I was starting to hate my pretty girlfriend, but
there was nothing I hated more on this entire planet than this shitty
little town, and I was gonna get the hell outta there even if it was in
the back of a police cruiser with the lights blazing and the front pages
of every newspaper in the county shouting my name in large capital
letters. I was more than itching for something to happen, man, I was
breaking out in hives.
So, I hatched a plan and decided me and Brady and Tony Baloney
were skippin’ town with a quickness, only we weren’t gonna slink outta
burg with our tails tucked between our legs, no, we were gonna go out
with style, with class, with a BANG! that people would still be talking
about for years to come. And as my two accessories sat cross-legged
on my bedroom floor, I brought Exhibit A from beneath my bed: a
fully loaded semi-automatic small calibre solution to our problems.
As their eyes went wide with What the fuck? I told them my plan. It
would be an inside job, see, with me working the drive-thru teller at
my dad’s bank, and Brady and Tony Baloney coming up in the drivethru in a borrowed car. I say, “Can I help you?” Brady shows me the
gun, and Tony Baloney says, “Show me the money!” The bank’s got a
policy drilled in stone, you see, that says, “If they ask for it, you give
it to them. Your life isn’t worth the money.”
Boom boom boom, I fear for my life! Boom boom boom, I put
the money in the cassette and put it in the suction tube! Boom boom
boom, Brady and Tony slowly and calmly drive away, and I wait a few
minutes before I report it because I’m so nervous at having a gun
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pointed at me. Hell, I’ll probably get a month’s free counseling out
of it and be proclaimed a futhermuckin’ hero, and my comrades will
be waiting for me in a hotel room in Reno with three showgirls who
look just like the tattoo on Brady’s arm!
And my friends are down with this caper, brothers and sisters,
they are ready to dig in to my shindig, and little dollar signs light up
in their eyes, and Tony Baloney says to me, he says with a shaking
voice, he says, “You know, I’ve got a monkey head mask I could wear,
and nobody would even know it was me.” And I say, “Goddamn it,
Grape Ape, you show up in a monkey head mask, and nobody’s even
gonna know the difference, you big goofy cantina scene in Star Wars
looking motherfucker. Besides, I’ll take that gun from Brady’s hand
and shoot you with it myself! Just stay cool and try not to drool, fool,
and I’ll serve up the money like pasta e fagioli!”
The big day arrives, and I am cool as a cucumber, slippery as a
snake in the green green grass, and I’m working the drive-thru teller
like I always do, and everything is fine as fine wine, and the appointed
time comes… (dot dot dot) and goes (period). Click clock click, the
clock ticks, and my eyes be picking out every white sedan that comes
galumphing through the drive-thru, but not a damn one of them is
carrying Brady and Tony Baloney. Click clock click, sweat’s beading
on my lip, and still no Brady, and still no Tony Baloney. Click clock
click, goddamn it, my hands are shaking. Where the fuck are they? My
nerves are quaking. Where the fuck are they? The short hairs on the
back of my neck be dancing the lambada. Click clock click, I drop two
$20 dollar bills onto the teller booth floor and bend over to get them
and bump my goddamn head on the table on the way up BAM! And
as I rub my head and look outta my window, what should I see?
A white sedan being driven by some dumb motherfucker in a
goddamned monkey head mask! And the silly motherfucker in the
passenger side is wearing a Casper The Friendly Ghost Mask! Believe
you me, brothers and sisters, my hands were shaking more with rage
than with fear as I pushed the intercom button and hissed through
clenched teeth, “May I help you?” And the monkey head just looks at
me, and I’m looking at the monkey head, and he’s looking at me, and
I say it again, I say, “May I help you?” and the monkey head turns and
looks at the Casper The Friendly Ghost head then back at me, then
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nods its monkey head up and down. So I clench my teeth so tight the
windows in a thousand counties shatter into a bzillion tiny pieces, and
I punch the intercom button, and I whisper, “Take off the goddamn
monkey head.” And the monkey head looks back at the ghost head,
then back at me, and shakes its fuckin’ monkey head no.
So, I hit the intercom button with the palm of my hand and hiss,
“Where’s the gun, Peckerhead?” And the monkey head looks down
then brings up the gun like it’s a dead fish pinched between his thumb
and forefinger, and he shows it to me, he fucking shows it to me! So
I pound the fucking intercom button four or five fucking times, and
I say, “Where’s the goddamn note?” And the monkey head is still
sitting there showing me the gun, and he looks over his shoulder at
the Casper head, and I say it again, I say, “Where’s the goddamned
note?” And I hear them muttering back and forth, and I see the Casper
head climb into the back seat while the monkey head opens the glove
compartment door. And I take my knuckle and jab it into the intercom
button, and I say, “Do not tell me you forgot the fuckin’ note, you
fuckin’ monkey head motherfucker! Do not tell me you forgot the
fuckin’ note!!!” And then I feel a tap on the shoulder.
“Is everything okay?”
The screech of tires muffled by bulletproof glass blends with the
crack of my neck as I turn to see the shift manager standing behind
me, his eyes darting from me to the teller window then back to me
again. I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
“You’re face is all white. Your forehead is soaking wet. Do you
need a break, young man?”
And I manage to croak, “Yes, I need a break.”
And as the shift manager presses his head against the glass of the
teller booth and looks at the molten black tire trail embedded in the
drive-thru pavement, I slowly walk out of the teller booth and walk
through the lobby and walk out the front door, and I keep on walking
down the street, and I feel something in the fist of my left hand, and I
look down, and it’s those two $20 bills I’d dropped on the floor, so I
take a left at the used clothing store and march toward the Greyhound
bus station with a brand new plan, and I never look back.
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garanimals (1997)
When I was a kid, my mother would take me shopping for school
clothes every August at a department store called Mervyn’s. We went
there because they had a good selection of Garanimals clothes.
Garanimals was a clothing line for kids that enabled them to pick
their own clothes and be ensured a perfect match. Everything had a
tag in the shape of an animal — like a purple giraffe or a yellow zebra
or a green hippo — and you simply matched up the tags.
My mom would take me to the shirt rack and let me loose to
pick whatever shirt I wanted, then I’d bring my shirt back for final
approval, and we’d head for the pants rack. I’d hold the tag of the
shirt in one hand and flip through all the pants looking for the right
tag. Most of the time, I’d find exactly what I was looking for, and I’d
give this little shout of victory and bring it back to my mom. It was
very empowering to make my own choices, and my mother liked it
because I wouldn’t mix stripes and polka dots.
I now find myself wishing people came with Garanimals tags.
Imagine all the time you’d save by avoiding relationships that
were doomed to failure. Instead of banging your head on the wall
for months at a time and wondering what you were doing wrong and
what you could try next to make this relationship work and going
to therapy and counselling in an effort to force things to gel then
going through a horrid break-up experience that left you drained
and tired, you’d just… know… from the very beginning… whether
or not you should be together.
Imagine meeting someone in a bar or an art opening or a party,
and you start a conversation, and there is laughter, and there are
emphatic nods of agreement, and they’re cute, and you’re feeling
cute, and you’re making all kinds of eye contact, and suddenly four
hours have gone by so effortlessly you’ve barely noticed. It’s time to
whip out the tags. You’d reach into your pocket and pull out your
orange rhino and show it to them… and they’d kinda smile, nod
their head, reach into their backpack, and pull out a pink zebra.
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And you’d both laugh a kind of wistful laugh, because you’d both
be thinking, “Oh man, that’s too bad, we were getting along great
and everything.” But you’d also be thinking, “Whew, that was close.”
And you’d be so relieved, because now you’d be able to concentrate
on a friendship and not have to muck it up trying to force it into
some kind of hopeless romantic entanglement that would leave you
both unable to be in the same room together.
You’d save so much heartache and frustration. Imagine the joy of
finding your true soulmate purple lion and knowing this was the one
you’ve been searching for, this was the fabled perfect match.
There could be clubs — the Brown Pony Room, the Magenta Kitty
Lounge — where you’d be guaranteed a perfect partner. Personal
ads would be revolutionized. No more lengthy descriptions to read
or cryptic codes to figure out, just Silver Tiger Seeks Same. BOOM,
you’ve said it all. Search services could offer help in finding those
elusive lemon leopards and tangerine iguanas.
Of course, there’d be some asshole who got hold of a bunch of
tags. You’d show them your purple lion, and they’d start rummaging
around in their backpack, mumbling, “Purple lion… Purple lion…
I know had one of those here somewhere…”
My Garanimals tag would probably be an orange-striped duckbilled platypus, and the only other orange-striped duck-billed
platypus on the entire planet would be some 67-year-old woman in
Outer Mongolia I’d never meet in a million years.
I’m sure the whole point of living is striving to gain something
positive from every relationship, and just because a relationship
doesn’t make it to full-blown ‘till death do us part doesn’t mean it
wasn’t a positive relationship full of wonderful feelings and emotions
and lessons. But, still, knowing would be nice.
And I keep thinking about the times when I’d find the perfect
shirt at Mervyn’s, and I’d run to the pants section and look through
every single pair and not find the right tag.
I’d look at everything three or four times, then have my mother
look, until finally, with my head hanging low and my shoulders all
slumped, I’d heave a heavy sigh and settle for something that sorta
kinda matched but not perfectly and hope that no one noticed.
Especially me.
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everyday magic (1999)
I do this thing with a cup of ramen noodles, you know, like Cup
O’ Noodles? They’re chicken and mushroom flavour, and I bought
them from the deli down the street from my work about a year ago. I
ate them right at my desk as I was working on my computer, and that
was that, they were gone.
The next day, I’m working at my computer, and I’m hungry, and
I start thinking about that cup of ramen I had the day before and how
I want another one, but I’m out of cash. Man, I’m hungry, and I start
wishing I hadn’t eaten those noodles so they would still be there at
my desk so I could eat them again.
My stomach lets out this little moan of hunger, so I go to the
water fountain to get some water, and when I come back, well,
what should be right there on my desk, but a cup of chicken and
mushroom ramen. What the hell? I think someone’s playing a joke or
something, like they had heard me talking to myself and happened
to have another chicken and mushroom ramen around. I can’t figure
it out, but I eat it anyway because I’m hungry.
The next day, I’m still broke, and I’m running late, so I don’t
have time to brown bag a lunch. Again, I find myself in front of my
computer wishing I had another one of those cups of ramen, and
BOOM! out of the corner of my eye, there it is, a cup of chicken
and mushroom ramen. It’s just suddenly… there… and I know for
damn sure it wasn’t there just a few seconds before. It freaks me out
a little, like someone is just fucking with me. Then I start wondering
if maybe I was somehow conjuring the cup of noodles by wishing for
it, so I close my eyes and wish for another. When I open them, it’s
just the same cup of ramen. No new ramen. Whatever, someone’s
playing games, but I eat it, too, because I’m hungry.
Well, that was Friday, and that Saturday I wake up in my room
and stretch and think to myself about getting some breakfast, and it’s
still on my mind, you know, this ramen thing, so I kind of jokingly
wish to out loud for another cup of ramen, I actually say, “Boy, I sure
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do wish I had a cup of ramen noodles right about now,” and I’m
chuckling to myself because whoever did it at work is gonna have a
hard time getting here in my room without me noticing.
Nothing happens, so I get up to take a shower, and when I come
out wrapped in a towel… There it is on my dresser! A styrofoam cup
of ramen noodles! Chicken and mushroom! So, I yell out, “Hey, this
ain’t funny anymore! Stop fuckin’ around!” But all I hear is silence.
I stare at the Cup O’ Noodles and squeeze my eyes shut and
wish for another one, only this time pork flavoured, and I open my
eyes, but it’s just that same chicken and mushroom flavoured ramen
staring back at me. I close my eyes and wish for a new car, shiny
and bright red, no green, a forest green Lamborghini parked right
outside my front stoop, then I go over to the window and look down
five stories to the street below. Nothing. No car. No soup. Sidewalk.
I don’t eat the noodles this time, but the next day I wake up
and wish for another one. Nothing happens. So, I ate the ramen and
wished for another one. Nothing. No new ramen.
Monday morning, I wake up and wish for another ramen,
and BADABING! there on my bookshelf next to a stack of Sports
Illustrateds is a cup of chicken and mushroom ramen.
I guess that’s it. Once a day I can wish for a cup of chicken and
mushroom ramen, and that’s it until the next day. I can’t get another
one unless I’ve already eaten the one I wished for. I’m not sure yet if
it’s the exact same ramen each time, and my wish that I hadn’t eaten
it keeps coming true, or if it’s a brand new one each time.
It’s kind of annoying, you know, that all I can conjure is a cup
of ramen and not, like, a million dollars or a big house on a hill, but
it’s still kind of cool. For six or seven months I used to wish for one
every day, but I’m getting tired of chicken and mushroom ramen, so
I only do it once or twice a week now.
Sometimes not even that much.
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the butt triplets (1999)
The ceremony began the same way at every apartment in every
seaside town where my family washed ashore when I was a kid.
The night after the first day of unpacking would be reserved for
me and my kid sister Nelly and our new rooms. After all the sweaters
and shirts and pants had been unpacked and put away, and all the
dishes and pots and pans had been stacked into new cupboards and
drawers, and all my father’s crisp Navy uniforms were lined in single
file in the hall closet, there would a point where my mother and
father would pause and exhale deeply.
They would look around the living room with their arms
akimbo, surveying the empty boxes turned upside down in a pile in
the corner and the stacks of bulging boxes yet to be emptied, and
one or the other would look at me and Nelly and say something on
the order of, “Well, I guess it’s time for you guys to get started.”
This was our cue to grab our boxes and drag them into our
own rooms and begin the process of reassembling a space roughly
resembling the last one, a place we could claim until the next time we
moved to follow our dad’s aircraft carrier up and down the coast.
I had exactly three boxes, marked with their contents in black felt
tip: Alex (Clothes), Alex (Books), and Alex (Star Wars). This last box
was the most important of all, holding within its weary cardboard
sides the keys to my grade school identity. I was a freak for anything
remotely connected with George Lucas and had every imaginable
action figure and spaceship associated with the Star Wars universe.
Buried beneath piles of Boba Fetts and Jabba The Hutts and Luke
Skywalkers, however, was something even more precious than my
favourite metal Star Wars lunch box: the crusty pair of driving gloves
my dad gave me that were used solely for playground four square.
I grabbed a cardboard flap of this most prized of boxes and
dragged it backwards down the hallway toward my bedroom, but
then Nelly shouldered past me with her enormous box labelled
Nelly (Barbies) and hip checked me against the wall.
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“Move, stupid!” she sneered, then she threw her box dramatically
to the ground and yelled, “Mom, Bud pushed me!”
I dove into my room and closed the door behind me before my
mother had a chance to yell at me.
I knelt beside my bed, already covered by a blanket and pillowcase
set decorated with streaking TIE Fighters and X-Wings, and I gently
opened my box. I dug through the characters and accessories, the
dioramas and vehicles, reached my arm all the way down to the
bottom, felt around, then pinched my pointer and middle finger
around something soft. I gingerly pulled my hand from the mass
of plastic to reveal my four square gloves, tied together with a
shoelace. I held them in my hand and admired the dirty creases and
folds caused by countless battles on the blacktop, the cracks in the
knuckles, the scrapes grated into the palms.
As I slipped on my gloves and unpacked and catalogued the
rest of my treasures, I had no idea I would meet my most dreaded
enemies of my entire elementary school career the very next day.
***
Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt were the biggest, meanest,
most foul-spirited and wicked little fifth-graders in the history of
fifth-graders the world over.
They were ruthless evil incarnate, a trio of foul thugs ruling the
four square court like Tiny Town Mafioso. Only they weren’t so tiny.
From a 10-year-old’s vantage point, they were a living, breathing
three-headed hydra doling out wanton pain and destruction.
Colossal.
Gargantuan.
Cyclopean.
Roget’s Thesaurus doesn’t have enough synonyms for way bigger
than you to describe these beasts. The identical sisters weighed 80
pounds each, at least, with fists like concrete blocks and arms rippling
with brute strength. I’m sure they could’ve easily bench-pressed 100
pounds, and their butts… Oh, never has a trio of thugs been so aptly
named as The Butt Triplets. I was sure you could land jet planes on
their backsides, their magnificent and frightening backsides.
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I was the new kid once again at this, my latest school, after
having just moved from Someplace Else for the fourth or fifth time
in two years. I was really shy, painfully shy, but I had two strengths
that allowed me to insinuate myself into schoolyard societies from
Bremerton, Washington, to San Diego, California: I could read four
grades ahead of everybody else, and I kicked ass in four square.
Picture Mark Spitz, his smooth chest festooned with seven
Olympic gold medals, standing before a cheering stadium and
soaking up the multinational roar of applause. Swap swimming for
four square, and that would have been me on that championship
podium. Had four square been a more respected sport, my mom’s
mantelpiece would have been strewn with statues of little golden
boys holding pebbled four square balls over their heads in triumph.
I had mastered all the tricks of the trade: baby bouncies; corner
shots; backstops; double-troubles; fakies; spins; and my signature
move, the mighty Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick. If I whipped out
the Schlebotnick, just forget it, just pick your jaw off the floor and
put your eyeballs back in their sockets and march to the hind end of
the line, Buster Brown, because you’re outta there.
The first thing I did on the first day of some new school was check
out my favourite book from the library: My Side Of The Mountain, by
Jean George, a great book about a kid who runs away from home to
live in the forest with his pet peregrine falcon. Then I would suss out
the schoolyard competition at the four square courts.
I’d stand at a respectful distance from the line of kids waiting
to hop into the first square, rubbing my jaw in deep thought. I’d
gauge second and third square strategies and watch the moves of the
servers. I’d listen to variations in blacktop lingo and check out the
local procedure for calling rules. Then, I’d hop in line and wait.
The servers would always think they were hot stuff, especially
those holding the position for consecutive recesses, but I’d knock
out the second square with a quick cornershot. When I’d advance to
second square and the next person in line entered the first square,
the server would inevitably announce, “Rules! No corner shots!” And
they’d smirk at me as if they had defused my only bomb. The fools.
I’d take out square three with a deft fakie with a backspin for
sugar and occupy it, smiling like a mercenary when the server
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shouted, “Rules! No corners and no fakies and no spins!” They’d try
to look smug, but they’d be worried by this point.
I remember this one server who tried to ban everything, but I
demanded he call them out by name, so he shouted, “No corners, no
fakies, no spins, no backstops, no bumpers, no over-heads, no toepeggers, no double-bouncies, no baby-bouncies, and no punchers!”
You should’ve seen the look of triumph in his eyes, thinking he
had plucked all the fruit from my cherry tree and was about to chop
me down, but I still had my secret weapon whose name only I knew:
the dreaded Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick.
Once I unleashed the Schlebotnick, victory was mine.
I would cement my reputation as king of the four square court
by reigning supreme all recess. I was a kind king, however, and took
days off to let the other kids play while I sat under a tree at the
far end of the playground reading White Fang and Charlie And The
Chocolate Factory and Blubber and The Cat Ate My Gym Suit and
Hello God, It’s Me Margaret. It added an air of mystery, I figured,
and a little mystery is almost always a good thing.
On the second day of this latest of new schools, I had already
claimed the crown and was holding court before an admiring
audience when the malevolence made its first appearance.
I was playing an easy game, not really paying attention and
thinking more about adventures in the forests with pet peregrine
falcons, when I heard one of the kids in line whisper, “Uh oh, The
Butts.” I looked up and saw several kids get out of line and walk
hurriedly to the swing sets. Even the kids in the squares eyed each
other nervously and shuffled their feet, finally removing themselves
one by one by one until only I was left. I absentmindedly dribbled
the four square ball and asked, “What’s wrong? Don’t you guys wanna
play anymore? Where are you guys going? Guys?”
I managed to grab some kid by the shirt sleeve as he headed for
the tetherballs and asked him what was up, and he nodded his head
behind me and said, “The Butts, man! The Butts are coming!”
I turned and saw them for the first time from across the
playground, stalking toward me with faces sour as vinegar and fists
clenched with purpose. The kid yanked free from my grasp and ran
to the bathrooms as The Butt Triplets took the first, second, and
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third squares. They were massive chunks of fifth-grader, each with
shaggy dishwater blonde pigtails held together with rubberbands
and tight corduroy pants and T-shirts stretched against their bulky
midsections. They had milky blue eyes shadowed by pink neanderthal
brow ridges and no necks whatsoever; their heads popped out of
their massive shoulders like boulders perched on freckly hills.
I was dumbfounded and discombobulated, squeezing the ball
against my skinny chest like a drowning man with a life vest. The
Butts stared me down in silence for long moments.
Finally Bathsheba, the loudest and most ornery of the three,
spat on the ground and snarled, “You playin’?”
I cleared my throat, shuffled a bit in my sneakers, and bounced
the ball a couple of times, my eyes darting from Buelah to Bertha to
Bathsheba, then back again. I licked my lips and quietly said, “No
rules. Everything goes.”
A collective gasp rose from the kids peering from behind the
jungle gym and the monkey bars and the rings and the swing sets.
This was the schoolyard equivalent of staring someone in the eye
and unblinkingly daring them to give you their best game — a noholds-barred, toe-to-toe, knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish for
four square glory — and was usually reserved for die-hard rivalries
that brewed to boiling points and demanded public resolution.
This, though, this immediate calling out of an opponent was
like going to full-scale nuclear war the second the enemy’s troops
massed on the border.
The Butt Triplets? They didn’t even flinch. They just crouched
down like sumo wrestlers, ham hands on burly knees, waiting,
expressionless as junkyard pit bulls.
A breeze blew over the blacktop playground. I took a deep
breath, bounced the ball a few times, then held it tight between my
gloved hands. The battle had begun.
I served Buelah a purposely easy lob to see what she would do
with it. One second she was frozen there like a hunk of granite with
the red ball arcing toward her, and the next instant the ball rocketed
back in my face. I didn’t even have time to blink and only through
sheer force of will did I manage to stop the ball from sailing into the
troposphere with a graceless fling of my flailing left hand.
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And that was the last time I saw that ball. For the next 45 seconds,
I only felt it as one after another — Buelah, Bertha, and Bathsheba
Butt — pummeled me with jackhammer blows from all three squares
at once with 257 four square balls. I abandoned every trick I had ever
used and threw all my energy into moving as fast as I could. This
was no time for finesse: This was survival! They pelted me with a
monsoon of red blurs, and I was there for each one, using Jedi mind
tricks to arch my body and stretch my limbs in never before seen
angles to return the ball.
It was brutal. Every hit was returned toot sweet with lightning
speed. Had it not been for the recess bell, I’m sure I would’ve
spontaneously combusted, but the lumbering behemoth that was
Buelah snapped into sharp focus and with the four square ball
clenched between her fists and growled, “Just wait ‘till tomorrow.”
With that, Beulah chucked the ball at my head, and I barely
danced out of its destructive path. The Butt Triplets walked away
without so much as a parting glance, and I stood there, gasping and
wheezing, T-shirt soaked with sweat, hair matted to my forehead,
one shoe kicked off, arms hanging limply at my sides, and thought to
myself that Christmas vacation was a million miles away.
***
That night, I glowered at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling
— this latest set purchased at the Navy base hobby store just two days
before — and tried fruitlessly to think of anything in the whole wide
world other than the vile Butt Triplets.
I frowned up at the glowing green galaxies of Saturns and Jupiters
and crescent moons and the plastic Millennium Falcon dangling
by fishing line from the light fixture. My arms were crossed tightly
across my chest, and I visualized ghastly public floggings, gruesome
sessions of torture and maiming, clouds of black crows and locusts
chasing the horrible sisters down the playground and plucking the
porky eyes from their sockets.
A soft knock at my door made me jump, and, for a moment,
I considered not answering, but then I crawled from under my
comforter and padded to the door and opened it.
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It was Nelly, a full foot shorter than me and in her Barbie
Underoos. I had the old urge to yell at her and tell her to go away
and stop bothering me, to yell it really loud so the whole house
would wake up, but I stifled it. Things had been really tense lately,
and these late night meetings had been convening more often than
usual. I let her in and closed the door behind her, watching as she
clomped across my room in the dirty pink elephant slippers Aunt
Ruby had given her last Christmas.
When my father was home, we avoided each other until dinner,
which we then ate in silence by ourselves at the kitchen table while
our parents ate in front of the television in the living room. When my
father was out to sea, we vied for my mother’s attention by constantly
bickering and pointing out the flaws of the other. Every once in a
while, though, in times of great stress or mutual need, we dropped
all the static and talked civilly, big brother to kid sister.
“Sometimes I hate Dad,” she said, looking down at her feet as
she dangled them over the side of my bed. The ears of her slippers
flopped back and forth as she kicked her legs.
I sat down next to her and looked down at my bare feet, at the
dirt wedged in the nail of my big toe. I told her I felt the same way
sometimes, especially when Mom and Dad argued.
“Yeah,” she said.
The wind blew softly outside my bedroom window, brushing the
azalea bushes in the flower bed against my ratty screen. That sound
wasn’t scary anymore; mostly it was annoying. The fridge kicked on
in the kitchen and my Obi-Wan night light flickered.
“Mom cried again today,” she said, still looking down at her feet,
fingers clutching little handfuls of my blanket.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I was playing Barbies in your room and…”
“My room? Nelly…”
She stopped kicking her feet and brandished her palm at me.
“…and mom was putting away towels, and I was playing Barbies,
and then it got all quiet, and then I heard her crying, and I don’t
think she knew I could hear her, but I could.”
The fridge buzzed. The wind blew. Something somewhere inside
the house creaked. I wished we had a dog.
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“Did you cry, too?” I asked.
“No.” She bit the corner of her lower lip and reached down and
pulled off one of her elephant slippers, scratched between her toes,
flicked a pink fuzzball onto my floor, then replaced her slipper.
We sat there for a while, kicking our feet and listening to the
night sounds of the house and the world outside my window. After a
while, Nelly plopped off my bed and walked to my door, her pointy
heel bones clomping through the bottoms of her slippers.
She opened the door just a crack, just wide enough for her thin
body to slip through. She disappeared except for her hand, curled
around the edge of the door and still grasping the knob.
“Nelly?”
Her hand paused, then a whisper floated from behind the door,
“What?” The wind blew again, raking the bush across my screen and
fluttering the curtains.
“Stay out of my room when I’m not home.”
I stared at her hand for a few more moments, then she closed
the door between us and clomped back down the hall.
***
The next day was a rainy one, full of storm clouds as bruised
and swollen as my mood. I woke up stiff and sore and achy, then
I got yelled at by my dad for using all the hot water taking a long
Hollywood shower. I ate cinnamon toast in the kitchen with Nelly
and tried to ignore the strained mood in the living room. They were
talking about moving again, this time to base housing, even though
we still had boxes lining the walls of our latest apartment. My mom
was upset because she had just enrolled us in yet another school.
I didn’t care; I was used to this moving stuff. In fact, if we could’ve
moved right at that very second, I would’ve given the idea three
cheers and a huzzah. I dreaded going to school. I knew I’d have to
swan dive into that pit of vipers known as the four square court and
defend my servership, and I felt drained just thinking about it. If I
could’ve conjured a good excuse — toothache, brain cancer, arthritis
of the eyeball — I might have used it, but I couldn’t back down.
I couldn’t lose my spot.
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I trudged off to school in my old yellow raincoat and prepared
to meet my destiny. It rained the whole way, all eight blocks, and by
the time I made it to the cafeteria to eat hot oatmeal with raisins and
a carton of 2% milk, my cowboy boots were soaked. The ink from my
Free Breakfast punch card got all over my jeans and stained the tips
of my fingers mimeograph purple.
I ate alone at the corner of a long, white table heavy on one end
with gabbing, giggling, soaking kids I didn’t know. I usually enjoyed
sitting by myself when I ate in the morning, but this time I felt a
little paranoid, as if people were sneaking glances at me over their
shoulders and muttering hidden snarks from behind cupped palms.
I only looked up once in the brief time I ate my meal, and when
I did I saw The Butt Triplets across the cafeteria, huddled in a soppy
clot at the end of another long table. They sat by themselves and
ate in silence without looking up. They weren’t wearing jackets or
coats, just limp hooded sweatshirts that dripped into the styrofoam
containers of their Free Breakfast oatmeal and raisins.
I looked through the foggy wall of windows along one side of
the cafeteria and saw the four-square courts on the playground. The
grey sky reflected from the surface of the slick asphalt, and crazy
circles radiated as drops hit. The rain sounded like stomping feet.
My head hurt. I was already starting to sniffle.
When the first recess bell freed us from class two hours later, the
kids all lined up at the edge of the school buildings, just under the
lip of roof that caught the rain and directed it to overflowing gutters.
The playground tarmac was covered by a greasy black sea and the
tetherballs bounced against their poles and swayed in the wind.
The crowd of kids huddled together in a long mass, their
hands thrust deep inside the pockets of their jackets and raincoats,
hunching their shoulders to keep the moisture from creeping down
their necks. It was weird. On most rainy days at most of the schools
I’d gone to, the kids tended to stay in the cafeteria, playing chess and
checkers and Monopoly or squawking in flocks that fluttered from
one side of the room to the other. But here, at this school, everyone
seemed to be standing around and staring out at the soggy swamp of
a playground, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
…oh God…
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Just then, a hubbub erupted twenty people down the line and
several kids scattered as Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt burst
from the throng and stomped through the curtain of freezing rain
falling from the roof. They marched without hesitation toward the
four square courts. Bathsheba was in the lead, kicking rainwater into
a huge spray with her dirty white tennies and headlocking a red four
square ball under one arm.
I looked down at my cowboy boots, soaking in a puddle inches
deep, then looked down the line of dripping school kids. They were
all staring at me, every single one of them, and they didn’t look away
when I met their gazes one by one by one.
…oh God…
I looked back down at my soggy hands, then back up at The Butt
Triplets who were standing in the first, second, and third squares of a
water-logged four square court, then back down at my hands again.
I sighed a big shivering sigh, held it, then took my Han Solo
backpack from my shoulders and handed it to the little red-haired
kid standing next to me.
“Can you hold this for me?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the kid said, and he held the straps with both hands. I
took one last deep breath and stepped through the curtain of rain.
Bathsheba glared at me when I took my spot in the server
position, spitting venom through tiny eye slits, then held out the
four square ball. When I tried to take it, she snatched it from my
grasp and sneered, “I triple-dog dare you to let us call rules.”
What kind of trick was this? This wasn’t… You weren’t supposed
to be able to do this! The server was supposed to be the one who
called rules, they knew that, so… What was this? What kinda…
Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt said nothing. They stared
me down like gargoyles, and I tried my best to stare right back.
A triple-dog dare ignored welcomed chicken squawks and
a profound losing of face. There may be some debate about the
legitimacy of a double-dog dare, but the triple was sacred playground
doctrine. I had no choice. I told Bathsheba she could do whatever
she wanted; it wasn’t like other people hadn’t tried this nonsense
before. The crowd behind me began to mutter, blending with the
wind slanting the rainfall.
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The Butts looked at each other, nodded their heads as one,
then began rattling off a vast litany of styles and power moves they
intended to ban from this game: basic plays every newbie knew by
heart; advanced shots only the most veteran players could employ;
obscure tricks I hadn’t seen in three or four schools; plus a slew
of esoteric strategies I had never even heard of, like googlies and
bone crushers and bloody marys and piggly wigglies. They went
on and on, rattling off move after move, trick after trick, each Butt
contributing every iota of four square lore they knew.
I stood there with my arms crossed, resisting the urge to scoff
openly at this last minute act of desperation. When they finally
stopped, I reached for the four square ball and snapped, “Okay, fine,
you done now? You satisfied now? Can I have the dumb ball now?”
Bathsheba stepped toward me, but as I reached for the ball, she
yanked it from my grasp and held it over her head with one hand.
“No sir, we ain’t done yet,” she scowled, then she spat, wiped
her mouth with the back of her hand, and moved closer to me. She
curled her finger and beckoned as if wanting to whisper something
in my ear. I looked over my shoulder at the crowd of people behind
me — it seemed the whole school was watching, including a few
teachers — then craned my ear closer to Bathsheba’s mouth.
She screamed, “And no Behind-The-Back Schlabotnicks!”
My eyes opened wide as halos, my gasping mouth melted down
my chin, my hands clawed at my face. I became a fifth grade dramatic
interpretation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Before I could even mouth the word how, Bertha answered my
question by jumping up and down and pointing and shouting, “It
was on your PeeChee! We saw it written on your PeeChee! Ha ha, you
wrote it all over your PeeChee!”
The Butt Triplets then did something I had never seen them do
in the brief history of our rivalry: they laughed, big bellowing belly
laughs like pregnant hippos choking themselves on some cruel joke.
In between laughs, they gulped air to power even more laughs.
Oh the humanity!
Of course, they were right. On the yellow PeeChee folder in my
backpack, I had doodled all over the basketball player guy, changing
him into a championship four square player with my name scrawled
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on the back of his jersey. Over his head was a bubble that said, No
one can stop the Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick! Die! Die! Die!
How The Butts had seen it, I’ll never know, but there I was
stripped of my secret weapon, and it was all my fault because I fell
for the most devious trick in the book. In front of the whole, entire
school, too. I was so embarrassed. Had this happened the year
before, I would’ve run from the playground with my face covered,
but I fought against that urge and stood my ground.
As her sisters continued to laugh and mock me, Bathsheba
reached over and handed me the four square ball.
There was nothing left to do now but serve the ball and play
the best game I could, given the wind and the rain and the cold and
the fact that every single bit of support had been snatched from me.
I bounced the ball twice, wincing at the dirty spray spattering my
jeans, and crouched down in my server position. I reached around
and pulled up the rear end of my pants, rubbed the rainwater from
my eyes, then I hit the ball to Buelah in square two and readied
myself for the firestorm to follow.
And Buelah hit the ball gently to Bertha in square one, who then
hit the ball gently to Bathsheba in square three, who then returned
the ball gently to Buelah once again. I kicked up water in tiny tsunamis
each time the ball switched sisters, realigning myself to receive the
ball, but each time it avoided me and gracefully arced to one of the
triplet. This continued, back and forth, back and forth, and I found
myself muttering, “C’mon… C’mon… Gimme the ball… Gimme
the ball…”
But they kept it up, lobbing the ball to each other in a gross
mockery of four square, the kind of four square you play with little
kids, not with each other. They acted like I wasn’t even there, like
they were just hanging out, just wasting time, as if the whole school
wasn’t watching our every move. I straightened up a bit, with my
hands on my waist, and said, “C’mon, guys, stop messing around,
and let’s play some four square.”
Then Bathsheba started chanting, “La la la! La la la! La la la!”
in rhythm with the movement of the ball. Buelah joined her, then
Bertha, playing little kid four square with that stupid, irritating, singsong nonsense blending with the soppy applause of raindrops.
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“La la la! La la la!” they sang, like little kids playing four square
on the sidewalk outside their grandma’s house, as if everything in
the whole stupid world didn’t depend on this very game. I couldn’t
believe the insolence. They were disrespecting me, mocking me, in
front of the whole school. They were afraid, dammit, afraid of giving
me their best game because they had already tried that, yeah, and I
had beaten them at their own game, yeah, and now they were trying
to keep me from exercising my right to be server by messing around
with the stupid ball like a bunch of stupid…
And then I saw it, the tell, the giveaway move, and my Jedi mind
powers turned the entire scene into slow-mo. Buelah’s eyes twitched
toward me — PINK! — and her nearest shoulder dipped ever so
slightly. Her knees flexed, the muscles in her calves bulged, and she
took in a deep breath. The ball sailed through the tattered veil of
rain from the soused hands of Bathsheba, whose mouth was caught
in mid-La but whose eyes had also twitched toward me — PINK!
In that split second, it was finally obvious to me what they were
trying to do, and I had almost fallen for it! My muscles tensed and
snapped my body automatically to the proper ready position: my
legs spread wide, my body low to the ground, my arms bent like
capitol L’s, my hands open and flexed for impact.
And then Buelah’s body relaxed and gently returned the ball to
Bathsheba, who then lobbed it gently to Bertha, who then tossed it
gently back to Buelah once again.
They knew I was onto them and knew I wasn’t going down
without a fight. It gave me no small amount of pride to know they
had to resort to such blatant trickery to beat me. This game could go
the whole recess for all I cared, I wasn’t about to let them win.
And that’s when I sneezed.
It seemed like such a simple thing, such an innocent little
sneeze. The wind had blown spray from a splash of the four square
ball into my face, much as it had been the whole game, only this
time a few molecules of grit had snorted right up my left nostril. My
eyes never wavered from the job of protecting my square, but my left
hand jumped up to scratch my nose and left behind the rubbery tang
of the four square ball. Some mucous membrane behind my eyeballs
twinged. I snuffed sharply. I snorted. I sneezed.
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It couldn’t have been more than a millisecond, maybe even a
trillisecond, but when I opened my eyes again, I saw Bertha, Buelah,
and Bathsheba Butt angled toward me with their bodies frozen in the
ready position. I twitched, my eyes ping-ponging across the scene,
from Buelah’s hands to Bertha’s hands to Bathsheba’s hands, and I
couldn’t find the ball.
I stood tall and looked back over my shoulder and saw the four
square ball way in the distance, way over by the tetherballs across the
playground, still bouncing and skittering along the wet blacktop on
its way for the back fence.
I looked back into the faces of the kids crowded by the school
building, the wide eyes, the gaping mouths, and the utter silence
told me I didn’t need to ask if the ball had been out of bounds.
I looked back at the three sisters. They looked back at me. The
recess bell rang, and The Butt Triplets relaxed and straightened.
They turned and walked back to the classrooms without a word.
It was over. I had lost. After all those years at the top of my game,
I had finally lost my crown.
I shoved my hands deep into my pockets with a grunt and
watched my cowboy boots slosh through plashes on their way back
to the school building. When I crossed the wall of water spewing
from the rain gutter and into the shelter of the overhanging roof,
I saw my Han Solo backpack face down in a puddle. I lifted it and
felt the weight of liquid inside. I unzipped the main compartment
and poured ink-stained water onto the sidewalk, and out flopped
the gloves my dad had given me, my four square gloves, limp and
swampy as dead frogs. In all the hullaballoo of the deathmatch, I had
forgotten to wear my lucky gloves. No wonder I had lost. I zipped up
my backpack, snaked my arms through the straps, and turned away
from the sopping gloves to start my walk home three hours early.
When I let myself into the apartment with the key hung from a
chain around my neck, my mom was bustling around with her arms
full of boxes. She took one quick look at me as she walked into the
hallway, then shouting over her shoulder, “I was just about to come
get you! Get off the carpet, you’re soaking wet.” Nelly was sitting on
the love seat in the living room watching cartoons with her Barbie
backpack at her side. She was supposed to be at school, too.
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“Are we leaving?” I asked Nelly.
“Yeah,” she said, never taking her eyes off the teevee screen.
“Mom! Bud’s gettin’ water all over the carpet!”
My mom’s muffled voice rattled down the hallway in response,
“Honey, I told you not to get the carpet all wet! If you ruin the carpet
and make us lose the deposit, your dad’ll tan your hide!”
I sighed. I couldn’t wait to get this school behind me and move
on to the next one. I dropped my backpack onto the floor and started
extracting myself from my waterlogged clothing.
Half an hour later, my mom drove my sister and me back to
school to start the procedure of checking out. There were papers to
sign, I imagine, and forms to fill out and medical files to be returned
so we could give it all to the next school. Nelly and I waited in the
Pinto with the windows cracked and listened to oldies on the radio.
She sat in back in a kid’s seat and played with her Barbies, and I sat
in front and read an Encyclopedia Brown book from last year.
After about an hour, my mom came back and got in the car, then
we pulled out of the parking lot for home. The rain had stopped by
this time, and the playground was filled with kids on recess. Through
the school’s chain-link fence, I could see The Butt Triplets in one of
the four square courts quietly lobbing a red ball to each other. The
other four square courts all had quartets of chatty school kids, but
The Butt Triplets played with each other in silence.
We stopped at the corner for a stoplight, and Bertha, Buelah,
and Bathsheba Butt looked up at the same time and stared directly
into our car and at me.
It was the last time I would ever see them or this school.
When the light turned green and my mom made a wide left turn
toward our apartment, I could’ve sworn Buelah waved.
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mosaic (2000)
“Okay, we’re doing sad today,” Ethan said, pulling the Polaroid
instant camera from his backpack.
“Sad?” she said.
She was a college student — little round glasses, sweater, freeflowing shoulder length hair, backpack — who just two minutes
sat at a cafe table with friends, sipping iced coffee and neglecting
homework. Now she stood with her back against a brick wall in the
alley behind the cafe, tilting her head slightly and smiling.
Ethan dropped his backpack to the ground, put the camera to
his eye, and walked a few paces toward the girl.
“Yeah, sad. Yesterday was lonely.”
She dropped her gaze, her arms crossing her chest, her hands
cupping her elbows. She tapped the tip of her sandaled foot to the
ground, then kicked it back and placed the flat of her foot against
the brick wall as she leaned. The sun glinted off the silver ring coiled
around her pinkie toe. The ring was formed into the shape of a rubyeyed snake swallowing its own tail.
Ethan stared a moment at the ring, tracing the intricate scales
with his gaze. Her toenails were the same sky blue as her eyes.
“You like my toe ring?” she asked.
Ethan shook his head slightly and mumbled, “Hmmm? Oh, uhm,
yeah, the ring. It’s nice. I used to… I used to have a friend who had
one just like it. She bought it in the Lower Haight in San Francisco.”
“Oh, I got mine on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Maybe it’s the
same type. Does it have little red eyes like mine?”
Jesus, Ethan thought, I can’t remember.
Ethan lowered the camera and sighed, then rubbed his eyes with
his free hand. Without looking up he said, “I’m doing this art project.
I ask people to portray an emotion — sad or mad or happy — then I
take their picture. Would you like to some others I’ve taken today?”
He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small stack
of photos. They were smaller than the average instant photo, longer
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and less square, rather like large Band-Aids with photos stuck in the
center. He handed them over to the girl, and she took them with
slender fingers and flipped through them, reaching up to twirl a
tendril of hair that had fallen over her glasses. She pulled a photo
from the stack and said, “I like this one. He’s sad, but kinda silly.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, “I had to coach him a bit. He wasn’t getting
it, but I asked him to kinda pooch out his lower lip, like he was
pouting. I think it worked. It’s cute.”
“He looks like a little kid,” she said, then handed back the stack
of snaps. She flipped her bangs from her face, shook her head, and
smiled again. Her long hair matched the honeyed glow of the sun.
She crossed her arms and bit her lower lip lightly. “So… Sad,
huh? It’s gonna to be kinda hard pretending I’m sad on such a
beautiful day. You should’ve waited until it rained. I think it’s going
to rain the day after tomorrow. Can’t you do happy today? I could
give you a really good happy today.”
She cracked a huge cheesy grin and held it.
Ethan brought the camera to his eye and moved one step closer.
“Nope, today’s sad. Think about something that makes you sad.”
She looked back down, hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of
her baggy corduroy pants, and bounced a few times against the brick
wall. Her smile was bright and full of white. The harder she tried, the
wider she smiled.
“I don’t know… This is kinda weird,” she said.
She tried again, pressing her lips together tightly and furrowing
her brow. She turned her head to the side and down, toward her
shoulder. She stuck out her lower lip.
“Yeah,” Ethan said, “exactly like that, only, like, not at all.”
She laughed and grinned broadly.
“Think of something really sad. Think about… I don’t know…
Disease… Famine… Think about all the starving refugee children.”
She crossed her arms and stomped her foot lightly on the
ground, then pooched out her lower lip again. “I’m trying,” she said.
“Give me a second. I have to find my motivation.”
Ethan moved a step closer. Her head and the curve of her puka
shell necklace were centered in the viewfinder with the rough red
stone of the brick juxtaposing the creamy smoothness of her skin.
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He moved a step closer.
“Just think about something that makes you sad,” he said.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “We’re doing sad today. I’ll be sad.”
“Think about… Think about that cat you had when you were
growing up, that cat who was always there for you waiting on the
comforter of your big four-poster bed, that cat that always understood
what you were going through and exactly when you needed warm
furry kitty love. Think about how important that cat was to you, how
many times you relied on it to get through the hard times of growing
up. Did you have a cat like that when you were growing up?”
She smiled, but her teeth were hidden behind her lips. Her
hands reached up again to gently cup her elbows. “No, but I had a
dog who was kinda like that. She was my best friend. Inga.”
“Inga,” Ethan said. “Right… A poodle?”
“Cocker spaniel,” she said. “We had her when I was little.”
“Right… A cocker spaniel named Inga.”
He stepped closer. Her face filled the frame. His camera reflected
inside the deepest blue of her eyes.
“Remember when inga died? How it broke your heart?”
She looked at him through the camera lens, and her smile slowly
faded. She stared for just a moment, then dropped her gaze. Her
head tilted to the side, then turned toward her shoulder as it rose to
meet her chin. She closed her eyes. The corners of her mouth tilted
downward ever so slightly, ever so slowly.
Ethan snapped the picture.
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Ethan walked down the street with his backpack slung over
one shoulder and headphones pumping ragged drum and bass, the
frenzied squall of electronically-mangled guitars and feedback fueled
by machine gun drum machines. Cars passed noiselessly.
Ethan scanned the faces in the crowd of passing college students,
looking for the next photo. Not just anyone would do. There had to
be a certain look in the eyes, a certain set to the mouth.
That was kinda fucked up, Ethan thought. It’s not her fault she
looks like her, even sounds like her.
Ethan passed a shop window and caught a brief glimpse of his
reflection. He hadn’t shaved in a week or more. His eyes looked
tired. Then the image was gone.
He passed the used record store, and Ethan saw a tall, skinny
skater boy exit and walk in his direction. He recognized the kid and
his ratty green combat pants, his scrappy high-top sneakers wrapped
in black electrical tape, his choppy green hair, his thrashed wooden
skateboard. When their eyes met, the kid smiled big and raised his
hand in greeting, his lips moving silently.
Ethan reached backward into the side pocket of his backpack
and slid his middle finger along the edge of his CD player’s volume
control. The world around him faded back in.
“…fucking guy,” the kid said. “He can kiss my fucking ass and
keep the fucking CD for all I fucking care, motherfucker.”
“Uhm, no, I’m just, you know, doing my project,” Ethan said,
bringing up his camera and pointing to it.
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The kid snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah, yeah, how’d you like my
picture, huh? That was pretty fucking good, man, I was cracking my
shit up. What day was that again? Scream, some shit like that?”
Ethan cleared his throat, and said, “No, that day was angry. All of
last week was angry. Today is sad.”
“Sad?” the kid said. “Fuckin’ take my picture. I can be sad.”
The skater kid rubbed his hands against his face, then dropped
his hands by his side to reveal a distorted grimace. His mouth cracked
open and his tongue lolled to the side, his eyes pinched shut and the
veins in his neck bulged into sharp relief.
The skater kid stood there, his face frozen. Ethan covered his
mouth with his hand and coughed. The skater kid cracked open
one eye, then, without moving the gaping hole of his mouth, said,
“C’mon man, take my picture.” His tongue flopped like a trout.
Ethan looked down at his camera and shook his head. “Look, I
appreciate your help, but I’ve got all the snaps I need for today.”
“Oh dude, let me check ‘em out, dude, dude, dude,” the skater
kid said, reaching out grabby hands, clenching them, snapping them
like crab claws and giggling maniacally.
Ethan reached into his breast pocket and handed him the stack
of Polaroids. The skater kid flipped through them, laughed out loud,
and shook his head as he looked at the faces.
“Damn, son,” the skater kid said. “These folks is mad sad. I know
this fool here with his lip all stuck out. I think he’s gay. He goes to my
school. His name is something like Gaylord Gay-Gay.”
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Ethan fiddled with the headphones slung around his neck and
looked into the traffic passing in the street. Downtown by the college
was busy at this time of day, and the noise was grating. The sun was
too bright. The back of his shirt was sticky against his backpack.
“Dude-bro, check it out, this chick right up in hurr is hella cute.
Who is this chick?” The skater kid held out the picture of the girl in
the cafe that Ethan had just taken.
Ethan shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Some girl sitting in the
cafe by the campus. I never got her name.”
“You know who she looks like, don’t you? She looks just like Jen,
dude, like she could be her sister. Isn’t that weird?”
Ethan snatched the photo from the skater kid’s hand then
grabbed up the others. He put them together, smoothed them out,
then stuck them back into his breast pocket.
“Look, I’ve gotta go.” Ethan moved to the side of the skater kid
and put his headphones back on. He reached backward to turn the
volume up as the skater kid said, “Whoa, hey, shit, dude! I’m sorry.
Hey, I didn’t mean nothing by that, man. Hey…”
Ethan walked past the skater kid and cranked the volume until
the passing traffic faded into harsh electronic cacophony.
Ethan walked home without stopping or looking up.
He let himself in the back door of the Victorian he shared with
three college students and three cats. Two of the cats — his Louie and
Ella — curled around his ankles and meowed as he stumbled his way
over them through the kitchen and into the living room.
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He sat on the dusty thrift store couch with a huff and a puff of
gray dust then turned toward the answering machine on the end
table. The light signaling unheard messages was blinking. It blinked
five times, then paused, then blinked five times again.
Ethan pushed the playback button and lowered his headphones
to curl around the back of his neck. He plunged his head into the
velvety bosom of the sofa and closed his eyes and listened to the
whir of the machine.
The first message was for his roommate Chloe, something about
the Women’s Center on campus. He leaned over without looking
and ran his fingertips across the face of the answering machine,
searching lightly, then pressed the save button and the skip button.
The next message was for him.
“Hi, guys! This is a message for Ethan. This is Shawna. Hey, we
haven’t heard from you in a while, and we’re starting to get a little
worried about you. We miss you. Give us a call.”
Ethan’s eyes were still closed as he reached his hand to the
answering machine, ran his fingertips across the face of the control
panel, then pressed the delete button.
The next message was for him.
“Ethan, you fucking fuck! What’s up, man? Mikey and Lydia are
in town for an acoustic set at The Big Sky Saloon. Come by, man,
let’s have some beer. We can…”
Ethan hit the delete button.
“Hi, this is Melinda. Give me call when you get…”
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He pressed delete again.
“Ethan, this is…”
Delete.
Ethan opened his eyes and looked up at the red and grey ceiling
tiles. He followed the filigree to curling fleur-de-lis, traced winding
vines hammered by some forgotten tinsmith. He breathed deeply.
He tapped his fingers on his leg, then he flipped the headphones
from his neck to his ears. The music screamed in the stillness of the
empty house. The music was the same he’d been listening to all day,
all week in fact, hard-edged electronica full of glitchy distortion and
the kerrang of sledgehammers and anvils.
It hurt to listen to it so loudly.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the day’s
photos. Each person looked back at him from the Band-Aid shaped
photos with a look of sadness, some with squint eyes and frowns,
some with downcast gaze, one with her arm pulled across her eyes
as though she were hiding.
Ethan reached over to the phone and dialed. After four rings, an
answering machine picked up. A woman’s voice.
“This is Jen and Shawna. We’re not here right now, but if you
leave a message we’ll call you back.”
The machine beeped. Ethan placed the phone on the cradle.
Her voice is still on the recorder. After three months, it’s still
on the fucking recorder. Shawna needs to take Jen’s voice off the
fucking recorder. It’s fucking morbid.
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He raised himself from the dirty couch and walked across the
empty living room and opened his bedroom door. He walked across
a mat of dirty laundry, newspapers, magazines, school books, plastic
bags, and boxes, and he stepped onto the mattress he used for a bed.
The blankets were pushed into a jumble and covered in kitty hair.
Ethan reached for the dented Zippo on his pillow and snapped
his fingers against the flint to spark a flame, then he lit the cheap
candles he bought from the Espiritualista last month. They were
encased in glass with colour pictures of the blessed virgin on the face.
He reached for a pack of incense, lit a stick on the candle flame.
He looked at his wall, the one alongside his bed. Every available
space on the white surface was covered with little Band-Aid shaped
photos, hundreds of them, tiling the wall from ceiling to floor with
faces. Each was marked with a date, a time, and an emotion, and
each was arranged in chronological order.
There was a line of anger along the top, with random people
biting their lips and baring their teeth and narrowing their eyes into
slits. There was a colony of fear in the corner, and patches of lonely
spread throughout like blotches.
Mostly, though, there was sad, long and wide streams of sad
flowing into oceans of frowning mouths and down-turned heads and
hands rising to cradle faces.
Ethan looked for an empty spot, found one in the bottom
corner, and knelt in front of the mosaic. He reached into his breast
pocket and brought out the day’s photos, flipped though them until
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he found the girl at the cafe. He stared at her face, her hair, her
shoulders, her eyes.
Ethan sighed. The incense curled warm tendrils of sweet smoke
under his chin; he could feel it float along his cheek and nose, tickle
past the tiny hairs of his eyebrows and his bristly widow’s peak.
His eyes burned. He reached up to wipe them. They were dry.
He reached for a stick pin in the box on his bed and began
sticking the photos on the wall, one by one, with the snapshot of the
girl in the cafe filling the last empty space. Ethan looked up at the
wall, then reached for a framed photo on the floor near his pillow
and slumped into his bed.
He stared at the photo in the flickering candlelight. It was a
couple: Ethan standing behind a girl with long sandy blonde hair,
blue eyes, and little round glasses. His arms were around her
middle, and his head was on her shoulder. They were both smiling
very broadly. The sky was bright blue behind them.
Ethan closed his eyes and held the framed photo against his
forehead and felt the cool glass. He imagined what it must have
been like, vaulting face-first over the steering wheel and into the
windshield. It must have been quick. That’s what they all said: it was
over before she knew what happened. Ethan pinched his eyes shut
and pressed the face of the photo frame against his forehead until
the krink of breaking glass cut his skin.
He dropped the frame onto the carpet and bled slowly, trails
of red crawling down his cheeks. Ethan shook his head at the three
remaining blank walls in his room.
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temp hell (2002)
I SHOW UP TO WORK ON TIME,
AND I VALUE HARD WORK.
This phrase is glowing at me green from a computer screen.
Beneath these words are five choices from which I am to choose the
degree to which I agree with the above statement: Strongly Disagree;
Disagree; Sometimes Agree; Agree; and Strongly Agree.
I am in the lobby of another temp agency in Wichita, Kansas, and
I am in the third of what will be four hours taking tests measuring
my ability to use such helpful programs as Microsoft Word, Microsoft
Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
This particular test seems to be scoring my morals and work
ethic on a five-point scale. Let’s call it Microsoft Homeland Security.
The first questions are easy. It’s obvious which answers they
want. They want to know if I am a hard worker, if I am prompt, if I am
worth the money client companies will pay for my services. I agree
with these questions with no reservation because I truly believe I am
a hard worker who is prompt and worthy of payment for services
rendered. They want me to click on Strongly Agree. I do.
The next question flashes on the screen.
IT IS OKAY TO STEAL OFFICE SUPPLIES SUCH AS
PAPER CLIPS AND PENS FROM THE BUSINESS TO WHICH
I WILL BE ASSIGNED SINCE EVERYBODY DOES IT.
I smile at this one, look around the temp agency office to see if
anyone else can read this and thinks like I do that it’s a ridiculous
question, but no one is looking over my shoulder, of course. The
agency representatives are busy answering phones and faxing
resumes and e-mailing resumes and filing resumes while the hopeful
temps in this office are busy with their own tests. The only sound
besides the hushed tones of the representatives and the clicks of the
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keyboards are my barely stifled giggles and the sound of my eyeballs
rolling around in their sockets.
Why ask such a question? Do they think someone would actually
answer using any choice other than Strongly Disagree?
Maybe that’s the point: not to weed out dishonest temps from
honest ones, but to weed out the reasonably intelligent ones from
the few so incredibly stupid they would not know enough to click
Strongly Disagree even if it were untrue. Or maybe they want to
find out who would try to bullshit their way through this whole test,
answering each question the way they thought the company wanted
them to answer rather than answering truthfully. If you picked
Strongly Disagree every time you thought you were supposed to,
maybe it would red flag you for trying to scam the system.
I click Strongly Disagree.
I hate this process. I have been here since 7:56 a.m., and I am
barely halfway through with the testing. I always test in the high 90
percentile on these programs evaluating basic office skills, but for
some reason their version of Excel testing kicked my ass with all
kinds of questions I couldn’t fake. Usually, you can figure out how
to answer their questions by simply rooting around the program and
figuring it out, but this version of the testing program fails you the
very moment you click on something you shouldn’t have, so I was all
huffy and flustered by the end of it.
Now this computer wants to rate my levels of moral turpitude.
I TRY TO GET MY WORK DONE IN A TIMELY MANNER
SO THAT I CAN TAKE IT EASY THE REST OF THE DAY.
How do you answer a mindfuck like this without getting it
wrong? Of course, I want to say I work hard to get my tasks finished
as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I don’t want them to think
I do it simply to make time for myself to flake off. Seems if you
Disagree with this one, it means you don’t work hard and can’t deal
with deadlines, but if you Agree with it, then it makes you a slacker
who only works hard so you can fuck off the rest of the day. I have
no idea how to answer it, so I click on Sometimes Agree. I’m sure I’ll
be docked for it. Why can’t these all be essay questions?
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I have a headache. I haven’t eaten today. I’m getting cranky.
This computer interrogation flapdoodle is so demoralizing, as if the
wetware working here can’t be bothered with actually interviewing
me, so these lines of ancient DOS code written in ’96 will decide
whether or not I should be trusted with a fucking fax machine.
IF I WAS OFFERED A BETTER JOB ELSEWHERE WITH
HIGHER PAY AND MORE BENEFITS, I WOULD RESPECT
MY COMMITMENT TO THE AGENCY AND NOT ACCEPT IT.
First, it’s were, not was, and second WTF? The application I
signed said any job assignment I receive will be At Will Employment,
meaning they can terminate my employment At Will with no warning
for no reason. And yet they think I would actually turn down a better
paying job with more benefits because of some misbegotten sense of
duty to some company who forces me to sign a contract confirming
they care fuck-all about me? What brand of blockhead would Agree
with such a cockamamie statement?
A blockhead who needs a job. I click Strongly Agree.
I need a job. Everywhere I go, the temp agencies are jam-packed
with underemployed techies displaced by the deflated Internet
bubble, techies who type faster than me, who know more about
computers than me, who have been out of work longer than me. I
need this job, I need any job, and I need it quickly, so fuck it, I’ll tell
this computer anything it wants to hear.
I WOULD NEVER SURF THE INTERNET, CHECK PERSONAL
E-MAIL, UTILIZE ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA, OR MAKE
PERSONAL PHONE CALLS WHILE ON THE TIME CLOCK.
This one evokes a snort of derision from me, something
between a chortle and a guffaw, like a steam furnace backfiring in
the basement of my throat. The agency’s quiet hum of desperation
has been momentarily dispersed, and everyone is staring, even the
agency reps shouldering phone handsets and typing while they talk.
I cover my mouth with my fist and cough loudly, sniff a little, and
shrug my shoulders, and the heads turn back to their tasks at hand.
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If anyone perused my blog, they would see 5 or 6 new posts
created during work hours every day for months at a time, and if
they were to go back in time and look over my shoulder as I was
supposedly entering data or answering phones, they would see
three or four browser windows opened at once — The New York
Times, my Livejournal, my e-mail, The Onion — and they would’ve
seen two or three IM windows opened as well, with me typing 165
words per minute as I carried on several virtual conversations and
wrote e-mails and somehow finished my work all at the same time.
“Goddamn, that boy types fast,” my co-workers used to say.
I click Strongly Agree.
I HAVE NEVER ABUSED MY ACCESS TO SUPPLIES
OR OFFICE EQUIPMENT SUCH AS COPY MACHINES
OR FAXES TO ADVANCE MY CREATIVE ENDEAVORS.
Oh my god, I could never in a million years answer this question
with even the slightest amount of truth and expect to be employed
anywhere ever again. My entire creative career has been based on
pinching office supplies whenever and wherever I can. If I ever make
it big, I swear the first thing I’ll do is send Paul Orfalea a check for
$25,000 with a note that says, Thanks Kinko’s!
Why do they even bother posing this question? Isn’t it painfully
obvious what answer they want from you? What is the point of even
asking this question? It’s such a waste of my time.
My head is throbbing.
I click Strongly Agree.
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM ENSLAVES THE WORKING
CLASSES AND TRANSFORMS HUMAN BEINGS
INTO MINDLESS DRONES WHO EXCHANGE
THEIR SHORT LIVES FOR DIRTY SCRAPS OF
PAPER AND PROMISES OF A BETTER LIFE
AFTER THEY ARE DEAD AND BURIED.
I stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, hands limp at my sides, my
scalp tingling. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!
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“What the fuck?”
I actually say this aloud, I interrupt the murmur of the temp
lobby with a full-on, “What the fuck?”
I don’t even have to look. I know everyone is staring at me again,
boring holes in the back of my head. The bosses with the keys to
the kingdom must surely be aiming scythe-sized question marks in
my direction, answering my “What the fuck?” with a corresponding
“What the fuck is wrong with Señor Tourettes?”
I don’t turn around to look, but I hear one of the agency reps
say, “Uhhm, sir? Can I help you with anything?”
I don’t turn around, I just clear my throat, cough, and say, “No,
I’m fine. Sorry about that. I just need a drink of water. I’ve got a
touch of that flu that’s going around. Can I get a drink of water?”
I turn and see a stern lady with a phone pinched between her
shoulder pad and her cheek. I can see foundation caking the back of
the handset, lipstick streaking the mouthpiece. I can smell her two
packs a day from across the room.
She jerks her head toward the water cooler across the room, then
continues with her conversation. I try to ignore the eyeballs tracking
me as I pussyfoot to the cooler, slide a paper cup from the top of a
stack, press down on the blue spigot, and drink lukewarm water. I
crush the cup, toss it, then turn and slink back to my computer.
On the screen, the computer now says:
ARBEIT MACHT FREI.
I turn to the guy sitting next to me. He’s shaking his head at the
Microsoft Word simulation. I very nearly ask him if he’s fucked with
my computer, but I don’t, I just turn back to my monitor, finger the
mouse, and click Strongly Disagree.
IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS, I HAVE FRATERNIZED
WITH DRUG USERS, HOMOSEXUALS, DEVIANTS, GOTHS,
SATANISTS, FEMINISTS, AND/OR HEATHENS.
My head really hurts, and my brow is harvesting greasy BBs of
sweat that drool down the crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes and
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mingle with unshed tears. This is fucking weird. I don’t know why
I’m even bothering with this fucking test. I don’t want a job this bad.
I want to go back to my girlfriend’s apartment and slip inside her
warm queen-sized bed and pull the pale green comforter to my chin
and watch the plants sway in the breeze of the ceiling fan on high.
I click on Sometimes Agree.
IT IS RIGHT AND GOOD TO WORK MY WHOLE LIFE
FOR A SERIES OF CORPORATIONS THAT CARE NOTHING
FOR MY HUMANITY, THEN DIE QUIETLY WITHOUT A
STRUGGLE SO NO ONE GETS UNCOMFORTABLE.
Gotta get that gold watch, get that retirement plan set up while
you’re young, get those golf clubs out of the garage and get those
tired bones in the SUV and head for the fairway with the other
castoffs, gotta watch Matlock until your hand clutches your chest
and your wife says, “Honey?”
The American Dream is a panacea keeping you drugged for 65
years while corporations suck your blood. After they unplug you,
they don’t give a shit what happens as long as you don’t make a
scene, don’t embarrass us, don’t go unquietly into that good night.
I click Strongly Disagree.
I BEAR ONLY A PASSING RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSON
I THINK I AM, AND NONE AT ALL TO THE PERSON
I COULD BE IF ONLY I WEREN’T SO AFRAID.
Like I need some antiquated software to tell me this shit, like
I need anyone to tell me what I already know, what is so painfully
obvious, not only to me but every member of my disappointed family
and every friend and lover I’ve let down since I was a kid. How could
anyone in this society do anything but click on Strongly Agree?
I click on Strongly Disagree.
WHAT I CALL LOVE
IS ACTUALLY FEAR
OF BEING ALONE.
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Oh, fuck this. I am so out of here. I don’t even read the questions
anymore, they’re all a blur. I just cover my eyes with one hand and
click the mouse in the same spot with the other, hovering over
Strongly Disagree. I don’t care what the questions ask, I don’t care
what my answers reveal about my inner workings, I just want this
fucking horrid test to be over, I just want to go home, I just…
“Sir?”
I lift my head and look to the sound of the voice to my left, and
there’s the employment agent with the blastoma breath so close to
my face I can see red capillaries wriggle in the whites of her eyes.
I say, “Hmmm?”
She says, “Sir, your test is over. You’re all done.”
I look at the screen. It says:
TEST COMPLETE
I ask her, “Uhmmm… Well… How’d I do?”
She says, “Well, let’s see.” She walks back behind her desk to the
printer near her terminal and pulls out a sheet of paper, looks it over,
then walks back to me smiling.
“Looks like you did great!” she says, nodding to the paper in her
hand. “Ninety-ninth percentile. That means you qualify for just about
any job we have. Congratulations! Check with us on Monday, and I
am sure we can place you in an assignment.”
I stand up, shake her hand, and walk toward the front door.
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lord of the breakfast club, part one (2004)
SCENE 36. EXT. — A MEADOW IN RIVENDELL
MERRY, PIPPIN, and ARWEN huddle around a raging fire, rubbing
their hands against the heat and staring deeply into the flames.
ARWEN (to no one in particular)
You know what I wish I was doing?
MERRY
Oops, watch what you say, Pippin here is a cherry.
PIPPIN (to MERRY )
A cherry?
ARWEN (staring off into distance)
I wish I was on a swan-shaped ship sailing into the western sunset.
PIPPIN (whispering to MERRY )
I’m not a cherry.
MERRY (whispering back to PIPPIN)
When have you ever gotten laid?
PIPPIN
I’ve laid… lotsa times!
MERRY
Name one!
PIPPIN
She lives in Bree. I met her at the Brandywine Falls. I am sure you
wouldn’t know her.
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MERRY
Ever laid anyone in the Shire, or around here?
PIPPIN shushes MERRY and motions toward ARWEN.
PIPPIN
Oh, you and Arwen… did it?!
ARWEN (spinning around to face PIPPIN)
What are you two talking about?
PIPPIN (to ARWEN)
Nothin’! Nothin’!
(to MERRY )
Let’s just drop it, we’ll talk about it later!
ARWEN
No! Drop what? What’re you talking about?
MERRY
Well, Pippin’s trying to tell me that, in addition to numerous hobbit
girls in the Brandywine Falls area, presently you and he are riding
the green pony of love!
ARWEN (to PIPPIN)
You little furry-footed pig!
PIPPIN
No, I’m not! I’m not! Merry said I was a cherry, and I said I wasn’t!
That’s it, that’s all that was said!
MERRY
Well, then, why were you motioning to Arwen?
ARWEN
You know, I don’t appreciate this very much, Pippin.
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PIPPIN
He is lying!
MERRY
Oh, you weren’t motioning to Arwen?
PIPPIN
You know he’s lying, right?
MERRY
Were you or were you not motioning to Arwen?
PIPPIN
Yeah, but it was only… it was only because… I didn’t want her to
know I was a virgin, okay?
MERRY and ARWEN stare at PIPPIN.
PIPPIN
Excuse me for being a virgin, I’m sorry.
ARWEN laughs.
ARWEN
Silly halfling, why didn’t you want me to know you were a virgin?
PIPPIN
Because it’s personal business, it’s my personal, private business.
MERRY
Well, Pippin, it doesn’t sound like you’re doing any business.
ARWEN
I think it’s okay for a hobbit to be a virgin.
MERRY looks surprised.
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PIPPIN
You do?
ARWEN smiles and nods.
MERRY looks disappointed and amused at the same time. He gathers
up his backpack and walks away from the fire into darkness.
MERRY
I’m tired of hanging around here with you dildos. I’m having fifth
breakfast by myself.
Fade to black
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lord of the breakfast club, part two (2004)
SCENE 239. EXT. RIVENDELL — DAY
GIMLI and LEGOLAS kiss. LEGOLAS rips a patch from GIMLI’s cloak
and climbs upon his horse to ride away. We see FRODO take off a
mithril earring and put it into SAM’s hand. They kiss and FRODO
climbs aboard a sleek white swan ship, which sails into the western
sunset. We see SAM put the earring in his ear.
CUT TO:
SCENE 240. INT. MORDOR — NIGHT
We see SAURON pick up a scroll and begin to read.
FRODO ( VOICE OVER)
Dear Sauron, we accept the fact that we sacrificed thirteen months of
our lives marching across Middle Earth to defeat you, but we think
you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we
are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the
most convenient definitions.
CUT TO:
SCENE 241. EXT. RIVENDELL — DAY
We see SAM walking towards us as FRODO’s monologue continues.
FRODO ( VO) (cont’d)
But what we found out is that each one of us is a hobbit…
ARAGORN ( VO)
…and a ranger…
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GIMLI ( VO)
…and a dwarf…
LEGOLAS ( VO)
…and an elf…
GANDALF ( VO)
…and a wizard.
FRODO ( VO)
Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Fellowship Of
The Ring.
We see SAM walking across an open field outside Rivendell as he
thrusts his fist into the air in a silent cheer. Freeze frame.
The strains of “Don’t You Forget About Me (Elvish Remix)” swell as
Enya’s voice is joined by a children’s choir and panpipes and flutes
and fiddles and drum loops provided by Moby.
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microwave (2005)
The stage is set with a table and two chairs. BRYAN is at the table
reading a magazine with a coffee mug at his elbow. ANDREW enters
with a huge fuzzy lump on his neck. He sits in the chair across from
BRYAN, pulls a magazine from his backpack, and begins reading.
BRYAN looks up casually, then reacts when he sees the huge fuzzy
lump on ANDREW’s neck.
BRYAN
Dude!
ANDREW
What?
BRYAN
’Dafuck is on your neck?
ANDREW
Dude, chill…
ANDREW tries to cover the lump with the collar of his jacket and
looks around sheepishly to see if anyone heard BRYAN’s outburst.
BRYAN
Dude, nothin’, it’s fucking huge!
ANDREW
I know, I know, be cool, man. My microwave oven is all fucked up.
I think it’s gone and infected this pimple I had on my neck.
BRYAN
Pimple? That’s not a pimple! That’s a fucking big-assed radioactive
tumor! It’s got fucking hair and teeth!
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ANDREW
I think it’s got a pulse.
BRYAN
A pulse? A fucking pulse? You need to get that shit, removed, man!
It’s gonna keep growing! I’m sick to my stomach just looking at it.
(Beat)
Does it hurt?
ANDREW
Not really. It’s actually… It’s actually kinda… warm… and soft…
kinda like… kinda like a cat.
BRYAN
Like a cat? Sweet Jeebus! You need to get that thing removed! It could
turn into cancer! It’s worse than cancer! It’s got teeth and hair and
a pulse! You gotta cancerous Siamese tomcat growing out of your
neck, man! You think it’s hard gettin’ a girlfriend now, wait ‘til she
gets a load of tumor pussy!
ANDREW
Jeez, man, it’s not that easy. I’m really light on funds right now.
I think I’m just gonna wait it out and see if it goes away.
BRYAN
Wait it out? Dagnabbit! Are you gonna wait until your tumor’s using
the goddamned potty box? Get out of here with that thing, it’s
grossing me out. Get outta here before somebody sees you and calls
the tumor squad!
ANDREW
Fine, whatever…
ANDREW slinks off while lifting his collar to hide the fuzzy lump.
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BRYAN goes back to reading his magazine, then lifts the card from
table. The card says TWO WEEKS LATER. He puts the card back
down and continues to read. ANDREW walks onto the stage with
ZARA-TUMOR curled onto him and her face buried in his neck. She
does not walk, but merely hangs onto ANDREW as he walks for both
of them. ANDREW walks up to the table where BRYAN is reading his
magazine. BRYAN slowly looks up and reacts.
BRYAN
Oh my Zeus!
ANDREW
Dude…
BRYAN
Is that your tumor?
ANDREW
Yeah, and I think it’s getting worse.
BRYAN
Ya think? It’s not only got teeth and hair, but now it’s got eyes and…
and… fuckin’… boobs… Bloody hell, man, you’re turning into
some kind of freakshow! You need to find a doctor right now and get
that shit cut off, because… because… Dude?! Have you looked at
yourself in the mirror? Have you seen it? The horror!
ANDREW
Yeah, I know, but… it’s weird… I’ve been thinking I don’t wanna
have it removed anymore.
BRYAN
You don’t want to have it removed anymore? You have a tumor!
Growing out of your neck! Shaped like a human being! Either have
that shit removed or… fuckin’… go on tour. I don’t know, teach it
to play piano and sing like Karen Carpenter or something. Take up
the banjo or… accordion…
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ANDREW
You see, here’s the thing. We actually have a lot in common.
BRYAN
You mean, besides blood flow?
ANDREW
I mean… When I play my favourite music, it kinda starts… I don’t
know how to say this… It’s kinda starts purring. I think it likes the
same music I like, and when i watched Dog Day Afternoon the other
night, I could’ve sworn it whispered, “Attica.” I’ve been dressing it so
people won’t stare as much, and I think it likes my style.
BRYAN
It’s a fucking tumor! Granted, it’s kinda cute… as far as tumors go…
It’s actually kinda hot… But you see, it’s not some girl you picked
up in a bar, it’s a tumor growing out of your fucking neck!
ANDREW
Be cool, man. I don’t want you to hurt its feelings.
BRYAN
Feelings!? It’s! A fucking! Tumor!
(Beat)
Does it play video games?
ANDREW
It totally kicked my ass at Guitar Hero 3 last night. She nailed Through
The Fire And Flames… on expert.
BRYAN
This is… this is really… You say it was your microwave?
ANDREW
Yeah, I think it’s broken.
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BRYAN
Could I… uhm… could I… borrow… your microwave?
ANDREW
What? Why?
(ANDREW is suspicious, holds ZARA-TUMOR)
BRYAN
Oh, I don’t know… I was just… thinking…
ANDREW
Well, I guess you can. Just be careful. And don’t blame me if you
suddenly have a ferret growin’ outta the side of your neck. Just go
over to my house and pick it up.
(ANDREW gives BRYAN his keys)
.
BRYAN
Thanks, man. Don’t, uhm… don’t mention this…
ANDREW
Don’t worry.
BRYAN leaves. ANDREW remains at the table reading a magazine
with ZARA-TUMOR on his knee. ANDREW picks up the card on the
table and shows it. It says TWO WEEKS LATER. He replaces it and
reads the magazine. BRYAN’s voice is heard offstage.
BRYAN (off stage)
Dude.
ANDREW (looking around)
Dude?
BRYAN (off stage)
Over here.
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ANDREW
Are you hiding in the bushes?
BRYAN (off stage)
Is there anyone else around?
ANDREW (looking around)
No, it’s just me. What are you doing?
BRYAN enters stage. BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR is attached by the face to
BRYAN’s neck. BRYAN drags himself awkwardly to ANDREW’s table.
ANDREW is horrified.
ANDREW
Great Scott!
BRYAN (practically crying )
Your microwave is totally fried!
ANDREW
I’ll say! Goddamn, it’s huge! And what’s that horrible smell?
BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR lifts a leg and farts loudly. ANDREW is
horrified. BRYAN is mortified. ZARA-TUMOR wafts her hand.
ANDREW
Vomitus!
BRYAN
It ate all the butter last night while I was asleep!
ANDREW
While you were asleep?
BRYAN
I think it’s figured out how to walk, and it just drags me behind it and
does its unholy deeds as I sleep. The other night…
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ANDREW
Yes?
BRYAN
I am so sorry to say this…
ANDREW
Out with it, man!
BRYAN
I woke up around 3 a.m… and I was… Dude, I was in your bed!
ANDREW
What?
BRYAN
And my tumor and your tumor…
ANDREW (stands up from table in shock with ZARA-TUMOR)
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR and ZARA-TUMOR slowly raise their arms
toward each other in mute yearning.
ANDREW
Jumping Jehoshaphat!
BRYAN
It wasn’t my fault!
ANDREW
I am so gonna return that fucking microwave!
ANDREW/ZARA-TUMOR storms off stage leaving BRYAN and BIG FAT
GUY-TUMOR alone. BRYAN stands there for a moment, then slowly
puts his arms around his tumor, who then puts his arms around
BRYAN. The lights fade as “Close To You” by The Carpenters plays.
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seesaw (2005)
BRYAN wakes up on stage with a big chain around his leg. He grabs
at it, tugs it, he screams, he shouts.
EVIL GUY is heard in a computer voice like the one Stephen Hawking
uses, like the one in Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier.”
EVIL GUY (voice-over)
Hello, Mister Johnson. Let’s play a game. Let’s say I have your wife
and children held hostage, and let’s say I have a gun pressed to their
foreheads, and you alone can save them.
BRYAN
You bastard! Where are you? What do you want with me? You’d better
not hurt them, or I will kill you!
EVIL GUY
Ha ha ha! Your loyalty to your family is very touching, Mister Johnson,
Now let’s see if you can use that loyalty to keep them alive. Behind
you is a backpack. Retrieve the backpack.
BRYAN scampers around dragging the chain on his ankle and finds
a backpack just off stage.
EVIL GUY
Inside, you will find a slice of cherry pie. You have exactly one minute
to eat that slice of cherry pie without using your hands. If you cannot
do this, Mister Johnson, your family dies. How much do you want
them to live? Your time begins now.
BRYAN dives into the pie and eats it voraciously as the EVIL GUY
laughs a cruel and wicked computer laugh. BRYAN finishes the pie
in mere seconds and throws the plate across the room.
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BRYAN ( face covered in pie)
There, you bastard, I finished it! Now let my wife and daughter go
before I find you and eat your guts like pie filling! Like Pie Filling!
(Pause)
EVIL GUY
So… uhm… you finished it already?
BRYAN
Yes! It’s all gone! All of it! Now let my family go!
(Pause)
EVIL GUY
Did you use your hands?
BRYAN huffs and raises both hands over his head to show they are
free of any cherry pie residue.
EVIL GUY
Well, I’ll be damned. Very good, Mister Johnson, well done, well done
indeed. However, that was only the first test of your loyalty, the first
test of how badly you want to live, how badly you want your family
to live. Behind you is a small brown paper sack.
BRYAN
You promised! You said if I ate the piece of cherry pie…
EVIL GUY
Silence! Do not upset me, Mister Johnson. My trigger finger tends to
twitch under stress, and i am sure your wife would not appreciate the
consequences. Now… the brown paper sack.
BRYAN reaches off stage to pick up the brown paper sack, which he
opens to reveal a Rubik’s Cube. He stares at it dumbfounded.
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BRYAN
I am dumbfounded! What the fuck is this?
EVIL GUY
It is a Rubik’s Cube, Mister Johnson.
BRYAN
I can see that, dumb ass! What do you want me to do with it?
EVIL GUY
You have exactly five minutes to solve…
As EVIL GUY is talking, BRYAN is flipping the Rubik’s Cube around,
and he solves it in a few seconds.
EVIL GUY
… the Rubik’s Cube before I…
BRYAN
There! There! I solved it! I solved your stupid Rubik’s Cube! Now keep
your promise, you son of a bitch, and let my family go! If you hurt one
hair on their heads, I swear to Krishna, I will ass-fuck your heart!
(Pause)
BRYAN
Hello? Are you there?
EVIL GUY
You’ve already solved it?
BRYAN
Yes! See! It was easy! It took, like, two twists and a turn!
EVIL GUY
I don’t believe you. Hold it up so I can see.
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BRYAN holds up the solved Rubik’s Cube, turning it back and forth
to prove that it is indeed solved.
EVIL GUY
God damn it.
BRYAN
Now let me go! You gave your word!
EVIL GUY
Silence!
(Pause)
EVIL GUY
Okay… Behind you, Mister Johnson, you will find a duffel bag.
BRYAN
No! No, sir! This is bullshit! I keep doing everything you tell me, but
you’re not keeping your end of the deal! What happens when I do
this next stupid little test in five seconds? Huh? What then?
EVIL GUY
Oh, Mister Johnson, I hardly think that will happen. The first tests
were appetizers before the main course. Behind you…
BRYAN
Yeah, right, a duffel bag, and now I’m opening it. Are you watching,
you fucking dick? And what do i find? Oh, look, it’s a riddle! Let me
guess, I have three fucking hours to solve your fucking riddle, or my
family fucking dies, right?
(BRYAN reads note sarcastically with arms outstretched)
“A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.”
You stole that shit from The Hobbit, bitch! It’s an egg! An egg! Big
fucking deal! Oh, let’s see what else you’ve got behind me…
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BRYAN dives backstage and pulls out several boxes, bags, backpacks,
and containers, and he spreads them across the stage. He solves
each stupid little puzzle in mere seconds, mocking the EVIL GUY and
cursing as he does it. One is a Magic Eye 3-D thing, another is a maze,
another is one of those truck stop puzzles with the twisted nails. In
the end, the remains of all the tests are strewn about the stage.
BRYAN
There! I solved all your stupid little puzzles! You are the saddest excuse
for a psychopathic serial killer in the whole wide world! Who did you
plan on kidnapping and testing with these stupid tests? A blind threeyear-old with stumps for arms? You gonna hold his binky hostage?
(Pause)
BRYAN
Huh? Answer me!
(Pause)
EVIL GUY
You don’t have to be so mean about it.
BRYAN
Oh, I’m being mean? You kidnap me and chain me to the fucking wall
and hold my wife and daughter hostage, and I’m being mean?
EVIL GUY
Look… I’m just trying to do my thing, you know? This is my first time,
and I’m just trying out some new things.
BRYAN
Dude… Your tests were fucking lame! I mean, a Rubik’s Cube? I
didn’t even know they sold those any more! I haven’t seen one of
those things since the eighth grade. If you had only bothered to…
I don’t know… mix it up a bit, I might still be trying to solve it, but
you didn’t even try to make it hard.
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EVIL GUY
At least it was harder than those Rubik’s Snake things. Remember
those? They were so easy.
BRYAN
I don’t want to fucking talk about the goddamned Rubik’s Snake, bitch,
you’re tests are lame! And look! This chain? It’s not even locked!
BRYAN frees himself easily from the chain.
I knew it all along, too! I just didn’t wanna hurt your feelings! And I
knew you were lying about my wife and kids, because, oh, guess what? I
don’t have a wife and kids! In fact, I’m gay! Didn’t you do research?
(pause)
EVIL GUY
I was just… I was…
EVIL GUY starts to emit electronic sobs.
BRYAN
Oh, Jesus Christ! Now you’re crying!?
EVIL GUY
I can’t help it. Everything I try just turns to shit. All I want is to be
good at something. Just one thing. Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong
for me to want to be good at something?
BRYAN
Well… shit… Maybe you should try something else, because this
whole… psychopathic serial killer thing… Man, it just doesn’t seem
to suit you. You might need another hobby.
EVIL GUY
Yeah, I guess so… Maybe I can go back to school… finish my thesis…
open a bookstore with a cafe like I’ve always wanted…
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BRYAN
Look, I’m just… I’m gonna head out. You, uhm, you take care of
yourself, okay? Keep looking. You’ll find your special purpose.
EVIL GUY
Yeah… man… sorry about all this…
BRYAN exits the stage. Lights go out.
(Pause)
EVIL GUY
Call me?
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michael6 (2005)
pissed1 on jesus2 juice3,
we4 bounce5 on michael’s6 bed7 and
watch8 dirty9 videos10
1] By pissed, I mean the English11 slang12 term for being drunk and not as a
synonym for angry, and yeah, we were so drunk.
2] This would be the son of god in Christian14 religions15 and not the short guy16
with the mustache33 who cares for Michael’s6 garden23.
3] Actually, it wasn’t juice, it was wine17.
4] It was me18 and Macaulay Culkin19 who were there at the time because Jesus20
hadn’t arrived yet.
5] And by this, I mean we4 were jumping up and down on the bed7 clad only in
the tighty-whitey underwear21 and rainbow toe socks22 Michael6 had purchased for
us the afternoon before.
6] Yes, that Michael28.
7] It was this huge king-sized four-poster bed with dark maroon sheets and an
impossibly fluffy maroon comforter scattered with throw pillows and stuffed
animals. The weirdest part was the gigantic26 painting of Michael6 rising up out of
the sea on a clamshell clothed in nothing but a diaper24.
8] To be honest, we weren’t really paying attention to what was on the big screen
teevee25 because we were too busy spraying each other with canned whipped
cream31 and watching Michael6 watch32 us4.
9] At first, we thought the videos were showing us4 on the big screen teevee25
because they featured two boys in their underwear jumping up and down on
Michael’s6 bed7, but then there were shots27 of some lady with ugly legs wearing
spiked heels and stepping on the heads of mice42.
10] Michael6 used a Betamax machine25. I remember the tapes being very small,
and Michael6 kept bragging about how much better they were than regular VHS
tapes. He was so proud of that machine.
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11] I love english slang. When I read the Harry Potter books43, I always make sure
to get the UK versions with all the British slang12 intact.
12] Here are some of my favourite British slang words and their meanings: pram
= baby carriage; trainers = athletic shoes; jumper = sweater; candy floss =
cotton candy; whingy = sad and whiny; pissed = drunk; shag = to have sex.
13] I have to admit now that I wasn’t really drunk because I was afraid of alcohol
and only pretended to drink it. Mostly I spilled it on the carpet and dumped it in
the sink when I went to the bathroom44. I am pretty sure Macaulay Culkin19 was
very drunk40. He always drank a lot in that house.
14] Michael6 told us that he was a devout Jehovah’s Witness45 and that it was okay
to drink the wine because it was the blood of the lord. That’s why he called it Jesus
Juice. He also had some kind of medicine he sniffed called God Powder.
15] I’ve tried all kinds of religions, but none has ever really fit. I tried Methodist,
Mormon, Catholic, Baptist — even this one church where their thing was singing
without musical accompaniment since the Bible never mentions singing to music
— but the whole thing creeped me out. I never felt like I could get a straight answer
from anyone. They would all just lapse into this rote Godspeak like recruiter robots
for the lord. My views have since been influenced more by non-western beliefs like
Buddhism and comedians like George Carlin.
16] Jesus Gonzales-Ortega said his first name like this: Hey-Suess. He was always
around when we4 were with Michael6, so much that we started calling Jesus juice14
Hey-Suess Juice. This would crack Michael6 up. He would laugh and laugh and
laugh. He loved Dr. Suess, and he would point at his books and say, Hey Suess!
17] We were never told what kind of wine it was, but I tasted something many
years later called port46 that was very similar. It has a very high alcohol content.
18] My name is Bill, but at the time, I went by Billy. I was 12 then and in sixth
grade. I am 24 now and just finished by bachelor’s degree in English literature.
Michael6 paid for my college. A lot of people40 think he did it to keep me quiet. I
am not sure what I think.
19] Yes, that Macaulay Culkin. We were the same age at the time, and even though
we had fun when were playing together with Michael6, I always felt a little jealous
of him since he was so rich and famous and so obviously favoured by Michael6. We
never talked or hung out outside of The Ranch47 because I wasn’t famous, I was
just some kid who had cancer49 really bad.
20] This would be the short guy16 with the mustache33 who cares for Michael’s6
garden23, not the son of God in Christian14 religions15.
21] I had always worn boxers, but Michael6 preferred that we wear tighty-whities
because he said they offered more support. Plus, he said they were more attractive
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to women. Mac19 already wore them, but Michael6 bought me several packages so
I could wear them, too. I haven’t worn them since.
22] Michael6 bought these for us, too, and I still have several pairs in a box.
23] The gardens were filled with all kinds of amazing examples of topiary, these
large bushes trimmed to look like elephants and giraffes and other exotic animals.
There was even a maze30, and in the middle was a giant bushy tree carved into
the shape of Michael6 holding a small child. There were benches around the leafy
Michael6, and I used to sit on them and read comic books29 for hours at a time as
Jesus20 manicured the bushes.
24] Well, it might have been some sort of loin cloth, but it sure looked like a big
adult diaper to me.
25] It was a Sony, I believe, which was Michael’s6 record company at the time.
26] I mean, it was really big, by far the biggest painting I had ever seen41.
27] I found out much later these were known as crush videos.
28] Michael was a Soul/R&B singer whose early fame for musical brilliance was
over-shadowed by his eccentricities and relationships with young boys4.
29] I really liked Thor and Spiderman a lot, and Michael had loads of comics in his
mansion, way more than you could ever read in your whole life40.
30] Now that I remember the maze, I am reminded of the one in The Shining38.
31] Michael6 taught us how to suck the air out of cans of whipped cream and hold
our breathe until it made us feel light-headed and funny. He said it was even better
than Jesus Juice, but it just made me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. I threw up
on Michael’s6 carpet in the bedroom, and he was livid. It was the only time I had
ever seen him angry.
32] Michael6 would usually be dressed in a dark forest green smoking jacket sort
of thing with these absurdly pink house slippers he thought were a gas, and he
would sit there on a big orange faux-leopard skin bean bag chair and encourage us
to jump on his bed, laughing and shouting, “Shoot more whipped cream on him!
Jump higher! Higher!” I still remember the look of pure joy on his face.
33] Who has mustaches these days? Mustaches are weird. Cops seem to have a
thing for mustaches. It must be some vestige of ’70s masculinity. I think it makes a
person look cheesy and cheap. Whenever Sean Penn37 is playing a character that is
unsavory in some way, he almost always wears a mustache.
34] I think if Michael6 had been truly guilty of the crimes that are alleged, he
should’ve gone to prison36, but only if he had gotten counseling while he was in
there, because if there was anyone who needed counseling, Jesus Christ, it was
Michael. It’s a moot point now51.
35] I remember hoping the people who made Michael6 go through all the court
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stuff are happy now. I wish Michael6 had left America and stayed the rest of his life
in a country48 where people would have left him the fuck alone.
36] If Michael6 had gone to prison, he probably would not have lasted very long.
He would have probably died there. I don’t know if Michael6 molested anyone, but
I do know he never molested me. It was Jesus20 who did it while we were in the
garden23. he did it five or six times before my cancer was healed.
37] Sean pean is one of my favourite actors. His movie The Assassination Of
Richard Nixon was amazing.
38] The scariest movie of all time40, especially those scenes with the creepy little
girls and that elevator gushing blood.
40] I cannot confirm this.
41] Which is not to say I had seen all that many large paintings as I was only 12 at
the time, but still… it was huge.
42] I think they were mice, but they could’ve been rats.
43] Don’t get me started.
44] You’ve never40 seen a bathroom as opulent as this one. The sinks were literally
gold. Not just golden, but made of solid gold. The toilet had a seat that was not
only covered in velvet, but it was self-heating. the spigots for the sink we shaped
like the arching necks of swans with the water spilling gently out of their mouths.
And the tub? Wow… it was as big as a jacuzzi. We4 took many bubble baths together
with Michael6 sprawled on the carpet, and the suds nearly touched the ceiling.
45] While I would never want to disparage anyone’s religious beliefs, I have to say
that the whole no blood transfusions thing kinda weirds me out about Jehovah’s
Witnesses. I asked a Jehovah’s Witness once if she would let her children die if they
were in need of transfusions, and this Jehovah’s Witness said, Better to let the body
die than the soul. I don’t know if I believe in that50.
46] Port is a very sweet wine with spices and a notable raisin flavour. It’s higher in
alcohol content than most wines, according to the guy at the wine store.
47] It wasn’t really a Ranch; It was more like an amusement park. My favourite part
was the garden23.
48] France? Sweden? Luxemburg?
49] I got better.
50] To be honest, I am not sure what I believe.
51] Michael died. I was shocked when I read about it, although I was not surprised.
what a sad ending, just as he was launching a comeback.
52] Michael loved solving the Cryptoquip in the newspaper, but he would always
cheat and use an Internet cryptogram solver like www.rumkin.com.
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commentary
haiku
I have written more than a thousand haiku in my time, but this was the first. in
fact, this was pretty much the first poem i ever wrote. it’s at least the first poem i
ever wrote that i can still remember. it came to me in the 7th or 8th grade, which
means anywhere between late 1979 to early 1981. since the newest poems in this
collection were written in 2011, i have placed this oldest of all my poems in 1981
to make an even 30 years of writing. this haiku was created for an english class
during a poetry unit, one of those lessons where you write a poem using all the
senses — anger smells like, anger tastes like, etc. — or you pick a word and make
each letter the beginning of a line describing the word, stuff like that. i might have
those oldest of old poem at the bottom of some box somewhere in my mom and
dad’s garage in wichita, but it’s a mess in there, and it would take forever to find
them. i remember writing something about hate smelling like motor oil, and i
remember this one. well, okay, i remember very clearly the last two lines, and i
remember it was inspired by seeing a little dust devil in either a parking lot or a
dirt field. i can’t remember the first line at all, so i made up the first five syllables,
but the last two lines are solid in my mind. i like the idea of my 44-year-old self
collabourating with my 12-year-old self to write this haiku. i like that idea a lot. and
it’s not a bad haiku, either. shoot, it’s better than a lot of the ones i’ve written.
ode to poison mushrooms
Frankly, i wrote exactly one poem during my entire time in high school, and it
didn’t come until my senior year. i was in the top-level english class, but i rarely
spoke and was even more rarely called upon. the class comprised some of the
most popular kids in my year, and lots of them were in plays together or on the
staff of the school newspaper or yearbook, or they did sports and stuff, so they all
knew each other, but i wasn’t really someone who occurred to anyone. the teacher
asked the class to write a poem one day, just out of nowhere: go, write a poem,
any poem about anything, you have five minutes. this is what i came up with,
inspired by the long series of nightmares i was having about nuclear holocaust. a
teevee movie called the day after had freaked us all out, and reagan-era america
was all about the possibility of dying in an icbm strike. the teacher gathered up all
the poems, and he stood in front of the class perusing them. he would find one
that struck his fancy, read it aloud, then he would reveal who had written it. most
of the poems he read were from the ruling class of kids, the popular kids, and
everyone would giggle and laugh when a familiar name was mentioned. then the
teacher came to one and paused, smirked a little to himself, and he read my poem
aloud. people seemed to be quite impressed with it. he asked the class to guess
who had written it, said they would never guess who had written it in a thousand
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years. names were shouted, all names of popular kids, of known smart kids, artsy
kids, pretty much everyone in the fucking room except for me. i was dreading
what was coming next. he said my name, and the whole class went silent, and they
all turned their heads and stared at me without saying a word. it was awful. not
only did i cringe at the idea of being singled out, but it was obvious not a single
person in that room expected anything out of me, the quiet kid in the corner, the
brooding kid who never spoke, not a single student and certainly not the teacher.
his surprise underlined my utter lack of status. it may have been they all said i had
done a good job, maybe the teacher said it was about time i started to show a little
of myself, but all i remember is being mortified. i spend a great deal of my life
being inspired by mortification and awkwardness. the line about shifting shafts of
shining light was stolen from an homage to jacob’s ladder by rush.
stranded
Can’t tell you it was ripped from an old diary stained with the tears of my 12year-old self, nope, i wrote this shit at 19 while i was in millington, tennessee,
trying my best to survive a year of navy technical school. easily one of my favourite
awful poems i have ever written. and i was fucking 19! have you seen the kind of
work 19-year-old poetry slammers are writing and performing on a regular basis
nowadays? fucking brilliant exposés of the military/industrial complex and shit,
and i was all searching / for a love / i am never to find. oh, had there only been
slam poetry back when i was in high school! what poems would i have been able
to write! i got started fairly late and didn’t put pen to paper until after i graduated
high school and joined the navy, so the shit poetry you’re supposed to get out of
your system in junior high didn’t get flushed from my pen until i hit my twenties,
and my writing still largely sucked until the cusp of my thirties. i was 29 before
i hit my first poetry slam in ’96, and i was 32 when i wrote my biggest hit — ¡the
wussyboy manifesto! — in 1999. back to this poem, yeah, i wrote it while in the
barracks on a navy base. it was kinda like living in the dorms on a college campus.
most rooms slept five: two bunk beds and a single bed. however, i managed to
somehow get fucking plantar warts on one of my feet, and the painful treatment
consisted of applying acid patches that ate through the thick layers of skin on my
heel. apparently, those kind of warts grow wicked roots that can twist around your
bones! yikes! the medics claimed my plantar warts were so deadly communicable
that i was quarantined to a five-person room all by myself for several months. at
first, it was awesome being the only squid in the entire barracks with a room all
to myself, but it started to really suck spending all my time alone. the schooling i
was getting was self-paced, so i’d spend all day in a cubicle staring into a monitor
and taking timed tests that were graded by computer. i spent hours and hours not
speaking to anyone during the day, then i went back to the barracks and stayed in
my room alone all evening. i would go days without speaking to anyone, and i only
left the base three times in the 366 days i spent there. i would read and listen to
music all night and write 30-page letters to my high school sweetheart kelly back
home. there was a phone center on the navy base where you could pay by the
minute to use a phone in a little booth, and i would stay there for hours talking to
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kelly. i spent so much time there, i struck up a friendship with the lady working
behind the counter. i would hang out with her on breaks as she ate sandwiches
from a bag. she was in her 30s and married and had kids, and i was 19 and totally
alone. she was the only friend i had for most of the year and a day i spent on that
dreary navy base. i begged the people who ran the barracks to let me have roomies
during my last month before finishing technical school. they finally relented, and i
roomed with two really great guys who became my friends. we even went camping
once, and i had a great time, but that was in my last two weeks on that base, then i
was shipped to a base in virginia beach, virginia. god, that was such a lonely time.
epiphany
Oh, this poem is so... so... bad... there always comes a time in a long performance
at a high school or college about 90 minutes into the show where i will do a
selection of really bad poetry i wrote when i first started. i do it so we can all get
a laugh at my expense, and i encourage the audience to shout the rhyming lines
before i get a chance to say them, but i also do it to show that we all write crap
like that in the beginning no matter how good we end up being years later. i’d like
to think i’m better at expressing myself now than when i wrote this poem, which
was included in a letter to my long-distance girlfriend kelly. i really missed her, so
i had to write about it. at one time, i’m sure i was really feeling this poem. as sucky
and cliché as it is, i was freakin’ feeling that shit. it meant something to me, and it
was so important that i wrote it down and showed it to my girlfriend to express my
innermost feelings. i also sent her lyrics from pink floyd’s the wall. emo much?
lone
Now, this poem? oh so horrible it makes me laugh out loud and roll my eyes. the
image of a lone wolf roaming the countryside is so clichéd and cheesy, and, of
course, the poem is called lone just in case you didn’t get that i was comparing
myself to a wolf. i felt it, though, and, to be honest, that shitty poem still pretty
much describes my life right now so many years later. at one point, this crap verse
perfectly described how i felt, and i meant every word, and maybe i still do.
erosion
Very old, but not too horrible, i mean, it doesn’t make me cringe like so much
of the stuff from that time period. i have always tried to keep a tight grip on the
elements of my life and soul and personality that retain the magic and glow of
youth, a magical way of looking at and interacting with the world around me that
embraces joy and wonder and mindful naiveté. you create the world you live in,
and if you want to live in a world full of mean people who are out to get you, be
mean to you, hurt you, steal from you, make you sad, beat you down, then that’s
the world you will live in. i choose not to live in that world as much as i can. i live
in a world where i have couches across america waiting to whisk me off to sleep
and people who can’t wait to tell me stories and listen to mine. oh, the things we
think are important when we are young and don’t know any better! i guess that’s
what this poem is about, holding onto those things.
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ennui, go on
Every guess is as good as mine on this one. i wrote it, apparently, the year after
i graduated from high school and joined the navy for six very long years, which
means it was probably written while i attended technical school in millington,
tennessee. i have no recollection of my daily life then, no idea what i did in my
free time, but i know i listened to a lot of music. i was really into the police at the
time, and i was a few years away from loving u2. hold on. i’m going to put on the
police right now. i’ll be right back. (pause) aww yeah, i just put on synchronicity,
and walking in your footsteps is playing. oooh, i used to love the police! i had
everything i could get my hands on, and i’m not talking just the albums, those were
easy, i am talking about the 45s with the b-side songs you couldn’t get anywhere
else. i would prowl record shops looking for their singles. it took me forever to
get everything, and then the fuckers went and release a boxed set of the whole
shebang, so now any schmuck can go and get a complete collection of the police
in one easy shot. oooh, that burns my butt. i paid $50 for the first 45 they ever
put out. fuckers. anyway, this piece is awful and reads more like song lyrics than
a poem. it has a little reggae rhythm going, i suppose. i still sometimes look at life
this way, or, rather, i rail against the aspects of society that want us to live our lives
this way. the part about thinking about those eyes of blue should have really been
about eyes of green, since that was the colour of my long-distance love kelly’s eyes,
which were emerald green, but it didn’t rhyme, so i changed the eyes to blue.
whym
Really thought i was the shit when i wrote this poem! i thought i was really onto
something with this writing stuff. i walked with a bounce in my step for a week
knowing i was capable of writing this poem. i’d feel better about it now had i
written it at 13, but i was 21 or 22 at the time, and it’s kinda really not that good.
life
So... so... so... deliciously awful! i wrote this while i was still in the navy about
a year before i discovered industrial music, like skinny puppy and ministry and
foetus and all the sturm ünd drang of wax trax! records, and it reads to me like
the lyrics of a song from kmfdm or front 242 or something ripped from the secret
diary of one of the trench coat mafia.
oed 1 & 2
Agony! oh please do not make me talk about these two poems. please! they are just
wretched, just craptastic! bend her over like auggie doggie? who writes that shit
and calls it poetry? dear lord, apparently i did. i had never studied poetry, so what
the fuck did i know? and to add insult to injury, i stole a line from a song called
hemispheres by rush. the part about fools against their foolish brothers? yeah, i
stole that. i once submitted the lyrics to the trees by rush to my high school literary
magazine, and i totally got busted by one of the student editors and mocked by
those who knew i had done it. you just can’t sneak rush lyrics past another high
school nerd. you just can’t do it!
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abrupt
This one started because my long-distance then-girlfriend kelly used to say “too
bad so sad” all the time. if i complained about there being no crunchy peanut
butter in the cupboard, for instance, she would say, “too bad so sad.” one day her
younger sister complained she didn’t have a car, so i singsonged, “too bad, so sad,
you wish you had... a car.” it cracked us up for some reason, probably because you
are expecting another word that rhymes with bad, but instead you get car. the
phrase stuck with me for some reason, and it eventually morphed into this little
tidbit of wannabe cut-and-paste. i had heard about william s. burroughs and david
bowie experimenting with a technique where you type out a poem on a piece of
paper, then you cut out all the words and phrases and rearrange them to create a
totally new work. i suppose i was mimicking that style when i wrote this screed.
mmm mmm, pro patria!
I get it! 13 lines in the first stanza! and 13 in the second! like the american flag!
and it’s on page 13, meaning it was the 13th poem i had ever written! groan! i was
influenced by wilfred owen’s poem that says dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,
latin for it is sweet and good to die for your country. i wrote this for a creative
writing class i took while i was in the navy. i really like wilfred owen’s work. he was
a soldier in the first world war who wrote in the trenches, and he died a few days
before the end of the war without having published any of his work. his lover, who
was a fellow officer — scandalous! — gathered all his writing after his death and
got it published posthumously, then wilfred owen’s work got famous. he is now
considered one of the premiere battlefield poets.
minuet
On an air base in virginia beach, virginia, is where my navy time was largely spent
between 1986-1991. i worked the graveyard shift from 11 p.m. - 7 a.m., and i took
a creative writing class during the day at the tidewater community college. i wrote
a series of dreamlike pieces where i was trying to be all surreal and stuff, and from
what i remember, this was right around the time salvador dali died because this
kid i knew in class wrote one about him, the same one, i think, with whom i was
supposed to see love and rockets and the pixies (see the notes for heroin). turns
out, i was born on salvador dali’s birthday, may 11. it’s also the anniversary of the
births of modern dancer martha graham, lead singer of the animals eric burdon,
and infamous bullshit artist baron von munchhausen.
sexuality
Non compos mentis, this one, a surreal bit written for a creative writing class i took
while i was in the navy. i have often felt anti-sexual, anti-romance, anti-everything,
and i have reacted to someone actively flirting with me with disdain, like i am so
not in that space right now. this poem seems to be an exploration of an invitation
and a rejection. the line she said something foreign under her breath was ripped
off directly from a song by roger waters called 4:30 a.m. (apparently they were
traveling abroad) from his album the pros and cons of hitch hiking.
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routine
I’m always getting people asking me where i get inspiration for poems, and i always
have to admit i really have no idea. they just come, and i write them down. i think
if i question the muse too much, she will stop putting out, so i try to remain open
to suggestion and grateful whenever a poem taps me on the shoulder and lets me
know it’s ready to be written. like this poem. where in the hell did it come from?
and what inspired me to write it? it was one of a series of surreal poems i wrote
for the creative writing class i took while i was the navy. i love it, actually. it’s just
fucking weird, but it’s delivered as though this type of thing happens all the time.
heroin
Sure do loves me some music! more than just about anything else other than my
kitties and kissing. when i go on tour, i often disappear into my headphones, and
it’s like the whole wide world around me becomes distant and moves in slow
motion. i’ll close my eyes and squish my head into my feather pillow pressed
against the bus window, and i’ll dive into the space between beats. i’ll melt into
the song and focus on nothing but the music. i won’t even hear the lyrics, i’ll just
hear the sound of the voice as an instrument. i can spend hours elsewhere. i wrote
this piece about how i get sucked into music during a creative writing class i took
while i was in the navy. a friend of mine in the class heard me read it before it was
titled and remarked, “whoa, i didn’t know you did heroin.” i decided music was
my heroin, and it was perfect, so that became the title. that kid — i can’t remember
his name — was so cool. he was a guitarist in a little punk band who turned me
on to vivisect vi by skinny puppy, the land of rape and honey by ministry, and
nail and thaw by scraping foetus off the wheel. those albums totally fucked up my
whole perception of music, and i was crazy about those bands for a long time after,
especially foetus, which lead me to be crazy about nine inch nails a few years later.
me and that kid in the creative writing class had tickets to see love and rockets
open up for the pixies, which would’ve been an amazing show since they were
both at their creative peak at the time — this was 1988 — but when it came right
down to it, i flaked. dude left frantic messages on my answering machine since
i had the tickets, and each message was more and more angry. me and the kid
stopped being friends after that. i’m not sure why i flaked. it kills me that i didn’t
go, because both the pixies and love and rockets broke up after that tour. for the
record, i have never done heroin or any other hard drug for that matter.
flyboy
Loves me some kitties! this didn’t really happen, no, and i don’t think people
should go out and do horrid things to their cats. i love my kitties very much, and
i would kick the ass of anyone who even for a moment suggested they should do
something as wretched as this to mah bebes. i wrote this poem way before i had
ever performed a poem in front of other people, way before i had even been to an
open mic poetry reading or had even heard of such a thing, but it’s interesting to
see a sort of spoken word style and cadence even this early in my writing career.
i do this piece even now and people crack up. i had a cat named ivan at the
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time who was such a sweet little shelter kitty, and he would do this crazy dance
whenever i flicked a q-tip at him that cracked my shit up. plus, he would lie on his
side, and i would call him, and instead of getting up and walking, he would pull
himself along the carpet with one paw, scooting his way across the room to me
on his side, and i thought that was hilarious. lazy pussy. i had to take ivan back to
the pound when the stupid navy made me go on some stupid ship for 14 months.
poor kitty. i think i just wrote this out of nowhere, not for a class.
flashlight
I joined the navy because i wanted to be involved with computers, however once
i got there, i wanted nothing more than to be a college student, which is why i
started taking creative writing classes. it felt so nice to be around people who
weren’t in the military, because i had very quickly come to hate everything about
the navy and everyone in it. i hung out with a group of students, and i didn’t tell
any of them i was a squid; it was my dirty little secret. i started dating a girl who
was a friend of a guy in the creative writing class. her name was dori holland, and
she was a cute but crazy/dramatic actor chick. it was like having this whole secret
life away from the navy. i grew the hair on the top of my head really long, so long
my locks leapt from my forehead all the way down to my chin, and i would keep
the sides and back all trimmed up military nice. i’d hide it all under the ball cap i
wore while working on the navy base, but when i got done with work blam! that
shit came out and fell over my face all flock of seagulls stylie. i also had my ear
pierced, and i would take out my earring and shove a piece of transparent plastic
into the hole while i worked. one time i was hanging out at the local mall, and
some squid from my work center who outranked me walked right past without
recognizing me, and i felt triumphant. the local cool kids hated most navy guys,
and i didn’t want to be associated with them at all, so blending in made me feel
great. i wrote this poem during that time as an assignment for the creative writing
class. it’s another poem about god. the teacher said i was trying too hard.
lycanthropy
Klutzy d&d nerd like me? or maybe a twilight fan? then you should know the
title is the mythical malady that transforms a man into a werewolf during the full
moon. i wrote this for that creative writing class i took while i was in the navy, and
the instructor once again accused me of trying too hard. i remember he liked the
echoes drip and run and fade part, though. whatever. look at me now, bitch!
truelove
Egad! this over-written piece of crap is one of only two poems to have graced the
pages of a publication i didn’t print myself. a little zine from ohio called impetus
printed it, and i was so excited! i thought for sure my writing career was going to
take off, so i bought one of those little word processors that was, like, an electronic
typewriter with a little viewscreen and a flip-down keyboard, and you could save
things to a little disc? suffice it to say, the writing career that was supposed to be
launched by this poem is still struggling to burst into fruition.
C
.
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rage
So unbearably bad! i don’t really remember much about this ancient poem. i was
in the navy when i wrote it, getting ready to spend a lot of time aboard the aircraft
carrier uss saratoga (cv-60) in preparation for a long deployment at the end of
1990. hostilities broke out across the border between iraq and kuwait as we headed
across the north atlantic ocean in august of 1990, i think, and all of our ports were
cancelled as we rushed to the red sea for what was to become the first gulf war.
interestingly, my best friend zara lived in kuwait at the time, and her family had to
flee into syria to avoid the iraqi army. i seem to think this poem was written for a
creative writing class, but i am not sure the date matches up to the time when i was
enrolled in the local community college. i remember at one time thinking this was
a damn good poem, although now i see overwrought purple verse.
love poem, no. 9
Early pile of dookie pooped while i was deep into my industrial music phase. it’s
so melodramatic, so like the shit wannabe-poets shout into open mics all over this
country. you just know the guy reading this poem would have skinny jeans and
pointy shoes and a cardigan covering a faded thrift store t-shirt of some obscure
indie band and thick black nerd glasses and an ironical trucker hat with a beaver
on it and a ’70s porn star mustache. he’d shriek the whole thing and force the
seven people in the audience to cover their ears, then he’d chuck the mic onto the
stage with a bang! and storm out of the coffeehouse and stalk down the street as
if reading this piece of shit had taken so much out of him because he was really
feeling it, man, he fucking cracked open his rib cage and forced you to see the
ugliness inside, and now he’s so spent he’s gotta ride his fixie to his favourite dive
bar and drink some pbr, and he would know deep in his hipster heart that his
poetry was more realer than all the bullshit other people spit at open mics. and
fuck slams, man, fuck assigning scores to poem, mostly because all his shit scores
poorly at slams because no one can stand being yelled at for three minutes at a
time, only he would say he got bad scores because he refused to pander to the
lowest common denominator. oh, this poem is deliciously bad. i love it!
lincoln logs and rabid dogs
Xeroxed aircraft carrier poetry. even though i wouldn’t visit an open mic poetry
reading until ’92 or a poetry slam until ’96, i consider this piece my very first
performance poem. i wrote it while aboard the uss saratoga sometime around ’89
or ’90, and it was the first piece i ever memorized, even though i had no reason
to memorize it at the time since i had never performed in front of and audience
nor had i even known such a thing was possible. i wrote it on the rudimentary
computers they used in my work center on the ship, and i printed it out on a shitty
dot matrix printer. i still do this piece every once in a great while, maybe every year
or two. i thought the world of this piece when i finished it, thought it was the best
thing i had ever written, and i considered it proof that i was a good writer. when i
hit my very first poetry slam at the taos poetry circus in ’96, this was my secondround poem, and it scored well enough to get me into the final round.
W
.. .
equalizer
This is one of the oldest poems that i still like and occasionally perform. it was
written while i was in the navy, probably while on the aircraft carrier uss saratoga
around ’89 or ’90. it was during my brief write everything in a solid block of text
phase, which, i have to admit, was inspired directly by ogre from skinny puppy,
who wrote his lyrics in the same fashion on the liner notes to their albums. it
was also inspired by a line in a song by scraping foetus off the wheel where jim
thirlwell talks about carrying an equalizer in the glove compartment. i just want to
take this opportunity to say that jim thirlwell has been my favourite musical entity
for more than two decades, and i have everything he’s ever done that i can get my
hands on. if you have never heard of the man or his various incarnations of foetus
— you’ve got foetus on your breath, foetus art terrorism, foetus interruptus, etc.
— then you really ought to check out his website at www.foetus.org. he also scores
movies and television shows, such as the amazing work he’s done for the venture
brothers. he’s a fucking genius. back to the poem... although i wrote it nearly three
years before i had ever witnessed an open mic poetry reading, it became one of
my first sorta hits once i started in early ’92. you never know who you’re fucking
with, who is a walking time bomb waiting for the right series of events to trigger
a mental explosion, so you should pretty much be nice to everyone just in case.
i feel like i am sometimes that guy, the quiet guy who will explode one day when
the wrong person fucks with him one too many times. i hate mean people.
wendy
Halfway think maybe this was written during a creative writing class i took
at a community college way back in ’88 while i was in the navy. or maybe not.
maybe i wrote it after i had been discharged and moved back to my hometown
of bakersfield, california. either way, it’s about kelly, my first real true love. we
dated for five or six years, depending on how you figure those things. it was totally
fucked. i was such an immature shithead, and she was an angel who deserved so
much better than the scraps of affection i had to offer between bouts of operatic
depression. it’s hard to remember what it was like to love her. when she finally had
the courage to break up with me, i was so miserable for so long, but i am so glad
she did it. she deserved better. kelly and i had nicknames for each other from high
school; she was wendy, and i was peter pan, the boy who never grew up.
ouroboros
Egyptian (or greek, not sure, maybe norwegian) symbol for eternity. that’s what
the title means, the image of a snake eating its own tail. it can also mean selfdestruction, which is nice since it’s handily shaped like a wedding ring. this
poem was written around the same time as wendy and was about the end of my
relationship with my high school sweetheart kelly. i don’t think our life together
was ever as bad as this depicts. at least, i hope it wasn’t. it was pretty cold at the
end, though. our cat ivan wouldn’t even sleep between us anymore. i nicked the
line about masturbating with her body instead of his hand years and years later
for the piece called how to make love. i like this one a lot. it’s pretty accurate.
O
.
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aspartame
Navy time was over when i wrote this poem, and i was in the middle of sowing
wild oats with anyone who would allow me near them. i had gotten out of the
navy after six years, and the early ’90s d.i.y. youth culture of alternative rock and
coffeehouses was in full effect. i sowed a lot of pent-up wild oats, and the detritus
of each connection littered my bedroom floor. i dated a dancer/choreographer
girl who was pixie cute. our first kiss was new year’s eve on the top of a building
overlooking downtown bakersfield, my shitty hometown. immediately after the
kiss, she sighed, smiled, and said, “i totally thought you were gay!” we dated for a
couple of months. toward the end, she was playing the part of anybodys in west
side story, and she really wanted me to see opening night, but i had to work, so i
could only check out the first half. she got really pissed. the next day, i went over to
her house to sweeten her up, and she ripped open the door and growled, “gimme
my key.” i stared at her, shocked, then reached into my pocket for my keychain,
removed her spare, and handed it to her. she snatched it up then handed me
a small paper bag and said, “now take your cream rinse and get the fuck out.”
she actually said that. i had long hair down to my shoulders at the time, and i
did indeed have a bottle of conditioner in her shower. i was stunned, but also
more than a little delighted. not only had she totally dissed me, but she did it by
uttering one of the most unforgettable closing lines ever. i immediately ran home
and wrote a poem about it, about all the shit you collect as you date one person
then another and another. i could walk down the street with remnants of five or
six relationships on my person and not even realize it. aspartame, by the way, is
the artificial sweetener known as nutrisweet.
echo
Full disclosure: context is the really interesting thing about this piece, because
in 1993 when it was written, i was getting so much action, you don’t even know,
jack, you have no idea. i was macking on, like, everything that moved. i kept track,
too, and i had sex with 33 different people in the three years after i got discharged
from the navy. holy crap! when did i have time to be lonely if i was fuckin’ all the
time? okay, wait, i’m totally rocking michael jackson’s thriller as i type this, and
wanna be startin’ something just kicked off, and i cranked the volume. i love this
song! say what you want, but michael jackson made a fucking amazing album
with thriller, and off the wall was terrific, too, and people forget how many good
songs are on bad. anyway, yeah, i fancied myself quite the ladies man back in the
day, and yet i wrote this, which is all about loneliness, all about the emptiness
left behind. it reminds me of the conclusion i arrived at after three years of rabid
humping: it didn’t make me happy. i wanted love, not random hookups, and the
thrill of flesh only made me feel lonelier. the woe to him part is from ecclesiastes,
my favourite book in the bible, and that’s where the title comes from, too. there is
something lonely about an echo. you want to pretend it’s someone else talking to
you, but, in the end, it’s only your own voice. i love thriller. when i was the dj for
the austin poetry slam, all i had to do was drop anything from this album, and it
didn’t matter who you were, you would rock the fuck out.
R
.
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appliance envy
Unclear on this one. i imagine it was about dating a foodie, someone who is really
into making all kinds of homemade dishes with fancy ingredients. i imagined what
it would be like after the break-up when she was gone but all her culinary tools
and exotic foods had been left behind, reminders of a relationship gone bad. i
wrote this piece in a period of time when i had been hitting open mic poetry
readings for a while and was moving away from page poetry and more into what
i thought of as spoken word. i used to perform it in this high-pitched whiny voice
that my girlfriend at the time hated. i would practically yell it, too. we all yelled
back then. that was the style. yelling. sometimes i still find myself yelling all the
way through a piece for no apparent reason, and in the middle of it, i always think,
why the hell am i yelling? another irritating non-style is reciting a piece so quickly
that no one can understand what the hell you are saying, as if the poet is trying
to fit a four-minute poem into three minutes and ten seconds. i would prefer they
write a tight two-minute poem and breathe it into three minutes, using the empty
spaces between words as punctuation. volume and speed can’t hide bad writing.
plastic
Come on, more kvetching about god? a friend i had at the time named melinda
would call stuff like this coffeehouse poetry, a derisive term she made up meaning
it had probably been written by some black beret dickhead smoking cloves and
moping to morrissey on headphones. i still feel this way, though, like... i hope
the rare times i pray, most often during plane flights, actually connect with some
sort of higher power, but we will never know. we’ll live our lives until we die, then
we’ll either know or we won’t, and that’s that. death scares the shit out of me.
darn
Killer bad memory means i don’t remember much about this poem at all. i don’t
even remember reading it out loud, although i must have since it was written
at a time when i was hit open mic readings in my hometown coffeehouse. it’s
weird looking into a mirror and thinking, wow, that’s me. i am looking into my
own face. that’s what i look like. that’s what other people see. i’ve spent a lot of
time staring into mirrors, both literally and metaphorically, and it’s just so weird
struggling to connect the person in the mirror with the person looking through
my eyes at the world. i have this concept of self that relies very little on how i look,
and when i catch a glimpse of myself, it almost sends shivers down my spine. aging
is weird, too, because i still do and think and act like i always have, but the face in
the mirror is showing signs of age. crow’s feet scratching at the corners of the eyes.
salty goatee. bad knees. it’s weird. aging can do a tongue ballet in my bunghole.
asbestos
Many know asbestos, of course, is a substance that was widely used throughout
construction projects during the industrial revolution and after due to its
inflammable nature, but it was later banned because it also happened to be
incredibly carcinogenic. asbestos was so widely used, it’s still being cleared from
D
..
old buildings to this day. i used it as a metaphor representing the danger of dealing
with anger by being shitty to someone else, as if you are transferring the anger to
the other person so you don’t have to feel it any more. this is such a self-defeating
way of dealing with anger, like a cancer that eats you both up. it reminds me of an
old saying: holding a grudge is like swallowing poison and expecting the other
person to die. i recall that saying often, especially when i am all pissed off. i think
this poem is pretty much bloody awful. it’s like i’m trying to write nine inch nails
lyrics or something. i can imagine rhythmically shrieking the words in a harsh
screamo style as a drummer kicks the double bass action and a guitarist churns out
power chords. squirming blind white raaaaaaaaaage! jeez, this is bad.
glue
Egregious remarks about a chubby couple inspired this piece, some snarky asshole
cracking wise about how ugly they would look while fucking. i thought that was
so rude and awful. who the hell cares what they look like when they make love as
long as they love each other while they do it? i would hope they make each other
feel sexy no matter what society may sneer about them. i was trying to illustrate the
inherent beauty in lovemaking no matter what the people look like.
listening to oak cliff bra
I was digging around an old journal and found this piffle scribbled on a forgotten
page. i have a terrible memory, especially for words, and especially lyrics. i tend to
listen to voices in music like they are instruments, and i rarely seem to know the
words to songs, even ones i’ve been listening to forever. i used to love edie brickell
and new bohemians, and i had a huge crush on her even though she’s hella tall
and leggy. i could never seem to remember the lyrics to this little song she did
on her second album, ghost of a dog, so whenever i felt like singing it as i walked
down the street, i’d make up my own words and sing them to the melody. that’s
how i came up with this little scribble in some old notebook. it makes me smile.
listening to deep in the heart
Wow, i used to love me some u2! the cool thing about them was that they out
with lots of collectible songs, little extra songs not found on proper albums but
released as a b-side to a single that only came out on, say, a 45 or ep or soundtrack.
i used to have a vast collection. one of my favourite rare songs was deep in the
heart, a b-side to i still haven’t found what i’m looking for from the joshua tree
album. i just made up my own lyrics to sing along with bono, and this is that.
insinuation
A moldy oldie i pretty much haven’t seen or even thought in years and years,
easily since the ’90s when i wrote it during my coffeehouse days in my shitty little
hometown, crashing on couches with friends i barely knew, hooking up with
random cute girls, trying to fill all the holes in my heart but only making them
bigger and bigger. i had just enough charm and wit to talk my way into a lot of beds
and couches, but not enough to keep from wearing out my welcome.
P
.
new town, new school, new job, new life
Nearly everything changed for me right around the time kurt cobain shot himself.
i was starting to feel like it was time to move on from my shitty little hometown of
bakersfield, california. i had been there for three years, ever since i got out of the
navy. there had been a golden time for a little while filled with coffeehouses and
poetry and rock shows and getting drunk and fucking, but by the time the voice
of our generation silenced himself with a shotgun blast, everything cool about the
city was changing. the nü metal band that became korn got signed by sony and
left town, and that started a flurry of bands bailing bako for bigger cities. the ones
left behind all seemed to get hooked on heroin. the indie bookstore closed. the
indie music store closed. the coffeehouse was closing. the dive bar that hosted
punk shows closed. and then the two girls i had been dating both dumped me on
the same day, which was april 8, 1994. i remember the date because kurt cobain’s
body had been discovered that day, and it was all over the news. yesh, my early
’90s was dying, and i needed a fresh start, so i transferred to chico state university
in northern california, about 90 minutes past sacramento and about three hours
north-east of san francisco. i was accepted, then i faxed every print shop in chico. i
got exactly one call back. i drove up to chico the first time for the interview and got
offered the job, so i found a room to rent in the local paper, met the people living
there, and put down a deposit and drove back to bakersfield to get my shit. within
a week, i was in a new town going to a new school with a new job, and i didn’t
know a soul in the entire place except for cale wiggins. he had been working the
counter of the coffeehouse in bakersfield, and when he heard about my plans to
leave town, he asked if he could go with me. i hardly knew the guy, so we bought
some whiskey and got drunk on the tip-top of a parking structure overlooking
downtown. the deal was sealed. a week later, we packed our lives into a u-haul
trailer and bailed. i remember walking down the main drag in chico right after i
nailed the job interview and thinking about how that town and everything in it
was unknown to me, but i felt deep in my gut i would surely make that town my
own in the months to come. i felt like i would get to know that town like the back
of my hand. and you know what? it kinda happened that way. i ended up running
the chico poetry slam and getting crowds of 100+ every tuesday for two or three
years, and for a while there, i was quite well-known, thank you very much. i had a
blast... mostly. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
floss
This one would qualify as my first appearance on the charts if poets could be said
to have greatest hits. this is my creep, my working man, my roxanne. it started
as a column for the zine i did at the time, and it just happened to be the perfect
length for a slam poem, even though i had never even heard of slam at the time. i
first read about the concept of competitive poetry in a late-1995 los angeles times
article about the 10-round poetry boxing match held at the taos poetry circus in
new mexico, and i made a roadtrip to attend the very next summer. the circus
comprised several days of events, and some people i knew from the los angeles
open mic scene had come, too, so it was mad fun. there was an open poetry slam
L
.
where anyone could sign up and rock out, but i had never heard of slam, and i was
hella skeptical about the competition aspect of it. i turned down the organizer of
the slam, but she cajoled me until i relented and signed up. i had no idea what the
rules were or what was popular or appropriate for a slam poem, so i just did this
piece about how much i love to floss my teeth. it went over like gangbusters, and i
ended up making the third and final round and placing third out of 30 poets. not
bad for my first time! the poet who won that particular slam was an albuquerque
slammer named kenn rodriquez, who would become a good friend of mine, and
the timer/scorekeeper was matthew john conley, who would become my touring
partner for a couple of years. matthew was also the person who re-introduced
me to haiku. this poem about floss was my very first hit, and it became a sort of
signature piece for me. for a while there, i was the guy who does that poem about
floss. it’s found its way onto quite a few dentist websites over the years, which is
delightful. and yes, i really am that freaky about flossing my teeth.
partyboy
Sorority chicks are, for the most part, foreign to me. however, the first friend i
made on the staff of the student newspaper at chico state university was a tall
blonde white girl sorority chick named lisa. she was the editor of a special features
section of thematically-linked articles — like the frat issue and the belief issue
— and i wrote stories and columns for her. she was actually really cool despite
being pledged to a greek organization, and we would hang out at her place every
week to watch melrose place and friends. we were buds until she was about to
graduate and move away, and then we kinda hooked up a little bit. it was nice. she
told me all the secrets of her sorority, like their secret song and secret handshake
and stuff, and she made me swear to never tell. she moved away, and i never saw
her again. i should google her sometime. anyway, lisa took me to an honest-to-god
frat party, the only one i had ever attended (and the last), and it was muy lamo. she
knew everyone and butterflied around while i stood against a wall next to a plant.
i sorta tried to mingle, but no one would talk to me, and i felt so out of place, so i
left without saying goodbye and slunk home in the dark and wrote this.
siena vision
Charming next magazine. what a great memory. i started escaping my shitty
hometown back in the early ’90s by visiting open mic poetry readings just over the
grapevine in los angeles. i would often hit a section of l.a. called melrose that had
all these cool shops and alternative nation vitality. i would check out the funky
book shops and coffeehouses and record stores and pick up loads of zines, which
were often lying in bundles on street corners and in the doorways of businesses.
one of the rags i picked up was called next magazine, and it covered the open mic
poetry scene in southern california. it had a calendar of events, and i would choose
one at random and make the four-hour round trip from my hometown to get my
name on the list and read. the very first one i did wasn’t even an open reading,
but i begged the host to let me spit since i had driven so far, and she relented, and
i killed it. in the audience was a dude named bowerbird intelligentleman, and
A
.
he is still part of the extended poetry slam community to this day. i see that cat
every year at the national poetry slam. it’s so funny that he was there to witness
my very first l.a. reading. anyway, the poetry was always god-awful, just horrible
diary poetry with no sense of performance, and the very worst of all was this cat
named belowsky, pronounced buh-lau-skee. he would do the worst faux poetry
in this fake-sounding english accent, and i used to refer to him as blowfish. oh, his
work was laughingly odious, and he delivered it with such utter belief in self, such
arrogant swagger, that it was hilarious. check out www.belowsky.com. i wrote this
piece in honour of belowsky’s over-blown style while sitting in caffe siena in my
little college town of chico, california. it was the venue where i would eventually
run the chico poetry slam, only by that time, the space was called moxie’s. there
was an art exhibit at the time featuring painted ceramic faces on the walls. i giggled
as i wrote it, picturing exactly how ol’ blowfish would deliver it. i would perform
it that way, too, in a screechingly absurd monty python accent and an irritating
spoken word cadence. so bad! years later, i was living in austin and kicking back at
ego’s bar waiting for the austin poetry slam to start, and i heard the unmistakable
sound of belowsky, and it was him! it was blowfish! apparently he was on tour,
and he came in to do a spotlight feature before the slam, and oh, he was still so
awful, and he used the same voice! i quickly whipped out this piece and told the
audience i had written it for belowsky years before, and i read it in his same style,
and the crowd was howling because they had just seen him perform. oh, it was so
funny, but he took it well and didn’t seem mad or anything for me taking the piss.
that was probably around 2003 or so, and i doubt that i’ve performed this piece
since. i stole the part about the click-clack and scrape of dishes on silverware
from a failed poem called the ballad of michael i could never quite get to work.
commerce
Ready for another poem written in the shrill accented voice of blowfish, meant to
be screeched in a song-song spoken word rhythm like a member of monty python?
i have no idea what inspired this rant, which appears to be championing feminism
while at the same time attacking some random woman for not measuring up to
the speaker’s standards, which, really, what the fuck is that all about? i found this
hiding on my hard drive in some ancient file format that needs translating by
openoffice, and i was delighted to find it. i had totally forgotten about it.
new poem about a coin
And this is such a major cop-out on the title, right? this very minor piece came to
me as i walked down the street and noticed a dime rattling around in my sock. no
idea how it got there. this whole poem was conjured during the walk, and it was
finished by the time i got home. i don’t think it was about anyone in particular. it’s
okay, i guess, but i can’t remember the last time i read it out loud.
the miracle corner pocket luck shot
This poem, now that i think about it, was first inspired not by a friend named
bryan but by this girl named cheryl i was kinda sorta dating while i was in chico,
Y
. .
california, in the mid-’90s. it came to me during a heated pool game wherein
she kicked my ass and made the eponymous shot, but when i wrote the poem, i
changed the main character from cheryl to bryan, this cool guy i knew at the time
with whom i’d end up forming a writers group. i suspect it was because bryan had
written a poem about seeing me dancing at a club surrounded by a clutch of hot
girls. i made him the central character in this poem as a thank you for painting me
as such a mack daddy. i hardly remember cheryl, but i do remember something
she said the first time we had sex. i was all trying to be suave and shit, talking some
nasty smack, trying to get her turned on with my words, and she huffed and said,
“will you just shut up and fuck me?” so, i did. another thing i remember about
cheryl was this one time when we were lying nekkid in her bed, and she covered
her body all the way up to her neck and started going, “i’m just a head! i’m just
a head!” then she lowered the blankets to her hips and covered her head with a
pillow and said, “i’m just a torso! i’m just a torso!” this cracked us the hell up, and
i named a subsequent collection of poetry i’m just a torso.
bookends
Can’t judge me! I started a writers group in my little college town of chico,
california, sometime in the spring of ’95. to be perfectly honest, the only reason
i did it was because i really liked this cute poet chick named trish. little did i
know, this guy i knew in the group named bryan, the same one in the miracle
corner pocket luck shot, also had a crush on her. immediately after our first group
meeting, trish and i went on a long walk through this huge meandering park full
of live oaks. bryan was pissed, and he quit the writers group in a huff. later that
night, trish and i got together to watch the scent of green papaya at my place.
we sat a very respectable distance from each other on the couch, but when she
took a break to hit the bathroom, i scooted all the way over to one end. i figured
if she liked me, she would slip right up next to me. otherwise, she could sit far
away, and then i would know she wasn’t feeling it. she came over to the couch,
paused for just a moment, then she cuddled up next to me for the rest of the
movie. we made out on my bed that was nothing more than a mattress on the
floor, and it was so nice, just like in the poem. we dated for about two and a
half months, but then as we got closer to her graduation date, we started having
problems. she would ask for my opinions on her poems and then get pissed if i
offered even the most gentle critique. she got mad jealous that my poetry, which
is closer to spoken word than verse, would get more positive attention at readings
than hers. she said her writing was real poetry and mine was bullshit. she would
say things like, “i refuse to demean myself by standing on a chair and waving my
arms,” as if i ever resorted to that. and then she got hella jealous and suspicious
that i was cheating on her with poetry groupies. i think she was just preparing
herself to leave, and she didn’t feel we were far enough along in the relationship
to continue after graduation. she was moving back to her hometown in the bay
area, and i still had a few years before i finished school. she asked me not to attend
her graduation ceremony, and that really burned me up, and then she blew off
our dinner plans afterwards. she called in the middle of the night to break up with
A
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me, but i had already been to her place to pick up my shit and return her key. it
was done. oh, and this is something weird... the one time she took me to visit her
parents, i walked into the living room, and her parents froze. they full-on glared at
me, and it was so awkward the whole time. i tried desperately to engage them in
conversation, but they weren’t havin’ it. they seemed to hate me on sight. i noticed
a big family photo on the living room wall over the fireplace of the whole family,
and there was some dude around trish’s age. i asked who it was, and trish’s mom
got up from the table and left the room, and the father said they don’t talk about
him anymore. trish later told me it was her step-brother... who had molested her.
he was short, a little portly, had a shaved bald head and a goatee and earrings in
both ears. take a wild guess how i looked at that time. awkward! here’s a lesson: if
your girlfriend admits you’re the spitting image of the step-brother who molested
her, just run, man, just fucking run.
wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth
Here’s the only poem i actually wrote during the writers group i formed in chico
when i was trying to get up on trish. we did an exercise where we randomly picked
a word or phrase from the dictionary and used it as inspiration for a poem. my
phrase was salt fresh. i have no idea what it really means, but it made me think of
that time when a cut is not quite healed, when salt would still burn if you rubbed
it into the wound. i pictured talking on the phone with a former girlfriend and
having her say she just wasn’t ready to be friends. been there.
state of the art
Early poem i had totally forgotten this one. it had been self-published in an old
collection of my poetry called an ecstasy of fumbling, the title of which shares
its origins with sarah maclachlan’s fumbling towards ecstasy, which is a poem
by world war one poet wilfred owen. in that poem, owen describes soldiers in
trenches scrambling to put on their gas masks as a cloud of death wafts their
way, saying it was an ecstasy of fumbling. to me, it sounds just like a first date
and accurately describes the joyous awkwardness of first kisses. this poem only
appeared in that old collection, and i no longer have copies of it, nor can i find
the original pagemaker file for the master copy on my hard drive, so it’s long been
a lost poem. i finally found it again after one last sweep of my imac, and there it
was, and it made me laugh, because it really is kinda pungent like a ripe cheese.
i have no idea what the title is about. i have often given poems nonsensical titles
by writing down the very first word that comes to mind, and i think that’s what
this was, some phrase that just popped into my head. i would later rail against the
capitalistic nightmare of the american dream in my poem mission statement, and
i think that one robs ideas from this poem and expresses them more successfully.
bigman
Silently is how i used to perform this one, holding up big printouts of the words
so the audience could say them in that creepy dull monotone usually found in
churches. i don’t think i’ve ever done this one out loud... weird, huh?
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the politics of just friends
After chico state university graduation broke up me and trish, i decided to spend
my summer vacation that year with my parents in wichita, kansas, where they had
moved after i graduated from high school and joined the navy. it was the first
time i had ever been to kansas, and i hadn’t seen them in a while, so i moved
into a spare bedroom in the basement and got a job at kinko’s. once i returned to
chico state university in the fall, i got a call from the opinion editor of the student
newspaper asking me to write for her in the new semester. she sounding so cute,
and we ended up talking for an hour even though we had never met and the call
was supposed to be about newspaper business. when i met her the next day in the
newsroom, she was all done up and totally cute, kinda like a ’90s version of velma
from scooby doo, or maybe even daria from that mtv cartoon, kinda like cute
nerdgirl. i was all about her, too, and we hung out at her place a few days later.
i kissed her on the couch. as soon as we finished smooching, she goes, “that was
awesome. i love how you held my face as you kissed me. no one’s ever done that
before. are we boyfriend and girlfriend now? because i totally want to be. do you
want to be? you do? awesome! i gotta go call my mom.” she was so funny. when
we were about to have sex the first time, she asked me to turn on the radio so her
roommate wouldn’t hear, and i told her whatever song played the first time we had
sex would forever be our song. i turned on the radio. stairway to heaven. awww
yeah! we just about died. yes, the first time we had sex was to led zep. i really liked
her, but she was really jealous, and that was a drag. she was always suspecting me
of cheating on her with girls at poetry readings (just like trish had), and i never
fucking did, so it was a real pain. we dated for about seven months, then we broke
up right before summer. we tried to be friends, but it was just too difficult. a lot of
her humour was based in bitterness, and she fucking unleashed her bitterness on
me when we broke up. she’s married now and has a kid. she is now my facebook
friend. she would later appear in my poem scars, part one, and in a series of bitter
ex-girlfriend haiku that were jokingly dedicated to her.
roadtrippin’
Crazy-assed majesty of the road! i wrote an early version of this one while driving
to new mexico for the taos poetry circus in ’96. and i mean while actually driving,
with a knee on the steering wheel, pen in one hand, journal in the other, driving
down the highway at 95 mph. it’s been rewritten several times since then, including
an ill-advised version with me singing to the songs on the radio during the trip.
ugh, i really don’t need to be singing in any poem, believe me, and that version
was immediately scrapped. there was a soul music version and an ’80s version, and
i performed them both exactly one time each before tossing them forever. when
i rock this piece, i change the name of the band on the t-shirt of the narrator to
something i think the audience would appreciate, and that helps keep it current.
the fourth paragraph is inspired by lloyd dobler’s answer to the question what
are your plans for the future? in the movie say anything, you know, when he
says he doesn’t want to sell anything, or manufacture anything, or sell anything
that’s manufactured, or manufacture anything that’s sold? basically, he just wants
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to hang out with ione skye. i love that movie. this is probably my most-performed
piece out of anything i’ve ever written, and it’s certainly one that i’ve read on a
regular basis ever since i wrote it. it doesn’t have any cussing in it, so i can do it
for high school audiences, and it captures that romantic notion of poets being on
the road, so it’s a good establishing poem. i can do this one for old people, young
people, black people, white people, men, women, children, and everybody gets it,
and it is often the very first poem i will perform in a long set.
pueblo dog
Righteous loathing inspired this poem during my visit to the 1996 taos poetry
circus in new mexico. the main part of taos, the touristy part, left a real bad taste in
the back of my throat. it was like this vast disneyland of native art, only it was the
kind of native art white people like to buy and display in their homes, artificiallyweathered brass sculptures of kokopelli the flute player, couch-sized paintings
of earth-toned rocks sculpted by wind, drums made of stretched deer hide and
rainsticks filled with thorns and pebbles. you couldn’t swing a dead chupacabra
without knocking a dreamcatcher out of some tourist’s hand. i hated it. the smaller
part of taos was called taos pueblo, and that was where actual people lived, real
people, native people. i met a girl from the pueblo named shell, and she showed
me the part where she lived, and she told me the story about her cousin finding
a stray dog and feeding him with beer fat from a plastic bag. the juxtaposition
between the pueblo part of town and the tourist part really affected me, especially
how the native people both hated the disneyfication of their culture and depended
on it for their survival. i don’t think i’ve ever performed this poem, which was lost
for a long time. i found it one day amongst some papers.
ode to poet x
Ornery little self-absorbed poets! the funniest thing about this poem is how many
people have heard it for the first time and assumed it was directed at them. i have
actually been verbally attacked and physically threatened for performing this piece
by people who mistakenly thought it was either about them or a friend of theirs.
i will end the mystery now. i wrote this piece during the taos poetry circus in the
summer of ’96 about this guy from los angeles who performed as roland poet x.
his stuff was really tight compared to most everyone else’s work, but he was acting
so arrogant and so disrespectful to all the other poets, like really making this
display that he had better things to do than listen to everybody else’s shit since his
shit was so much better. i was really pissed off about it, so i wrote the poem. since
then, so many people have been all too willing to step up and play the role of poet
x. every time someone accuses me of writing this as a personal diss for them, i just
laugh and laugh. i have lost track of the times i’ve caught myself being poet x.
ma’amed
Sliding to the end of my relationship with sonia was hard, so i spent the summer
of 1996 at an internship for a newspaper in tiny red bluff, california, population
13,000. one of the first people i met was nancy, who worked in the library. she
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wore black, had a black bob like uma thurman in pulp fiction, and was olive oyl tall
and slender. the second time we hung out, she basically said, “look, i don’t want
a boyfriend, but it would be nice to get fucked on a regular basis.” and i was like,
uhm, okay! and we did, too, boy, wooo, we boned like bunnies all summer long.
when i moved back to my college town of chico, she moved there too, because
she hated red bluff, so we kept right on fucking. it was some damned good fuckin’,
too. damn good. toward the end, nancy was reconsidering the whole i don’t want
a boyfriend thing, but by that time, i had met kimberly, this cute entertainment
writer at the university newspaper, so nancy and i stopped hanging out. she was
so pissed. i don’t blame her. anyway, this poem is about something she told me
that summer, that some asshole of a bag stuffer at the supermarket had called her
ma’am. this cracked me up, so i wrote a poem about it, about being shocked when
some stranger takes you for some adult who needs to be called sir or ma’am,
like you are too old to be considered a peer anymore, you are just some random
adult who needs to be treated with some kind of distant professional respect or
something. i thought of this poem when i went to portland in the summer of 2011.
i was standing in line at this hip bakery called voodoo donuts, and the counter
girl was this painfully cute alternative chick with tattoos and cool hair, and she
was all flirting with the dude in front of me, some skinny jeans wearin’ hipster
with a thrift store where’s the beef t-shirt and a fake trucker hat and an ironic tom
selleck mustache. when dude walked away with his bag of donuts, she paused
a moment and watched as he galumphed out the door, then she turned to me,
utterly blanked her face, and said curtly, “can i help you?” that instant feeling of
not being in the same world as the hipster girl behind the counter sucked: you’re
not a peer, you’re just some customer, some random dude. of course she’s not
gonna flirt with the likes of me! i’m unhip and uncool and old and short and have
stupid clothes. and it’s not like i wanted her to flirt with me, because she was, like,
22, but still... it’s nice to be invited to the party even if you don’t wanna go. girls
like her used to cross the room to talk with me, and now here i am just another
customer. but that’s cool, whatever, that’s the natural order of things. i need to
find myself a cool former generation x’er who’s been around the block a coupla
times and is ready to settle down. i need to date pre-scientology janeane garofalo.
so bad. or the mom from the gilmore girls.
death to romance
Summer of ’96 is when i wrote this. i was interning at a newspaper in red bluff,
california. it was a dreadfully boring time for the most part. i had just broken up
with sonia, so i was a little bitter about relationships. all those ideas they stick in
your head, all those fucking songs and movies and shit, i tell you, it’s poison. they
fill your head with all kinds of unattainable dreams that make you feel like a failure
for not having the kind of life the characters in those movies and songs have. if
religion is the opiate of the masses, then romantic comedies are the heroin. having
said that, anyone with a clear eye can read through the poems in this book and see
that i still yearn for that lovely connection we see flickering on the silver screen,
an indie rock gabfest with witty conversation and a great soundtrack from all my
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favourite bands. i’d be the shy kid with a hoodie working behind the counter at
the alternative record store, and she would walk in wearing a fake fur hoodie and
a hello kitty backpack covered in feminist buttons, someone cute and quirky in
blood red chuck taylors, a little bit broken, a little bit fixed. i keep hoping. i am
sure glad i have cats. if my life were made into a romantic comedy, there would
be no romance and very little comedy, it would just be me lying on some couch
and staring at the midnight ceiling and sighing a lot. the music would be brilliant,
though. the soundtrack would break your heart and make you want to start a
band, a really good band, a band that makes people have babies.
jesus moshpit
My newspaper internship in red bluff ended after the summer of ’96, so i returned
to my college town. i was in the newsroom writing something for the entertainment
section of the university newspaper, and a new girl sat at the computer terminal
next to mine. she was cute, short, had lovely blue eyes, short spiky hair, bomber
pilot jacket, wallet chain, nose ring. she seemed neat. i joked with her as we sat
there typing our stories, shamelessly flirting, and i made her laugh. and that was
that. i told her my name. she told me hers. and i left. a few days later, she called
me on my home phone, and she was all, “i hope you don’t mind, but i got your
number from the staff contact list. you wanna go see a punk band with me tonight?
i have to cover it for the paper, and i don’t want to go alone.” and i was like... how
often does that happen? like, the cute new girl calls you and asks you to hang out. i
was delighted! she spent her time writing notes and taking photos, so i spent most
of my time watching the snarl of the moshpit from afar. i found myself imagining
what it would be like to be the biggest punk in the moshpit, to be so big and
mean god wouldn’t even fuck with you. this poem started coming to me, based
in part on a news story i had written on the whole moshpit phenomenon for my
hometown newspaper in the early ’90s, and i ran to the bar to get some napkins
so i could scribble this piece down. it ended up becoming my next greatest hit.
suddenly, i was no longer the guy with the poem about flossing his teeth (see
floss), no, i was the guy with the moshpit poem. the new girl in the newsroom was
kimberly, and we dated for a good two years, then we were off-and-on for another
two years after that. i wrote a lot of poems in the time that i dated kimberly, some
of my best early performance pieces. i was hitting the san francisco scene a lot, so
i was writing new work to perform all the time. it was a productive period, and
this poem was the start of a real streak. this is one of the oldest poems i still do
on something of a regular basis. it’s a great opening piece, and it’s sort of the first
poem that had a definite big poppa e swagger to it, even though it was written four
years before the stage name came up. this poem owes a debt to r. lee ermy. ever
see full metal jacket? remember the bad ass company commander in the boot
camp scenes? that’s r. lee ermy. he played the same character for a movie a few
years earlier called the boys in company c, and there’s a great scene where he’s
having the soon-to-be soldiers chant that they are the baddest motherfuckers in
all the valley. i am positive that scene was in my head when i wrote this, and you
should check it out sometime. that boot camp scenes are awesome.
X
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just take another drink
Yeah, so, this was written right before henry rollins came to chico state university
in late ’96. i decided i wanted to open up for him. i figured all i needed was a kick
ass poem to impress him enough to invite me to start the show, so i wrote this
in pretty much one sitting. it was heavily influenced by quentin tarantino, since
his pulp fiction had been released a year or so before. i never pursued the whole
opening up for rollins idea, but i debuted the poem at the very first chico poetry
slam. i have a recording of that very first reading that was made on a cheap radio
shack tape recorder, and you can totally hear my brand new girlfriend kimberly
and her distinctive giggles throughout the poem (she held the recorder from the
audience as i performed.) i came in second at that first chico poetry slam to a
local poet named annie la ganga, and i never once beat her the entire time i was
in chico. bitch! she and i would reconnect years later in austin, and she and her
partner bill cotter remain dear friends of mine. i would end up running the chico
poetry slam and hosting shows called wordcore featuring crews of bay area poets
i met while hitting the san francisco poetry slam. i would later use that name for
the quartet of poets i formed with buddy wakefield, eitan kadosh, and gregory
hischak. we performed as wordcore back in fall of 2001 and spring of 2002.
real live über grrrl
By the way, über is pronounced like oober. it’s german for super. i think this was
the first poem i ever wrote about my college girlfriend kimberly. our relationship
was flawed, to be sure, but i really really liked her a lot. she was so flattered when i
gave her this poem and told her it was inspired by her, but now that so much time
has gone by, i kinda wonder about that, wonder if it was really about her or just
my idea of the perfect girl. i dig the image of 10,000 fireflies caught in a womanshaped bottle. i think that’s one of the loveliest things i’ve ever written. kimberly
would just glow when i wrote poetry about her, especially about how beautiful
i thought she was, and i would come to abuse that effect on her. i quoted this
very poem when i wrote poetry widow as a means of atoning for the poems i had
written that were meant to calm her when i had fucked up. i am still looking for my
real live über grrrl. i know she’s out there somewhere. the spelling of girl as grrrl
comes from the riot grrrl movement in indie rock in the early ’90s.
potty is pee
Amusing regionalisms fascinate me. this was inspired by an actual conversation
with my college girlfriend kimberly, and upon further enquiry, i discovered that
northern californians tend to use the term potty to mean specifically pee, while
rest of the country uses potty to mean either pee or poo, as in go to the potty. in
my family, however, potty has always and only meant poo. so, you know... i just
had to write a poem about it. my best friend zara jokes that i can’t go through a
single phone conversation without at least once mentioning the topic of poo. and
it’s pretty much true. i kept an online blog during my summer 2011 tour across
america on greyhound buses, and believe me, the whole idea of poo and pee was
a constant source of consternation. ever poo in a bus toilet? wretched.
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silly shower song
Can’t get much sillier than this, just some silly song i started singing in the shower
after seeing a poor soggy spider in my soapdish. not much more to say about it.
i found this scrawled in an old notebook stored in some box of notebooks at my
parent’s place in wichita. i totally can still sing it, too, but don’t ask. i’m shy.
map of your body
Kimberly and i totally digging each other with no body issue nonsense. it happened
pretty much exactly as it reads in the poem, just me and my college girlfriend in
the shower smiling at each other. things ended poorly between us, mostly, i think,
because we took so long to finally break up, but during the time when this poem
was written, it was a really sweet relationship. i like the intimacy of this piece, that
image of her catching me checking her out and smiling because it totally turns her
on that i am checking her out and getting turned on, and she’s checking me out,
too, and there’s no shame. there’s just love, acceptance, desire.
1,000 secret things
AN awful lot of demure. that was my college girlfriend kimberly. she was sweet and
shy, but that girl had a mischievous streak. she was really bright and had a lovely
laugh. when she smiled, she showed all of her teeth, and she had wonderfully full
lips. i could always tell when she was upset because those pillowy lips would press
themselves thin. she was prone to urinary tract infections, and i could always tell
when she was starting to get one because her pee smelled like freshly-mown grass.
i could tell when she wasn’t really in the mood for sex because her labia would be
sort of puckery and tight instead of full and loose like an open mouth. she used to
say the taste of my cum changed depending on what i had eaten that day. this kind
of secret physical intimacy has always been a sweet part of a close relationship,
how you can know each other so well you can detect their mental and emotional
state just by looking them, by smelling them, by tasting them. i wrote this during
the tail end of our official relationship, just before we broke up for good and
entered the booty call phase of our time together. here is wisdom: if you’re still
having break-up sex two years after you broke up, you haven’t really broken up.
catching the bus
Dumb old navy time ended for me on july 16, 1991, and all i wanted to do was
go to college and be an english teacher. so my first semester of university classes
aimed in that direction, but i met a cute girl on the very first day of the very
first class i took that changed my direction. she was on the staff of the student
newspaper, and she was so smart and so cute, i could hardly take it. so i switched
majors and began studying journalism, and i became the arts and entertainment
editor so i could get the chance to know her better. that’s a long story right there. a
long one i’ll put into a collection of essays after i finish this one. what i’m trying to
say is that i had been writing newspaper columns for quite some time, and when
i transferred to chico state university, i continued writing columns for the opinion
section. numerous performance pieces i’ve done over the years started out as
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newspaper columns, including this one about the realization that my relationship
with my college girlfriend kimberly was edging toward an end. this piece sort of
disappeared for a while, but i rediscovered it while putting together my greatest
misses collection. it’s not really poetry, but i think it’s poetic. i hate that time when
you know you’ve got two weeks, maybe three, before you’re gonna get dumped,
and you feel the growing distance, but you don’t know what to do about it.
painfully white
Barely remembered poem found hiding on my hard drive. this was one of the
first times i tried to write about race stuff, and i am not sure it was successful at
all. i kinda feel what it’s trying to say, even though it’s flawed. growing up white
and seeing all the kids with discernible culture bond through shared experiences
makes you wish you had some of that, you know? i don’t walk into a room full of
white people and think to myself, ahh, my people. i grew up in an area of central
california that had a lot of racism, and i heard these things from my family all the
time, and yet i loved richard pryor and the comedic depiction of black culture on
the television, shows like sanford and son, the jeffersons, and what’s happenin’?
one of my best friends growing up was the only black kid in our white bread
neighbourhood, a kid named walter stuckey who i used to call butch. he would
end up introducing me to the first girl i ever had sex with, so i owe him a lot.
poetry widow
I often caught myself writing sappy love poems for my college girlfriend kimberly
when i did something lame and hurtful. it was cheaper than flowers, you know?
toward the end of our relationship, she would eye me suspiciously when i gave her
a poem, waiting to hear my latest excuse for messing up. i performed this piece for
the first time at the ’98 finals for the san francisco poetry slam, just a few days after
i wrote it. everyone told me not to debut an untested piece at a finals that would
pick the official slam team, but i did it anyway. i cried during the performance
because kimberly was in the audience, and she cried, too. afterwards, i waded
through the crowd and hugged her as everyone cheered. i got the highest score
of the night. it was like a scene from fame. this piece is inspired by the etheridge
knight poem feeling fucked up. it’s sort of my version of it, replacing the drugs in
his poem with poetry. it also riffs a bit on ginsberg’s howl with the nothing is holy
parts. i quoted my own poem real live über grrrl in the middle of the poem as an
example of the shit the poet has written to impress his girlfriend.
ode to a plaster casting
The college girlfriend i dated for about three years shared a best friend with me
named vandy, this really cool artsy poet chick who loved julie london and drove
a classic car from the early ’60s and had a tuxedo cat named big daddy who may
have been the inspiration for my stage name. for a surprise birthday gift one year,
vandy made a plaster casting of a nude kimberly, then she hung it on my wall
while i was away. it was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen, and kimberly had
actually smiled the whole time the plaster was setting so the sculpture would smile
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at me from the wall. and then we broke up, and i had to have this plaster casting of
my naked ex-girlfriend on my wall staring down at me all the time reminding me of
how she wasn’t there anymore. i took it down and gave it back to vandy.
wilson road
Exact memory, this poem, a snapshot that makes me smile. i can still hear the
spoon on the side of the pot as my mom made oatmeal. she was only 18 when she
had me, so we kinda grew up at the same time. when my mom was the same age
i am as i write this, i was already 26. holy crap! just a little number from a creative
writing class around the fall of ’98, i believe. i like it.
lydia and the duck
My updated version of a famous william butler yeats poem called leda and the
swan about the greek god zeus disguising himself as a great white bird and raping
some chick named leda. apparently, it’s an ancient story, and poor leda bore
several of zeus’s human offspring from all the feathered fucking. the yeats poem
is rather horrifying because it describes in detail how this swan literally rapes this
woman. i wrote a new version of it with a barstool floozy named lydia replacing
the victimized leda, and since lydia not all that bright, she figures zeus is actually a
duck instead of a swan. either way, she gets her revenge on the quacky bastard. i
half-remembered this poem in the back of my head, but i was never really game on
including it here, but then i found it again, and i found myself giggling in spite of
how stupid it is, so what the hell, i typed that shit up and stuck it in.
dreams
At this point, i can only hope you have no idea who michael bolton is/was. it all
started with the very first line about dreaming of a fishing trip with miles davis.
that’s all it was for a long time, just this line in my head. it made no sense, and it
hinted at no rest of the story, yet it was funny to me for some reason. it had some
kind of resonance, so it kept spinning around in my head. finally, after carrying it
around with me for about a year, the whole thing just came spilling out sometime
around ’98. i wonder if people still understand about kenny g and michael bolton.
it still gets a laugh when i do it, but i would imagine i’d have to freshen up those
references after a while. miles and coltrane and monk? those cats will be eternal.
michael bolton? kenny g? maybe not so much.
immortalized in celluloid
Real people never really measure up to the characters in movies, who are just so
much more interesting and beautiful and dramatic and funny. a really good way
of knowing i am really depressed is by noticing how many movies i am seeing at
any given time. the more movies and dvds, the more time i am spending alone,
the more i am trying to escape something or get through some unhappy phase.
like right now. as i write this, i am holed up at my sister’s place in wichita, kansas,
and i don’t have a penny to my name, like, literally, i am completely broke, and
i’m depressed as fuck about it, and i am withdrawing from the people i know, and
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i am watching the hell out of some movies, man, just downloading them five and
six at a time and watching them until three in the morning. fuck me. while i was
crashed for eight months in seattle in 2001, i was a movie-watching motherfucker,
man, renting dvds by the fistfuls and catching movies in theatres nearly every
friday night, mostly all by myself. it’s easy to yearn for escape into that world
where everything always works out, we all fall in love, everything is awesome,
and the drama we experience along the way only makes the happy ending more
worthwhile. i think i first wrote this in ’98 or so, then i dusted it off in seattle
in spring of 2001 and cleaned it up a bit, and just this year, 2011, i added some
lines to it as i was putting this book together. i rarely perform this poem for some
reason, but it’s not because i don’t like it. there are just others that i like better i
guess. maybe i’ll perform it more now that i have added to it.
holiest of holies
Kids do silly shit like flipping through dictionaries when they’re bored, at least i
did, and still do, and i find all kinds of interesting words and concepts. one was
the idea of the sanctum sanctorum, which is defined by wikipedia as the holiest
place of the tabernacle of ancient israel and later the temples in jerusalem. i’m
not exactly sure what that means, but i take it to mean the holiest of holy places for
judaism. the phrase can also be used to describe a very private and personal place
of contemplation, sort of like superman’s fortress of solitude. i have always felt my
head and my notebooks were my holiest of holy places, so i started using sanctum
sanctorum to label the creative things i distributed, whether they be mixtapes or
zines or books of poetry. so, yeah, this poem is about losing interest in writing,
about looking at the mountain of notebooks in your closet and feeling like you will
never write again. this was the very very last last poem added at the last minute to
this collection because i don’t really like it that much. it was written for a creative
writing class and quickly forgotten until now. eh... it filled a page. i don’ tend to
write original poetry in my notebooks, i just use them to read from at shows.
chain record store blues
Sometimes i yell myself hoarse on this one. i declawed and defanged this piece so
it could be included in my greatest hits collection, and i’ve regretted it ever since.
that book was specifically meant for high school and college speech students, so
i took out all the cuss words and references to sex, stuff that could get a kid or
a teacher in trouble. but i discovered that my rewritten version totally missed
the point of this piece, which is to be over the top and ripe with profanity. it’s
supposed to offer images so outrageous that you just shake your head and laugh at
how audacious it is. the obscenity is the point, is what makes it funny, is what the
speaker is using to express his utter discomfort at being made to feel like a cog in
a soulless machine and an over-the-hill has-been too old and too lame to be cool in
the eyes of his co-workers. you can never be cool enough, because there’s always
someone who won’t allow you to be one of the cool kids. erasing the obscenity
from this piece makes the piece pointless and lame. i’ve returned it to the version
i use when performing it, cuss words and all. and yeah, i used to work in a chain
O
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record store, and i used to hate the christmas season. dear god, i want to get every
member of mannheim steamroller and beat them senseless. youtube the video for
joy to the world, and you can hate them, too! so fucking awful!
wormboy
I will never know why exactly i wrote this piece. it’s all about making an audience
laugh and groan at the same time. it started as wormgirl and was meant to be a
funny variation of the i will love you no matter what poems that everyone writes,
like, i would still love you if your face got burned in a car accident, but i just took
it way too far. it became so ugly and offensive i couldn’t do it on stage anymore
without people thinking i was a misogynist pig. when i switched it to wormboy,
however, it suddenly became hilarious, especially when targeting someone in the
audience. i have officially retired this poem, and i will never perform it again.
there’s an audio and video floating around of it, so go look it up if you like.
fuckety fuck-fuck
Well, christ, i can’t believe i am including this, my most notorious performance
poem of all time. my book will probably get banned because of its inclusion. i was
delighted at the outraged hoopla surrounding my wormboy poem, so i decided
to one-up it with this rant brimming with nazis, cub scouts, dead babies, the
pope, and princess diana performing heinous acts of bestiality, necrophilia, and
coprophagy. the first time i busted out this wretched piece of filth, i was cut off
halfway through by the host and banned from the venue. people hissed at me as i
left. the second time i tried to read it, some dude from the audience stormed the
stage and threatened to kick my ass for the dead soldier line, and the audience
was cheering him on. some girl in the back of the audience was crying hysterically
because her brother had died in iraq. the last time i performed it, and this was
years ago, i pulled down my cargo shorts and literally took a shit on the stage at the
end of it, which had been the plan all along. people were howling! i got in so much
trouble! i’ve never seen a poem tweak raw nerves as much this spew of obscenity.
the incredibly foul language is merely one delicious level, but it goes deeper than
curses and tweaks every taboo subject and gives them a nipple pinch. it’s meant to
offend everybody. i’ve always freestyled this poem, adding shocking lines as they
occurred to me, so this is the first time i’ve typed these words. i haven’t performed
it in years, and no video of it exists, so i had to type it from memory. i think it’s
funny to say such gloriously offensive things because it mocks the sensitivities of
americans, who watch bloodshed in movies without blinking an eye. this poem is
an easy target for those who need a scapegoat for everything, and i was eager to
provide it. this poem is a masterpiece of yuck, and i’ll never perform it again.
hungry poet, will write for food
About welfare i knew nothing until i took a journalism class at chico state university
and wrote a story about it. i decided i would apply for food stamps just to see what
it was like. the funny thing was that every time i went to the welfare office, i saw
someone i knew, and they were all poets from the local community. i qualified
B
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for food stamps, so hell yeah i got on the dole! i visited a soup kitchen, too, and
would eat there every now and then because it was just so interesting to be there.
plus, shoot, there were a few times where it was the only way i could eat that day.
money was freaking tight, yo. ain’t no shame. shoot, this one time i was so hurting
for cash and was out of food completely, so i went to the austin poetry slam with
the idea that i could win and use the prize money to buy food, but i fell short of
making the final round. oh, it sucked, but then they had this random raffle thing
where the winner got a whole case of top ramen, and i freakin’ won! i ate freakin’
ramen noodles that whole week until i got paid again. thank you, poetry! poetry
has pretty much been feeding me since 1997. that and my parents. :(
steeple stabbed and hell bound
Noooo! so goth! so whatever, dude! but knucklebones is such a cool word. this
poem is supposed to be this metaphor depicting the raging depression that comes
after a huge fight with your girlfriend that’s so bad you think you surely must be
getting ready to break up, and that mean old dementor behind the wheel starts
screeching toward you to make everything suck. the only thing i like about this crap
is the line about his headlights cut the night like a knife through a black velvet
dress, which is, come on, that’s some good-ass writin’. that line is all that’s left of
a discarded poem i once wrote about a roaming serial killer. it was so yucky and
misogynistic, i got loads of complaints when i published it in my thrust magazine.
it was gross, sure, but i wasn’t freakin’ advocating killing people or torturing
women, i was merely exploring the mindset of some psycho freak who would do
that kinda stuff. i was fascinated by serial killers at the time, and i actually had a
complete collection of serial killer trading cards with stats on the back. they were
quickly banned all over the country, but i bought a complete set and made a serial
killer calendar out of them one year. i thought briefly about including that poem
in this collection, but it’s so vile! i should find it and just add it here as a special
bonus feature, huh? let me go see if i can find it, because it really is that bad. i have
a box of shit in my mom’s house next door to my sister’s house, which is where
i am as i type this. i will be right back. (long pause). okay, i’m back. it’s twenty
minutes later, and i found every single issue of thrust magazine except for the
one with that awful serial killer poem. it’s probably for the better, because really, it
was bloody awful. in fact, that poem got the first issue of thrust magazine banned
from one of only two coffeehouses in my hometown. the good news is that i just
found two more things i didn’t have on my hard drive, a decent short story named
p.o.v. and a god-awful poem named cut-up poem (bactrim is a sulfa drug ) that i
will spare us both. i like p.o.v., though, so i am going to take a break from these
liner notes and type it in! woo-hoo! (longer pause) it’s a couple months later, and
i am pleased to say i finally found that awful serial killer poem! it was lurking on
my hard drive in some kind of ancient unreadable document format, and i had to
use openoffice to sort of translate it. here it is in all its wretched glory! as i said,
it’s awful and it’s a persona piece, so don’t be all thinking it’s about me! 95 on the
freeway 3 a.m. no traffic just me and my headlights cutting the night like a knife
through a black velvet dress one gloved hand on the steering wheel the other on
I
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my stick shift i’m looking for someone who’s looking for a ride i’m looking for a
hitchhiker with a knapsack and a tight crack perched upon two longer-than-thou
legs spray-painted with rip-kneed blue jeans i’m looking for that sweet yellow
smell a woman excretes when she’s afraid i want her to scream to scream as
loud as she likes with her hands tied over her head and her bare legs wrapped
around my waste i’m gonna go grave-diggin’ in the fresh flesh of her loins and for
ten-fifteen minutes i’m not gonna want anymore i’m gonna have i’m gonna take
i’m gonna feel then as I dump her steaming remains into a ditch at the side of
the road somewhere outside some shit-kicker little town i’m gonna think about
jacking off as i drive to the nearest motel and take a blistering hot shower and a
15-hour nap before hitting that blacktop and doing it all over again. yuck!
her smile, like knives
Those poor english lit. majors and their terribly dry survey classes, you know, with
the thick norton anthology made of bible-thin pages? i was zoning out during one
at chico state and looking at this cute girl across the room, and i couldn’t help
noticing her lips were so thin, like little razor blades. out came the pen, and by the
time class was over, i had a new poem. she was a really nice girl, though, so i never
showed her this evil little poem based on her smile. god, can you imagine? i once
tried to turn this piece into an indie rock song, but it didn’t work out. i am just not
a singer. singing in front of people drives me crazy with stage fright, but i still try
now and again. i have this one song called i love jew about how much i dig jewish
girls, and i have this other one called hey, han solo! that is sung to the tune of the
banana boat song. neither of them will be appearing in this book, which might be
a shame, but... yeah... i just shouldn’t write songs, and i definitely shouldn’t sing
them. go on youtube, and you can see them both, and i’ll give you a dollar if you
make a video of yourself singing them. a whole dollar!
incantation 1: the odyssey
✮❁◆▲❅❁▼❉■❇ ❁■❄ ❅❍❂❁❒❒❁▲▲❉■❇✎ ❉ ❈❁▼❅ ▼❈❉▲
❐❏❅❍✎ ❉▼ ❍❁❋❅▲ ❍❅ ❃❒❉■❇❅✎ ❉▼ ❉▲ ❁ ❆❁❉●❅❄
❐❏❅❍ ◗❒❉▼▼❅■ ❆❏❒ ▲❏❍❅ ❃❒❅❁▼❉❖❅ ◗❒❉▼❉■❇
❃●❁▲▲ ❁▼ ❃❈❉❃❏ ▲▼❁▼❅ ◆■❉❖❅❒▲❉▼❙✎ ❉▼ ◗❁▲ ❍❙
❆❉❒▲▼ ❁▼▼❅❍❐▼ ❁▼ ◗❒❉▼❉■❇ ❁❂❏◆▼ ❍❙ ❒❅❄■❅❃❋
❈❅❒❉▼❁❇❅✌ ❁■❄ ▼❈❁▼ ●❅❁❄ ▼❏ ▼❈❅ ■❅❘▼ ▼◗❏
❐❏❅❍▲✌ ❂❏▼❈ ❏❆ ◗❈❉❃❈ ❉ ●❉❋❅✎
incantation 2: the home front
Even though it never scores well at poetry slams, i still like performing this piece,
mostly for it’s rhythmic style. i like the images, too, like the bit about bo’s body
arcing through the air like a dying gull. my family always lived at the outskirts of
bakersfield, right on the edge of vast dirt fields where new housing tracts were
being built, so there were always wooden frames erected that would soon be
houses and deep ditches for water pipes and stuff. i used to go out there with my
german shepherd chinook and pretend we were the only survivors of a nuclear
O
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holocaust. the only difference between this poem and my real life is the presence
of kids to play with, which i rarely had. i just hung out in the trenches with my
dog and pretended. it was more fun alone, anyway, since kids are freakin’ mean.
huge snowdrifts of tumbleweeds would pile up as big as houses against these brick
walls built in the middle of some empty field, and i made little forts inside them,
like, there would be a secret tumbleweed that revealed a path through the stickers
leading to a dug-out area with a lawn chair and a piece of plywood for a roof. i
would hide in there and read comic books. some mean kids riding bmx bikes saw
me get inside the fort once, and they surrounded it and threatened to burn it
unless i came out and let them take it over. if you’ve ever seen a tumbleweed on
fire, you know it takes about, oh, two seconds to explode into flame, so i got the
hell out of there. fuckers. for years after, the sight of a bmx bike scared me.
incantation 3: the sweet mysteries of hot peach cobbler
I never thought this one would cause such controversy! both my grandmas told
me at gunpoint to stress that this poem is about neither of them, not even the
slightest bit. sure, one has blue eyes like the character in the poem, but that’s
it. the rest is all made up. there, grandmas, i told them. this poem came to me
as i was falling asleep one night in late ’99. i was going to blow it off and write it
down in the morning, but huge chunks started disappearing as i faded, so i rolled
over and wrote it down on a scrap of paper in the dark next to my bed. by the
morning, i had completely forgotten it. had i not seen the scrap several days later,
it would’ve been another poem that got away. the funny thing is, i had to make up
the ingredients for the peach cobbler off the top of my head as i wrote it, and some
older lady in my creative writing class told me i needed to use ice water instead of
boiling water for the crust. i asked my mom’s mom how she made peach cobbler,
and she was all, “you just pour a can of del monte peaches into a frozen pie crust!
takes two minutes!” i was all... ugh... so i invented a more appetizing, and poetic,
recipe for the peach cobbler in the poem. even though the character is made up, i
tried to capture some of the redneck essence of my grandparents.
leaving las vegas
Getting zines and publishing zines used to be my favourite thing. i did an internship
at the reno gazette-journal during the summer of ’99 and worked as the assistant
entertainment editor. the editor was a zine publisher i knew who put out happy
not stupid, one of my favourite personal zines of all time, and he was a fan of my
zines, too. the two of us put together a 28-page tabloid insert every week. it was
just the two of us, writing stories and headlines and cutlines and assigning stories
to freelancers and arranging photo shoots. a month and a half into the internship,
the editor took a week’s vacation, leaving me to put the whole section together
myself, which is hella unusual for a summer intern still in college. i did such a
good job, they offered me the position full time. however, toward the end of the
summer, i performed at the national poetry slam in chicago as part of the san
francisco poetry slam team, and we were the only undefeated team out of 48 and
took the top spot. after performing my work in front of 3,000 people at the finals, it
G
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was very difficult to go back to cubicle life, so i turned down the job, dropped out
of journalism school, and became a touring poet. this piece was originally called
leaving reno, but i changed it because i thought las vegas was a better metaphor as
a city. i stole lines from a newspaper column i wrote about a trip to vegas i took in
the early ’90s with a cute girl i was dating named robin, and i finished it all up in a
skanky little apartment i rented for the summer of ’99. when i look at this poem, i
think of my kitty thelonious, who would allow me to put him into the tub when i
took a bath. isn’t that weird for a cat? he would just stand there in the warm water
up to his neck, and we would chill there for a while. i also think of jennifer lynn
o’hare, the girl i was dating over that summer who lived in my college town of
chico, which was about three hours away. i would visit her on weekends, and we’d
go on poetry roadtrips to the bay area. all that stuff is in between the lines.
poem for a friend
Having a dear and trusted friend means getting an ass-whuppin’ now and then.
early in ’99, i was going to kick some poetry at a venue that was primarily black,
and i tried to write a new poem that would appeal specifically to that audience,
or, at least, to what i thought that audience would like. my friend, who was black,
looked at the poem i was about to deliver, and he tore me a new ass for trying
to pander to the audience. he told me to stop trying to impress people with how
down i was and just deliver my truth, which is all any audience ever wants. i ended
up doing ¡the wussyboy manifesto!, which is about as true to me as i can get, and
it went over great. lesson learned. this poem used to contain the name of that
friend. when i was invited to perform for the 5th season of def poetry, this is the
poem i was asked to perform, but the subject of the poem asked me to remove his
name. i had already submitted it with the original title, but i asked the producers
to change the name. they didn’t. when the poem aired using my friend’s name, he
was so pissed he ended our friendship. he hated this poem, saying none of it had
anything to do with him, that it was all made up, that it presented him as some
noble black man stereotype, that it made me look like a clown. i continued to
perform it, and i’ve quite often gotten amazing responses with it from both black
and white audiences, but i have now retired it. i just don’t trust it anymore.
fratboy
Back in college, i would take creative writing classes to counteract my lack of
motivation. this one came during one such class at chico state university when we
were studying different types of poetry, maybe fall of ’99. we had just read this
list poem called fast talking woman by anne waldman. i wrote this piece the next
day, cannibalizing the best lines from a previously discarded poem i’d written on
napkins in a bar once. chico state is rife with the most blunt frat boys imaginable,
so i conjured this image of some frat boy with his thesaurus trying to write a poem
for his sorority girlfriend. he tries to be sweet at first, but then his true piggishness
is revealed. frat boys are genetically incapable of not beating my ass, or at least
trying to. my very existence seems to offend them. that’s why i carry mace, and
i mean the medieval sort. fucking frat boy douchebag assholes. such tools. when
R
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i was on tour in the summer of 2010 with my road partner lennon simpson, we
would spy some asshole businessman frat boy lookin’ dude coming our way, and
as he passed, we would mention the name of some tool, like, “say, you still got my
screwdriver?” it always cracked us up.
¡the wussyboy manifesto!
Oh yeah, here’s the big one, the one that made a name for this short little fat kid
named big poppa e, the one that put him on the map, the one that inspired him
to turn his back on his dream job as an assistant entertainment editor at a big
newspaper, the one that drove him to drop out of journalism school, the one
that gave him the final push toward living the rest of his life on the spoken word
highway as a vagabond poet. this is my stairway to heaven, my hotel california,
my smells like teen spirit, my greatest of all hits. if my tombstone will say anything
at all, it will say he wrote ¡the wussyboy manifesto! i had come up with the idea of
using wussyboy as an empowering term a few years before in an opinion column
i wrote for the student newspaper at chico state university. the meat of the poem
started as notes in the margins of a notebook i used for a communications class. it
was simply a chance to write a comical ode to effeminate men, a championing of
the underdog on par with that famous comic of a mouse flipping its middle finger
at a diving eagle about to snatch him up with outstretched claws, a defiant fuck
you before being eaten alive. this joint was an instant hit and became something
far bigger than i ever expected. i busted out this poem on the finals stage at the
1999 national poetry slam as part of the winning team from san francisco, and
it was the first funny poem of the night. it came after three depressing political
pieces in a row, so the audience was ready for release, and this poem gave it to
them. the response was uproarious. a video of that very performance can be found
on my youtube page if you want to see it for yourself. three thousand people went
apeshit. it was amazing, definitely one of the top five best moments of my life.
since this was the tenth anniversary of the national poetry slam, reporters from
major newspapers all over the country were covering the event, and numerous
reporters used this poem in their lead paragraphs. it was quoted in the new york
times, the washington post, the chicago sun-times, the utne reader, the sydney
morning herald, the ottawa citizen, the london daily news... shit, i got calls from
freakin’ 20/20 and the bbc. i will never forget getting a call from the los angeles
times. the reporter wanted to do a story on me, and he seemed hell-bent on
making this poem seem like a nationwide revolution. i was in austin, texas, at the
south by southwest music festival with a bunch of poets from around the country,
and i was surrounded by a number of them when i took the call. right off the bat,
the guy is like, “so, as the leader of this new men’s movement... blah blah blah.” so
i gave him what he wanted. i told him all about the poem, and how i came up with
it, and my theories on masculinity in america. when he asked if he could speak
with other members of the movement, i looked over at my friend mike henry,
winked at him, and gave the reporter his number. thirty seconds after i hung up,
mikey’s cell phone rang, and there was mikey telling the reporter that his life had
no meaning until he discovered the wussyboy way. then mike gave him our friend
A
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eitan kadosh’s number as the los angeles representative, and eitan’s phone rang
thirty seconds later. he told the reporter he had given up a teaching position to
become a wussyboy full time. oh, it was rich, and the reporter even talked with
kimberly, my ex-girlfriend at the time, who had allowed me to forward my mail to
her while i was on tour. when the article came out, it said she ran my mailroom.
brilliant! here is an actual sentence from that article: visualize a match tossed on
the dry tender of american masculinity, with big poppa e as the match, his win
at last year’s national poetry slam the toss, and hundreds of men resonating
to his words the tinder. in the freakin’ los angeles times! go to my website if you
don’t believe me! the article is posted under press quotes, and you can read the
whole thing! i even got a call from scholastic, inc., which you may know as the
american publisher of freakin’ harry potter. they asked me to do a series of books
with a wussyboy theme. youth literature for girls covered a widely-varied range
of topics, they said, but the books for adolescent boys and younger were just
about stupid shit like sports. i pitched them the idea of writing a diary in the first
person of a kid in school dealing with the bullies who picked on him because of
his wussiness, and i suggested that i also include little drawings in the style of my
little guy that i had been using as a logo for years. you can see a copy of the little
guy over my bio in the back of this very book. i was so excited, i could puke, but
then... man... i don’t know what happened... i blew it off. i got depressed and
lost my way and blew it off. i got distracted by my mess of a life, and i never did
anything grand with the whole wussyboy thing. i had been given a huge boost by
all the initial publicity, but then... i just walked away. fast-forward a number of
years later, and i see a book in a mall bookstore, and guess what it’s called? diary
of a wimpy kid. guess what the art looks like? my little guy. guess who publishes
it? scholastic, inc. i just about had a fit. but then... you know... shit... i didn’t do
anything with it. who am i to blame the guy who ran with it? i have often thought
about suing them, but what good would that do? like i have any money to do that
anyway. fuck it, i had my chance, and i let it slip through my fingers. what else can
you do but move on? and then an interesting thing started happening. this poem
got picked up by the community of high school and college students who perform
at speech competitions, and they breathed new life into my little poem all on their
own. i get emails all the time from kids who have read the poem and performed
it in competition, and that really makes me feel great. so many young people
have done this piece and still do that i have pretty much retired the poem. i don’t
perform it anymore. i am 44 years old, and i wrote that poem twelve years ago. it
now belongs to the teenagers who are empowered by it, not me, so that’s where it
stays. this poem changed everything, and i will be forever grateful for it.
deathwish
Represent silver kitty patronus! if my broom closet were infested with a boggart,
and if i were to open the broom closet and the boggart were to leap at me disguised
as my greatest fear, i would see the grim reaper reaching a skeletal claw toward
me. and then i would point my wand at it and shout riddikulus and turn it into
a nekkid george w. bush with a carrot in his butt. if you have no idea what i’m
P
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talking about, then you are not down with dumbledore’s army. the thought of my
mortality is the most horrifying thing i can possibly conjure. perhaps it’s because i
didn’t grow up with any religious belief in an afterlife or a patient and loving god,
but death scares the shit out of me. not the pain part, the actual non-existence
part, the idea that one day i will just... be... gone... and there won’t be any thinking
or feeling or seeing or hearing, there will be nothing. i will just cease to exist. even
writing this right now, this very second, i feel faint. the only way i can handle the
idea of death is by driving it from my mind and replacing it with something else,
like a glowing silver cat patronus driving off a soul-sucking dementor. the process
of dying is going to suck. it’s going to be so scary. i just hope i’m not alone. i want
to be in a loving relationship and have her there holding my hand and telling me
it’s okay to let go. i don’t want to die alone. i don’t want the first indication that
i’ve died to be an awful smell noticed by neighbours. how many years do i have?
i’m 44. will i make it to 80? my dad’s dad died at 58, and my mom’s dad died at 61,
and my dad’s kid brother died at 52. expecto patronum!
crushworthy
Such an easy write. i penned this poem for a girl named jennifer lynn o’hare. she
just showed up one day at the door to the creative writing class i was attending at
chico state university. she waited for me to come out and then introduced herself,
asked me if i was the guy who hosted the poetry slams, asked if i could get her in
since it was a bar and she was 19. she was so cute i could hardly breathe. kimberly
had broken up with me again so she could see what dating other people was like,
again, so i was single. jen showed up at the slam, and i snuck her in, and i couldn’t
stop looking at her from the stage as i hosted, trying in vain to keep focused on
introducing the next poet and keeping the energy levels of the room up. at the
end of the show, she gave me her phone number, said she was having a party for
her 20th birthday in a few days, and she asked me to come. i said i would love to.
i wrote this very poem that night, contemplating how much i wanted her to dig
me. i went to the party, and it was awesome, and at the end of the night it was
just the two of us. we kissed on her futon, and it was amazing, just perfect, like
making love with our mouths. i told her i had written a poem about how i wanted
her to like me, and she ran into her room and brought out a poem she had written
about how much she had wanted me to like her. and that was it. we dated from
that moment until the end of the summer. she was my constant companion at
poetry events, both in chico and in the bay area, and we took lots of roadtrips in
our time together. we listened to a lot of the dave matthews band during out trips.
she was way cool. at the end of the summer, we decided to call it quits and become
friends. it was meant to be a summer fling, and it was, and it was lovely. i went back
to kimberly, she went back to her ex. jen was lovely. when i perform this piece,
i always do it as a group with the other two poems i wrote about jen, which are
moonlight through mini-blinds and there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her
smile that will never be filled. i tell the whole story about our relationship from
the beginning to the tragic end. if you go to my youtube page, you can hear all
about it with these three poems. it’s a great story, but oh how i hate the ending.
H
.
moonlight through mini-blinds
This is the second of only three poems i was able to write about jennifer lynn
o’hare. she died in a very tragic and wholly unexpected car crash on september
10, 1999. this poem had been written before her death while we were having an
intimate moment in march or april of 1999. and the moon was shining through
the blinds and casting stripes across her naked form, and the sight of her lithesome
body stretched out before me was so beautiful, i almost ached. right in the middle
of this, uhm, intimate moment, the words of this poem came to me, so i wrote the
poem on the small of jen’s back with a black felt-tip marker from her bedside table.
probably the sexiest thing i’ve ever done. my god, she was beautiful.
there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile that will never be filled
Oh god, i never expected to write this one. i can’t believe it’s been more than a
decade since jen died. once we started dating, she was always asking me, “when
are you going to write another poem about me?” i would hem and haw and say
something about poetry not being fast food you could just order up hot and fresh
at the drive-thru, but i always told her that more poetry would come in its own
sweet time. i never in a million years would’ve guessed the next poem i would
write about jen would be this one. i spent the months following jen’s death in a
fit of writer’s block, not being able to write anything, but then, just a week before
my first national tour in the summer of 2000, i was finally able to write this poem.
and i was finally able to cry. i once saw the spitting image of jen dancing to a band
in austin, texas, during the intermission of a roller derby match. same hair. same
lithesome figure. looked just like her, only instead of 20, like the last time i had
seen her, she looked 30, which was just about what she would’ve been had she
been allowed to live. it was haunting to see a glimpse of this life she never had.
jen’s mother has heard this poem, and so has her sister, and they both like it very
much. it makes me feel good to say her name out loud, and it makes me feel even
better when i hear about a student somewhere performing this piece in a speech
competition. i would like to think jen would be delighted. she was such a cool
chick. the day after she died, we all held a vigil at her apartment, and i remember
collapsing onto her bed and breathing in her essence from her pillow. so sad.
wired
Connecting people through technology is pretty freakin’ cool. the internet is
amazing, but i think it can also be a very lonely, impersonal, alienating force in
someone’s life as well. social media can’t replace real social interaction, the eye
contact, the pauses in conversation, the walks in the park, the smell, the feel, the
taste of an actual flesh and blood relationship. having access to all these forms
of long-distance communication only serves to highlight the loneliness one feels
when there is still no one to talk to, even with all this fucking technology. i wrote
this in a creative writing class at chico state university around ’98 or so, then i
dusted it off and spruced it up while in seattle in the summer of 2001. i further
updated the references for this book in 2011. i wonder when something else will
come along and replace facebook. i wonder what it will look like.
I
.
presque vu
Aching for inspiration? hit the national poetry slam. this one came to me as i was
watching a canadian poet named shane koyczan take the individual championship
at the 2000 national poetry slam in providence, rhode island. he was so fucking
amazing and passionate and poetic and real, so very fucking real, that tears streamed
down my face. oh my goodness, i was so moved, and i wrote this poem in my
notebook shortly thereafter. the title comes from that tip of your tongue sensation
when you know you know something, but you just can’t seem to remember it, you
just remember remembering it, it’s there somewhere but you can’t seem to find it.
i feel like that a lot, like i am so close to something amazing.
rats in the ivy
Love affairs in college never seem to last. even though the relationship with my
college girlfriend kimberly started out so strong, it ended up being so on-again offagain. had we called it quits after the first two years, which were really awesome,
we might still be friends now, but instead we did the whole break-up sex thing
for another two years. she wanted to date other people, but when there were no
people around to date, she would rely on me for comfort and warmth. when new
people finally did come into the picture, it was hard. kimberly would get jealous
when i saw someone else, and she would utterly blow off our friendship when she
was seeing someone. it all came to a head one day, and we had a screaming row
over the phone that officially ended our connection completely. i haven’t spoken
to her since. this poem is about trying the kick the habit of a flawed relationship
that you know is bad for you yet is still hard to move past. the title comes from
something kimberly’s mom used to tell her as a child in order to keep her from
playing in the ivy in their front yard. she would tell her there were rats in the ivy,
and i always thought it sounded like a lunatic: rats in the ivy! rats in the ivy!
pushing buttons
Lowering myself, yes, but i kinda like it. this poet i knew named kenny mostern
in san francisco was slamming against me one night in ’99 or ’00 at the berkeley
poetry slam, and he bet me a dollar that he would outscore me. i told him not
only could i outscore him, but i could write a piece off the top of my head right
then and there and score a perfect 30. he stifled a laugh and bet me a dollar. when
he scored a 29.6, which is pretty damned close to perfect, he was sure he had me
beat. nope, sad to say, this poem scored a 30 it’s first time out and garnered mad
applause. the smile i gave kenny as he reluctantly gave me a rumpled dollar bill
was probably the shit-eatin’-est grin ever grinned, and kenny called me a fucking
whore. this poem is such a shameless display of button pushing, and i often serve
it up as a mocking example of how easy it is to write a crowd-pleasing slam piece
full of nothing more than applause lines. the phrase crowd-pleasing is such a slight
in the poetry slam community, as if a poet who can read the energy of a crowd
— the make-up of the audience, the sensibilities of the judges, what has scored
well already — and deliver the perfect poem to rouse the spirits of the room is
somehow aiming for the lowest common denominator, and i think that’s bullshit.
C
.
even though this poem is shameless button pushing, i believe every line of it, and
i would never read it if i didn’t. if i find something to say that causes a massive
positive response from the audience, who’s to dismiss it as crowd-pleasing, as
if that’s a slight, as if you have to horrify an audience or obscure the meaning
of your poem through verbal acrobatics in order for it to merit the label of art. i
think finding a universal language that can move masses of disparate people is a
truly amazing talent. say what you will about james cameron’s avatar, but he was
able to craft a movie that moved people from all over the world regardless of their
language or culture or ethnicity, and that is really something. anyway, this piece
is not the most challenging poem in the world, and yes, it’s shameless, but i don’t
think that’s necessarily a bad thing. i have faith in people. i believe in the wisdom
of crowds. if an audience suspects you are pandering to them, they will reject you,
but sometimes you wanna see a movie with lots of explosions. i hope this poem is
more die hard than transformers, but who knows? who really fucking cares?
boojiboy
This poem sucks. i kinda hate it. it’s just like... it’s a slam poem about slam poets
who write knee-jerk political poems full of half-assed bullet points, but really,
when you look at it, that’s exactly what this piece is, just a bunch of half-assed
bullet points, only it pretends to be more righteous than that. it’s everything it
rails against. i guess what i’m trying to say in the poem is that it takes more than
a bumper sticker to change the world, that buying a bumper sticker tricks us into
thinking we’ve actually made a difference, that we are aligning ourselves with
activists around the world, but it’s just a piece of sticky vinyl unless you actually
do something to bring the slogan on that sticker to life. this poem is nothing
more than a bumper sticker that says bumper stickers are stupid. i never perform
this piece anymore because i think it’s lame. at least i try to call myself out in the
end. the name should be spelled bougie, as in bourgeois, but i spell it the way
i do — booji — as a nod to one my favourite bands of all time, devo, who had a
character in their videos called booji boy. however, they said it like boogie boy, as
in the movie boogie nights or the classic hip-hop act boogie down productions.
receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart
Had many tour partners, but never as cool as matthew john conley. he told me a
joke once. a guy walked up to a supermarket cashier and began placing items on
the little conveyor belt for the cashier to scan. there was a 6-inch frozen pizza, a six
pack of beer, a small container of ice cream, and a magazine. the cashier looked
up from the products and said, “you’re single, aren’t you?” the guy smiled and
said, “yeah, how could you tell?” and the cashier said, “because you’re so fuckin’
ugly.” i think that joke is so funny, and it illustrates something about the nature of
humour. you build up this expectation, then you twist it, and the surprise is what
makes it funny. i think about this joke when i buy food at the grocery store and
wonder what cashiers can tell about me from the products i buy. am i single? am
i married? am i gay? do i have kids? am i getting ready for a party? a date? a study
session? am i a vegetarian? am i preparing a specific meal or buying for the week?
A
.
those kinds of thoughts led to this piece, and it was a real challenge to craft a story
using only nouns and adjectives. the action had to be implied by the products
themselves, and their juxtaposition with others formed the story. like, you could
say, “i swing the bat to hit the ball that crashes through the window,” or you could
simply say, “bat ball window.” the three words tell the same story since the verbs
are encoded into the nouns and the story is told through the order of the items.
this poem was a real challenge, and i love the way it turned out, even though it’s
quite creepy when you start to understand what’s going on. my favourite part is
the cat food at the end. there’s this list of items that becomes more and more
sinister and reveals more and more about the dark plans of the purchaser, then the
killer gets all the way to the end and goes, “oh yeah, cat food.” that cracks me up.
untitled
Embarrassing that i can’t remember the inspiration for this poem. i have no idea
where this poem came from or when i wrote it. i found it on a scrap of paper
and typed it into my computer for safekeeping. i dimly remember it being about
some girl, but i can’t remember who or where. i just guessed on the date. i wasn’t
going to include it, but i thought the mystery of it was kinda intriguing, so what
the hell. actually, now that i think of it, i remember who inspired it. it was a lovely
red-haired poet girl named kelly mcnally. i was so smitten with her, but our time
together was limited. she met someone else, and that was that. she had the cutest
smile. i imagine she still does. i love calling this poem untitled because that’s the
actual title, because the two people in the poem don’t need a label for what they
are doing. they are untitled. i really liked kelly. she was so cute. but she fell for
some martial arts instructor dude, and that was that. his kung fu was stronger.
the endless pursuit of happiness, parts one, two, and three
Crappy day jobs have allowed me to write numerous poem while dilly-dallying.
the first one in this series is from seattle in mid-2001, just before i left and returned
to my college town for a few months before hitting the road again. the second and
third were written the next year after i relocated to austin, texas. i am always sad,
so the idea of finding happiness as easily as ordering a trinket on some shopping
channel or clicking a download now button appeals to me. i am often drunk with
sadness. it makes everything so much more difficult. i really need to get sober.
wallflower
Often i comb through my blog to find possible poems lying in wait. this one started
as a few sentences describing this college house party some immature college
roomies took me to once when i was going to chico state university. i felt so stupid
and clumsy being there, but i ended up fascinated by the way all the girls moved.
it was amazing. we used to call that dry humping, but now people just call it
dancing. i could never get this poem right, though, so i put it aside and let it stew
awhile. then it hit me, right as i was standing in line for the fellowship of the ring,
the whole poem just fell into my lap, and i spent the majority of the movie writing
notes in the dark on my arms, my hand, random napkins, anything that would take
L
.
ink. after the movie, i raced home and wrote down all my notes, and boom! this
poem was done. i did a shortened version of this poem for a black entertainment
television series called the way we do it. it was a low-budget production that did
not pay a dime, but they did feed us... popeye’s fried chicken. the irony was not
lost on me or my poet friend ratpack slim, a white poet who also taped the same
session as i did, but we kept that shit to ourselves because we felt guilty even
raising an eyebrow. i remember we filled our pockets with anything in a plastic
wrapper or can, and we walked out of there bulging with snacks from the green
room. if you check out the recording of this piece on my youtube channel, you
can catch me doing a very unfortunate booty dance at the very end that is totes
magotes embarrassing. i should never booty dance unless i am alone. and i do. i
booty dance all the freakin’ time, and i’m damned good at it, too. only not.
krakatoa
Preparing some kick-ass steak is one of my dad’s best talents. he grills that shit
up until it tastes like god just came in your mouth, and he uses his secret bbq
sauce, too, which, actually, is now just kc masterpiece. but still, it’s like he’s a
magician of meat, a sorcerer of beef, a wizard of animal flesh. he and i have had
our challenges over the years, especially when i was in high school. oh, how we
used to bump heads! and he actually did hand-build this ugly monstrosity of a bbq
in the backyard out of cement bricks, and he had bricks left over, so he built the
ugliest mailbox on our entire street. you could’ve run a tank at either of them, and
the tank would’ve been all, “oh hell no!” me and my dad didn’t have too many
bonding moments when i was in high school, but i do remember tending the bbq
with him in the backyard. even when i was convinced i hated my pops, i still had to
grudgingly give him proper respect for his skill at barbecuing steaks. we get along
way better now that we’re all old and shit, but he can still fuck up a steak real nice.
we just had some the other day, and they were amazing. ribeye. mmmm, good.
the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit
See, i had always wanted to write a proper cowboy poem and perform it at a
cowboy poetry festival, so i was all excited when i wrote this during the summer
of ’99 while i was interning at the newspaper in reno, nevada. i have only ever
performed it twice, and neither time was at a cowboy poetry festival. maybe
someday. the few times i’ve performed this poem, i’ve used this really gravelly
voice, like a pirate, and that shit hurts. it’s hard to do it the whole way through
drought
I don’t think there’s much to say about this poem. it pretty much speaks for itself. i
don’t really think most people would read one of my poems and wonder what the
heck i was talking about. my shit is pretty simple and straight-forward. i don’t use
a lot of verbal acrobatics to impress the poets in our community, and i don’t tinker
with layers of meaning you have to peel away after several readings before you
finally get it. i just kinda want you to get it right away. the weight of depression,
of sadness, weighs me the fuck down like a backpack full of bricks. if i could only
H
. .
discard it, i’d be swimming like michael phelps, but as it is, i can barely keep
my head above water sometimes. i’m on zoloft right now and something called
hydroxyzine, but before that i tried celexa, welbutrin, remeron, and effexor,
and none of them really seemed to work. effexor was a motherfucker. that shit
is poison. it was nothing but bad side effects for six months, everything from
massive sweats to diarrhea, and then weaning yourself off it makes these, like,
brain shivers pulse through your head for a couple of weeks until it’s out of your
system. fuck effexor. zoloft seems to be doing okay for me. it gives me the shits,
but i haven’t cried once since i started taking it, and that’s an improvement. now i
just need to work on getting some exercise and eating healthier food. sometimes,
you get so deeply lonely that you can no longer bear the presence of others, and
once you get sucked into that spiral, it’s hard to pull out. you just want real bad
for someone to come get you.
don’t forget to breathe, love
For a while, this poem wasn’t included because i kinda don’t like it, but the only
other poems i have in this collection that were inspired by my relationship with
hilary are so negative, so i thought i’d clean this one up a bit and include it to show
where we started before things started to suck. i really liked her a whole big bunch
at first, we both dug each other, we must have since we stayed together for a year
and a half, but it’s kinda hard to remember why. well, this poem shows why.
you are a strange fruit
Falmq qont nt kmalq cylnq. krqlkzzg, nq’t kmalq bg qode-jnyzcyndef onzkyg,
pynqqde qapkyf qod def pode nq pkt k ydkz tqyljjzd qa tqkg qajdqody. pd qaqkzzg
toalzf okud myahde li zaej mdcayd pd fnf, mlq pd hdiq roktnej qod jaaf qnbdt pd
okf dwidynderdf ne qod mdjneenej, tkryncnrnej k jaaf gdky qygnej ne ukne qa
ydrkiqlyd qod bkjnr ac qod cnytq qoydd baeqot. iabdjykekqdt kyd aed ac qod batq
mdklqnclz cylnqt, znhd znqqzd jdafdt clzz ac ylmndt. n zaud hnpn cylnq, qaa.
us
I wrote this one about my then-poet-girlfriend hilary and me sometime toward the
end of our relationship, right before we went on tour together and spent three
months breaking up in a mini-van, so it must’ve been the spring of 2003. that
relationship was marked with clenched fists and teeth pressed so tightly together
shop windows would crack as we passed them. in the end, we were both so glad
to be done with it, to have the chance to be happy again.
the train station
After 45 days of a three-month tour in a van across america, hilary and i broke
up. it was a very tense tour full of insecurities rubbing up against each other, of
awkard silences, and miscommunication. it sucked, and we tried so hard to make
things work, but they just wouldn’t. she just wanted to go home, so she made the
decision to leave right before our gig in kalamazoo, michigan, and i went with her
to the train station to say goodbye. we cried and held each other. it sucked.
A
.
fists
Lovely poet girls will be the death of me. i arrived in austin during my 2002 tour,
and i met a girl, a lovely poet girl named hilary, and she and i instantly hit it off. we
spent a lot of time together during my visit, and i decided to move to austin to be
with her after my tour was over. and it was awesome... until it wasn’t. one month
later, she freaked out about our instant relationship and broke up with me, and i
ended up sleeping at a friend’s house on his futon while i figured out what to do
next. this poem was written while i was on that futon. i am not sure if it was based
on actual flowers i had purchased for hilary or what, but yeah, the poem is about
the magic and beauty fading from a relationship until finally you just fucking throw
it out. we kept hanging out, though, hilary and me, and one night when she was
over at my friend’s house on the futon watching leon the professional, we totally
humped right there in the living room on the futon. yup, we decided to give it
another try. i moved back in with her, and we dated for about a year and a half. it
was a very tumultuous relationship. i shoulda stayed on the futon.
13 metaphors for why we should’ve never dated
Often, great mistakes can lead to great poetry. this used to be why we should never
date, as in future tense, but i changed it to past tense after i broke up with my
poet-girlfriend hilary. we had a really tough time of it, even though it started with
passionate fireworks. we kinda dove into the relationship without really knowing
each other well enough to justify it, to be honest, and after the initial few months
of glowing connection, we ran into problems based on how different we were. had
we only gotten the chance to know each other before we had sex, we probably
would’ve realized we were incompatible, but we tried to build a relationship
around the fact that we had been intimate so quickly. we wanted to believe we
were meant to be together, so it was okay to jump-start the relationship, but it
was a mistake. once things got difficult and communication became a constant
challenge, we kept thinking we could return to the good times we had at the
beginning if we just worked hard enough to get there, as if the seeds of that
connection were simply hidden somewhere and all we had to do was find them
again. we stayed together way too long trying to get back what had been so fleeting
and spent most of that last six months angry and upset. we were just so different
in the way we communicated. we tried really hard to figure things out, but we
destroyed any chance of being friends in the process because we just couldn’t let
go soon enough. the faster you realize a relationship is not a failure simply because
it’s time to move on, the better. when you accept that you are simply moving from
one phase of the relationship to another, it doesn’t hurt as bad.
scars, part one
Going by my blog, i arrived in austin, texas, on march 7, 2002. it was just after
7 p.m. on a wednesday. i know this because the austin poetry slam was every
wednesday night in ego’s bar back then, and i rolled up in my van just as the
sign-up list was being distributed. on march 13, 2002, i was in slam master mike
henry’s living room when a cute poet girl named hilary walked in. it was just after
I
.
noon. right then and there, i decided to turn my visit to austin into a relocation.
i was smitten, and the feeling was mutual, and that was that. i was hooked. this
particular poem is the last i ever wrote about hilary. i scribbled it in my journal
just before the very last gig of our ill-fated summer ’93 tour, in minneapolis. the
three-month roadtrip was in shambles, as was our broken relationship, and the
van’s transmission took a $2,000 shit all over our meager finances. i read this poem
at our very last gig of the tour, and she fucking hated it, but by that time, i could’ve
shit gold bricks and she would’ve hated it. we were in pretty bad shape by the
time we limped home after the tour, and we soon stopped talking, and we haven’t
exchanged anything by uncomfortable glances from across crowded rooms since
then. i love scars. i got my last one when i burned my arm on a candle lantern i
was using to read a harry potter book while lounging in a sleeping bag in a tent at
the western regional poetry slam at the henry miller library in big sur, california. i
seem to have only included poems about my relationship with hilary that are really
negative, but i did write sweet ones when we first dated. i have not included them
because they are neither good enough to warrant inclusion nor bad enough to be
funny; they are just kinda meh. they are pretty boring. love makes poetry boring.
maybe that’s why i’ve dated so few people. maybe i need to be miserable to be
creative. i’d gladly give up writing to be happy. i’d be a ditch digger if it made me
happy. i’d crawl through an alley full of broken glass if it would make me happy.
thank god for zoloft is all i gotta say.
emo love song in the key of 9 3/4
Can’t always say i was a big fan of the harry potter phenomenon. back in 2001, my
poetry friend and then-roomie morris stegosaurus practically demanded i read the
books, but i resisted, seeing the crazed look of an addict in his eyes. like i needed
another obsession. i finally gave in during a tour across the u.s. in the summer of
2003. i spent three months in a van with my then-poet-girlfriend hilary, a brilliant
writer and performer in her own right, and we listened to all the audiobooks while
putting more than 21,000 miles on my ford windstar mini-van. sometimes we’d be
so into it that we’d arrive at our destination early and park the van, roll down all
the windows, and lie in the bed in the back listening to a couple more chapters.
i’ve been a fan ever since. this song is a simple ode to adolescent yearning, the
story of a teenaged boy crushing on his best friend and not knowing quite what
to do about it. we’ve all been there. i crushed on everyone when i was 13 and
lived and died at the merest sneeze in my direction. i still do. i wrote this while
on that summer tour at a point where hilary had decided to quit and go home,
decided we were officially breaking up and i was finishing the tour alone. there
is a lot of the yearning i felt at that time in this silly love song. had she just stayed
home, we might still be friends now, but dear god, she came back after two weeks
and finished the tour. that was such a bad decision! being in a van for weeks at
a time with your girlfriend is hard enough, but with your ex-girlfriend? just say
no. we fought about everything, and when we weren’t fighting, we erected this
painful silence that could not be breached. we tried to be friends after the tour, but
neither of us felt it. i hope she’s happy and warm and has forgiven me.
K
.
someone
Although it’s tough to admit, this was written in response to the question what are
you looking for in a mate? on one of those online personal ad websites. i think
it was okcupid. admitting this makes me feel really lame. i can picture someone
scoffing at me and saying, “are you serious? you perform in front of audiences all
over the country, and you can’t find a freakin’ date?” well, yes, actually. i’m kinda
shy, number one, and number two the girls in the audience at poetry slams all over
the country tend to be, oh, fifteen or twenty years younger than me, and i’m so
not gonna go there. believe me, i know the outcome already, so what’s the point?
question: how many big poppa e’s does it take to screw in a lightbulb? answer:
zero, because he’d rather sit in the dark in his room all alone and cry. anyway, i
wrote this for an online personal ad, and then i read it at the austin poetry slam. i
told the audience i would report back about my experiences in the weeks to come.
i didn’t though. most of the people i met had nothing in common with me except
a desire to not be alone, and that just wasn’t enough. it made me sad. it also made
me feel like i was auditioning for a role. i have had some good experiences that
began by meeting someone on personal ads since then, and while some were fun,
most were lame and never went anywhere. i have added stuff to this poem since
that original version written specifically for okstupid, and i like it very much. it’s
totally accurate, too. in fact, if you know someone who sounds just like the person
i am describing, please give her my email address! as long as she’s at least 30!
penance (albuquerque, austin, sushi, wendy’s, war, etc.)
Now and then, i get lazy. so, in 1993, i challenged myself, matthew john conley (a
tour partner) and hilary thomas (my then-poet-girlfriend) to write a haiku every
day for a year. the rule was you could write as many as you wanted on any given
day, but once the next day came, you had to write a new haiku for that day. you
couldn’t write seven haiku in one go, then not write a new one for a week, because
that would be cheating. on the rare days we flaked, we would have to do penance
the next day to make up for our sin. our chosen form of penance was to write
seven thematically-linked haiku. it was sort of like a new form of poetry, at least to
us, and we ended up writing some really decent ones. my favourite was the sushi
penance. i love sushi. when i lived with hilary, we were just down the street from
a really good sushi place called kyoto 2, and we would hit that joint several times
a month. we sort of bonded initially through our shared love of sushi and six
feet under. the chef we liked best was this japanese dude named ted with thicklyaccented broken english, and he would always greet us with shouts and smiles
when we entered the room. he was so funny, and we had him make a special roll
just for us out of our favourite ingredients, and he named it after us. i loved that
place. the restaurant closed, which sucked. several years later, my then-girlfriend
zara and i used to hit the sister restaurant kyoto in downtown austin, and it was
our favourite, but it got closed down, too. lame. my favourite kind of sushi is eel,
but i really like yellow tail, too. sea urchin is gnarsty. it’s like eating the ocean floor.
oh, and i really did work at a spenser gifts in the mall once, for about three weeks
just before i was going on tout to earn some extra cash. it sucked a sack of dicks.
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disillusion curry
The girl really did exist, and she was so cute, and she really did have a pepsi logo
tattooed on her arm, and she really showed it to me, and she really said that she no
longer drank pepsi. the restaurant was called chada thai in my lovely little college
town of chico, california. thai was the first sort of exotic food that drove me crazy
with delight, followed by sushi, vietnamese, and ethiopian. i don’t remember her
name. she has no idea i wrote a poem about her. that’s probably a good thing. i
think it’s crazy how young people so willingly allow their bodies to be used as
advertising space for corporate logos they actually pay for. fuck that! if i’m gonna
be a walking billboard for nike, they gotta pay me. having said that, i could see
getting a uniball vision-elite gel pen with blue-black ink tattooed on the inside of
my forearm. i love those pens. those pens rule. i buy them by the box.
passersby
Boy, i hate flying. i fly lots of places for gigs, and i absolutely despise it, but i do like
looking out the window as we descend over a city. i love looking at all the houses
and building and trees, love how it looks like you can run your hands over the top
of them like they’re toys, and i often find myself staring at the traffic. every single
one of those people in every single one of those cars is a living breathing thinking
feeling human being who loves and hates and lives and dies and has an entire life
i will never know anything about, and isn’t that odd? standing in line for a latte,
i look around and wonder who are all these people? what are their lives like? so
many stories. i love the word passersby. it’s kinda like attorneys general.
sorrow, part two
Even though i don’t know from whence this one came, but i do know i was walking
through a grassy field in athens, texas, near the house of my then-poet-girlfriend
hilary’s grandma when it came to me. i think it started with the concept of the
chord of ultimate sadness, and i just kept working it around in my brain. by the
time my walk was through, so was the poem, and after a few last-minute edits, it
was done. i don’t suppose there is any such thing as complete silence, especially in
a city. there’s always the sound of a far-off dog barking, the shush of distant traffic,
a car horn, a door slam, voices, the wind, the rain, the buzz of street lamps, the
constant ringing in my fucking ears that sounds like the electric hum some old
teevees make when you first turn them on. i did a gig once at this rich guy’s house
in tesuque, new mexico, which is nestled in the hills outside santa fe, and i stood
at night in his backyard and listened to the utter absence of city noises, the kind
of brilliant silence filled with buzzing insects and wind through cactus thorns and
the smell of sage brush and sand. and so many stars!
the double glass doors of your heart
Andy buck inspired this nonsense. he was my teammate on the ’02 austin poetry
slam team, and he posted the beginnings of a poem on his blog that said something
about if you had a full body tattoo of the globe, i would circumnavigate your
tummy. i don’t know, some crap like that, and it cracked me up and made me roll
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my eyes, so i immediately posted this ode in my journal the next day as a means
of ribbing him. i performed it at the next slam with andy in the room. i suppose
i could say it has a deeper meaning than is apparent, but no, it doesn’t, it’s just
me messing around at andy’s expense. i hardly ever perform this piece anymore
because it’s kinda stupid. no, it’s not kinda stupid. just stupid.
cellophane
So don’t know what to think about this piece. in fact, it probably shouldn’t even be
in this book. it’s a purely performance piece that makes little sense on the page.
i usually start the poem while sitting in the middle of the room. i wait until the
host has introduced me and the random clapping has died down, and then i just
keep sitting. eventually, the silence will ripple with mumbled whispers of what
the fuck? as the room full of people wonders out loud why the mic is just standing
there on the stage with no poet behind it. and then i’ll start it right from my seat,
just lift my head to the ceiling and shout the first lines. i’ll leap from the chair and
move around the room and reach out and grab people as i talk, place my open
palms on either side of their heads and give them a shake, press my forehead into
theirs, kiss them, sit on their laps, flirt with them, toy with them, do anything and
everything other than stick myself at a mic on a stage behind a piece of paper. i
wanted to do a transparent poem where i narrated exactly what i was doing as
i was doing it, hence the name, and i wanted to show how much freedom an
audience gives a performer, how much power they willingly relinquish. i could
never in a million years get away with the things i sometimes do on stage if you
were to take away the mic, the stage, the lights, the audience. if i just walked up to
some random girl in a cafe and tried to kiss her forehead, oh my, she would freak
out! put a mic in my hand and surround her by people watching my every move,
and she’ll let me do anything because it’s part of the show. that’s dangerous. this
poem started out trying to illustrate the potential for performers to abuse their
power over an audience, but it strayed from that idea and became something
else. it tried to become something empowering, something about community,
about doing something positive with the power an audience gives us. i am not
sure it is a successful piece, and i rarely do it anymore. it’s kinda cheesy. but
sometimes? sometimes, it’s amazing. people aren’t used to becoming a part of the
performance. it breaks down all the walls. i originally wrote this piece to make fun
of the people who start their poems from the middle of the audience for no reason
that’s intrinsic to the piece; they just wanna be the first one to do it. i hate that.
26 new rules for poetry slamming
So-so piece, but i have rarely performed it, and not because i don’t think it’s funny
or effective in front of the right audience, but mostly because every freakin’ poetry
slammer has written a piece exactly like it, so what’s the point? i try not to write
poems i’ve seen a thousand times before, and believe me, i have seen a thousand
versions of this piece. poetry slams were initially meant to offer a lively forum for
poetry in front of an audience that might know nothing about poetry, but the
scoring and judging aspects of the show have greatly influenced the kind of work
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that gets written. this has certainly not been for the better, in large part, since so
many slam poems are written using the same tried and true formulas. the poems
all sound the same after a while: they sound slammy, mine included. there are
numerous clichés in the poetry slam community, and one of the biggest ones is
slam poet slams slam poetry. as i was putting this collection together, i found
myself tweaking the lines, and now i would actually love to perform this piece again.
clichéd, yes, but sometimes cliché is tremendously effective communication.
ode to george w. bush
Masama pulitiko ay pakikipag-usap tulad katarantaduhan. Hindi ko maintindihan
ang karamihan ng kung ano ang sinasabi nila sa kanilang mga speeches.Tingin ko
ang kanilang layunin ay puno ng tae. Pulitiko gawin hindi gusto sa amin upang
maunawaan kung ano ang sinasabi nila. Mga pulitiko ay gusto ng kanilang mga
batas at mga singil at badyet na kaya mahirap maunawaan na ang mga ordinaryong
tao ay mananatili sa isang estado ng pagkalito. Ang pagkalito ay kung paano ang
mga tao ay kontrolado at ginulo mula sa kanilang mga mainip buhay sa pangaalipin.Pagkalito ay kung paano ang pinakapuno class upang mapanatili ang
kanilang kontrol sa masa.
bpe rap
Even though i have a hip-hop-sounding stage name, i cannot rap, nor can i
freestyle, but this does not prevent people from asking me ad nauseum to drop
some beatbox action and deliver sick knowledge straight off my dome. it got to the
point where i finally just wrote something so i could bust it out to prove i should
not be allowed to freestyle, like, ever. i had fun rhyming things with the names
of russian novelists and playwrights and saying ridiculous shit, especially the line
about if my wienie was a rabbit maybe i would let you pet it. that shit is funny.
i have done this so-called freestyle for nearly ten years, and my friends who have
heard me pass it off as improv expose me as a fake by rapping along with me.
silver
Ask yourself: when was the last time you hugged a homeless guy? this poem
reminds me of this one time when i was in a cafe in austin, texas, and spied a
pretty girl in a corner with a massage chair. she was giving out free body work as a
means of advertising her fledgling business as a masseuse, and my shoulders were
in knots, so i took her up on the offer. and it was awesome. and then the weirdest
thing happened. i was sitting there with my face pressed into a cushioned donut
thing that allowed me to breathe, and the girl shoved the tip of her thumb into a
knot beneath my left shoulder blade, then she opened her hands wide and pressed
her warm palms against my back and just held them there for a while, allowing
the warmth to reach deep into my muscles, and all of a sudden, i started to cry.
i think it was because i realized how wonderful it felt to be touched by a girl like
that, how much i missed physical intimacy, how lonely i was, but i have also heard
your body can store bad memories in the knots of your muscles, and sometimes
deep-tissue massages can release the body’s hold on those emotions. either way,
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it fucked me up, and i bawled silently. She must have known, because she stood
there behind me with her hands on me for a few minutes until i got through it,
then she continued. it was overwhelming, and i felt embarrassed to look her in the
eyes afterwards, so i left the cafe and felt like shit all day. but my back felt great!
tigerlily
This girl i met in austin, texas, circa fall of 2004, was a fragile drama girl addicted to
meth and anorexia who was trying very hard to leave both behind and failing. she
was trouble, i knew it the moment i laid eyes on her, but that didn’t stop us from
spending time together for a few months. we had the same birthday, how could
i resist? one time, she wanted to do a performance art piece where the audience
would sit in darkness while i raped her on stage. she said she would fight with all
her might, but i was to force her down and rape her right there on stage then leave
her to weep in the dark. i told her it was the worst idea i had ever heard in my
entire life. i wrote this poem just a few weeks after we’d met, and she cried when i
showed her. she said i was the only person who had ever gotten it right.
propers
Years ago, about halfway through my so-called career, i became aware of speech
competition kids covering work from poetry slammers, and when school’s in
session, i get requests from students each week asking permission to perform
my stuff at regional and national speech competitions. they all seem to need
confirmation that i was born after 1960. (i was born may 11, 1967.) i wrote this
piece at the request of a high school kid from west texas with red dreadlocks at
a big conference at west texas a&m during my spring 2004 tour. she asked me to
write a poem for them, the high school kids in attendance, and 20 minutes later,
i performed a rough version of this piece in front of 300+ students. i rocked
the final version for the sixth season of hbo’s def poetry in 2006, and i dedicated
it to the girl from west texas with red dreadlocks. i’ve been told this poem is
a simplified version of shake the dust by one of my favourite slam poets of all
time, anis mojgani, but i wrote it before i’d ever seen his piece. they cover similar
ground, but his poem is far more poetic and brilliant.
mission statement
Ask a poet a philosophical question, and you’re likely to inspire a poem. who are
you? what do you believe in? what is your purpose in life? what the hell are you
doing? all poems. this one seeks to answer those questions. when i read this poem
out loud, i am reminded of the sheryl crow song that says if it makes you happy,
then why the hell are you so sad? writing and performing poetry has affected my
worldview immensely, and that changing worldview has in turn guided my poetry.
the whole process has forced me to be more open and accepting, less judgmental,
more compassionate, even toward the assholes of the world, because the assholes
are mean because they are in pain, and we can all understand pain, we all hurt, we
are all wounded in some deep way, at least the interesting people are. i don’t think
i could spend significant time with someone who had never known darkness, who
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had never been burdened by sadness, who had never been fucked over in some
way. i think the perfect companion for me would be someone who had every
right to be bitter and angry and cold, but who consciously chose to be gentle with
this fragile world, who understood those difficult times gave her the vision to
appreciate true beauty, which can only be known once you have experienced the
ugly. this poem is weird, because it never seems to score well at poetry slams no
matter how much passion i put into the performance. people always come to me
after a show and tell me they liked it, though, and that makes me feel good. it takes
a lot to inspire a person to cross a crowded room just to honour a gut feeling.
cats
Say i love my kitties aretha and thelonious a little too much, and i’ll tell you i love
them, but i don’t make love to them, which is what i get accused of whenever
i do this piece, which has almost universally become known as the cat blowjob
poem. grrrreeaat. what i like about this piece is how the speaker in the poem is
such an unreliable narrator. he’s acting like the girlfriend in question is the one
with the problems, but he’s a total douche nozzle. some of the complaints of the
girlfriend in the poem have been lifted from actual conversations i’ve had with
past lovers, i am sure, but mostly it’s all made up, except for the part about calling
the vatican. i actually did that once, since the number is listed in the first pages
of the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. my mom was so pissed off when she got
the long distance phone bill. she was all, “who the hell called the vatican?” i got in
so much trouble! as i write this, theo is asleep on a spare office chair i’ve placed
near my own chair, mostly so i can kick my feet back on it while i watch movies
on my computer. theo is making like it’s his personal kitty chair now, which is all
good by me. i love that kitty. he and his sister aretha are 13 years old now. i love
them so much i could just kick ronald mcdonald right in the nuts. i don’t know
what i would do without those little muggles sometimes. i get so fucking lonely,
but having them around makes it easier to keep on living. sometimes i just lie on
the couch and hold them for hours, stick my nose deep into their tummy fur and
breathe their warmth, put my ear to their chests and listen to their heartbeats.
birth control
Awesome poet matthew john conley, a former tour partner of mine, gave me the
name of this piece in the fall of 2004. he said if i continued to read this poem
in public, i would never again get laid. it’s not necessarily about me, but i sure
did borrow a lot from my experiences. i’ve done the whole re-gifting of mixtapes
thing, and i’ve even done the making out with your sister thing. not proud of
either of those. and i am nearly as clingy and needy as the speaker in this piece.
i’d like to think that aspect has been amplified for comedic purposes, but no, it’s a
pretty accurate portrayal. shit, i wouldn’t date me. no way!
thoughts on gay marriage
Really, is marriage equality such a perplexing idea? perplexed is what the whole
dialogue on gay marriage leaves me. it’s so ridiculous and stupid that i wrote
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a piece as over-the-top stupid as the whole stupid debate. i wish people would
mind they own bidness and let each other live the lives that fit best without feeling
the need to meddle and pass judgement. i will be so glad when the terms gay
marriage and interracial marriage are replaced by the simple term marriage.
this is a pretty lame piece. i have only performed it twice.
i want to hold you
Once in a while, i challenge myself to write a haiku every day for a year. i have yet
to actually complete the challenge despite three attempts, but i have gotten some
mad decent haiku out of the exercise. i went through this period in late 2004
of writing these kinda sensual haiku, most about this crazy meth actor girl i was
kinda sorta dating, who also happened to be the inspiration for my poem tigerlily.
i strung a bunch of haiku together to make something new. that’s how this poem
started, and you can tell where the haiku are in the meat of the poem. i can’t stand
most so-called erotic poetry — see my what it means (when i say i love you) for
more on that subject — so i tried to do something that was actually sensual and
sexy and not pornographic. i kinda like it okay. it’s kinda sexy. it’s more than just
body parts and bullshit, which is what most erotica is. shit, i’d fuck me. way!
oh! canadian fedex lady!
Unless you have seen the viral video, you won’t know how this poem caused me
mad problems! it pretty much happened the way it’s implied in the video. i was
working the phones at apple computer and was completely taken with the cute
voice of the canadian fedex lady who was helping me track an order, and i actually
did leave my customer on hold long enough to get the basic idea of this piece in
my journal so i could finish it later. we didn’t really flirt — i was dating zara at the
time, and she woulda cutta bitch! — but what cracks me up is the idea of flirting
with a cute voice... it’s just so silly! plus i love the stilted references to canada,
as if the speaker really doesn’t know all that much about canada except what he
could find on wikipedia, yet he’s still trying his best to impress this canadian
crush with his canuck knowledge. i performed this piece for the annual apple
computer employee talent show, and i was fired two days later because it was
deemed unprofessional. whatevs. the video i made about the situation — why i
got fired from apple computer — ended up getting over a million hits on youtube
and google video, and about a bzillion websites linked to it. it was really bizarre to
be famous on the internet for about, oh, a week or so, at least until the next video
of someone lighting his farts came along. speaking of apple computer, just today
it was announced that steve jobs has died of the pancreatic cancer he had been
fighting for years. he was 56, just two years younger than my dad’s dad when he
died of lung cancer. i have been bummed out all day. i am typing on a 24-inch imac
right now, listening to le mystère des voix bulgares on itunes. i have always been
a mac man, from the first mac i used in a computer store to design the cover of my
high school literary magazine to the quadra 630 i had after i got out of the navy
and the old school egg-shaped imac dv i got after that to the 14” ibook and 4th-gen
ipod i still use while on tour. this font? it’s the apple font. godspeed, mister jobs.
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closer to the heart
Silly, but i never loved a band as much as i loved rush. the first 45s i ever got my
hands on were loaned to me by david pletcher, my best friend in my freshman year
of high school, and one of them was the single for rush’s tom sawyer with witch
hunt as the b-side. i can’t honestly say listening to that 45 changed my life, but it
sure did make me a huge fan of the band. they were, in fact, my very first favourite
band, followed in rapid succession by pink floyd, led zeppelin, the police, u2, and
foetus. i bought everything rush ever did, and i still have everything they did up to
exit... stage left. after that, they started to suck, and i didn’t have the heart to watch
something so dear die such a drawn-out death. it will never be the same as when
i was 14 and miserable and alone and rush gave me escape. maybe the fact that i
find myself miserable and alone more often than not lately is why i’ve returned to
them for solace, endlessly listening to rush albums on repeat. i know every word
to every song they did from 1974-1981, every drum fill, every guitar lick, every
bass line. i know those songs like i know my own name. if you haven’t seen the
documentary about rush called beyond the lighted stage, you should totally see it
right now! it’s perfect! but don’t illegally download it... like i did... bad poppa!
muscleman
I get asked where poems come from all the time, and i have no idea: i’m just glad
when they come. i greeted this one with open arms while pedaling my peewee’s
big adventure cruiser bike down the long slow slope of a street called lamar in
austin, texas, and by the time i got to the end of the hill and parked in front of
the flagship whole foods, the opening lines were done and the outline for the rest
had been laid out in my head. that night, i put the first version on my livejournal.
it’s been a crowd-pleaser for all the bad puns, especially the one about pumping
irony, which, really, is deliciously bad. i think this was one of the last poems i
wrote before i met zara, the girl i dated for three years who then became my best
friend once we broke up. this is a good opening piece to do at a high school gig.
there are no cuss words, and it’s easy to understand, plus it’s a good establishing
piece. speaking of puns, i’ve performed at the annual o. henry pun-off in austin
for several years, and i’ve garnered two trophies. i was going to include all the pun
pieces i’ve done, but then i changed my mind. you can see them on youtube. one
of them contains all the porn names for the harry potter books i made up, which
are: hairy bottom and the sorcerer’s bone; hairy bottom and the chamberpot of
sexcreeps; hairy bottom and the prisoner of ass-grabbin’; hairy bottom and the
gobbler of fur; hairy bottom and the hoarder of the penis; hairy bottom and the
half-bloody prince albert; and hairy bottom and the salty swallows.
napoleon
Now and then, poems work right out of the box. you get an idea, you’re excited
by the concept, you write some lines, they kick ass, you get more excited, you
polish it up, then you perform it and it’s your new hit. i love it when that happens.
sometimes, though, you get all excited about a new piece, and you can just hear
the applause in advance, but when you finally get up on the stage to bust it out...
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dude... it’s like you took a big fat shit on the stage — which i have literally done
(see fuckety fuck-fuck). and you can’t figure out why it doesn’t work, like, you
were so sure this was your next chart topper. this piece sprang out of a bit of
between-poem banter about how much short people rock, and i developed
that improvisation into the first version of this championing of wee folk. when i
performed it the first time, it was... well... it was okay. some of the lines worked,
but the energy was not right, and there were dead points that dragged, and some
of the lines i just knew would be killer lines kinda fell flat. i was perplexed, but i
kept performing it, thinking maybe it was just the audience. time after time, all i
got was meh, so i crumpled that shit up and threw it into a box and forgot about it.
about a year later, i happened upon it while looking for something new to read at
the san antonio poetry slam, and right away i saw the parts that weren’t working.
i kept everything that worked and cut the rest, then i wrote new stuff to connect
everything. this time, it went over like gangbusters, and i got the highest score of
the show. i did it again the next night at the austin poetry slam, and i practically
got a standing ovation. it’s been a greatest hit ever since. so weird... i had given up
on this poem, but it wouldn’t go away. i’m glad i gave it another try.
dead horses
Grand cliché. another slam poem deriding slam poets for caring more about
scores than integrity, which is a tried and true way of getting good scores at a
poetry slam. but i gotta tell ya, if i have to sit through one more so-called poet
spitting another so-called poem that’s nothing more than torture porn posing as
poetry, i’m gonna cut somebody. it’s like those anti-abortion protesters and their
signs featuring full-colour blow-ups of chopped up babies; i don’t need that shit
shoved in my face to get your point, no more than i need graphic details about
every aspect of your molestation in your freakin’ high-scoring daddy rape poem.
there surely must be a better way of writing these types of poems without simply
listing purposely horrific images one right after another and calling the resulting
litany poetry and daring the judges to score your pain less than a 10. i rarely do this
poem unless it’s at some big event with a lot of poetry slammers in attendance, but
then some poets get all up in my face about it, too, like who am i to tell someone
who has been molested how they should write their poem? who am i to say such
graphic details shouldn’t be shared to drive the point home? and maybe those
are really good points. however, after the seventh poem of the night detailing
someone’s rape or abuse or neglect, god, i wanna scratch my fucking eyes out. if i
were an alien visiting this planet for the first time, and the only input i had about
humanity was a poetry slam, oh my god, i would turn right around and lightspeed my ass out of this cheerless rock full of such savagery! surely there must be
something that makes all the horrors worth surviving, but there aren’t many slam
poets spitting joy and redemption. nope, just poet after poet cataloguing how
fucked up life is. such a dismal worldview gets old after a while. i feel like... if my
poetry is going to make the stomach of every person in the audience hurt, i want
it to be from laughing, not crying. so fucking sue me. and if you do cry, i want you
to cry for release, for joy, for glory, for love, for breathing.
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not drowning, but waving
Boom, suddenly and unexpectedly, you’re at the end of a relationship. yeah, that’s
what this one is all about. i wrote it about my then-girlfriend zara, about a trip
we took to the beach in corpus christi, texas. it’s about that time in a relationship
where you find yourself considering your options. you’re sitting there in the warm
sand beneath a beautiful blue sky, and out of nowhere you begin to suspect you’re
on the cusp of breaking up. and it’s a struggle between holding on with all your
might or allowing your relationship to move from one of lovers to one of friends.
sometimes you have to let go and allow the romance to end if you really want
the connection to last forever. hold on too tight, and it could kill it. the title is a
twisting of not waving, but drowning by stevie smith.
scars, part two
Oh so many so-called adults tell you that real life comes after graduation, and that
can be such a wonderfully painful and bewildering time for both the person going
through it and their parents who are witnessing it. it’s a constant wrestling match
between fighting for your sense of self and against the idea your parents had
in mind when conceiving the baby who would eventually become an individual
beyond their complete control. it’s a struggle, and this transition period tests and
defines the relationship between parent and child from that time on. i wrote this
poem for two precious people going through that time together, one having just
finished college and the other fresh out of high school: my best friend zara and her
kid sister aimy. i love them both very much, and i hope their scars always enhance
their intense beauty. my favourite scar is on the back of my head. it’s a dog bite
scar. from your mom. she’s a savage bitch, your mom. real biter.
ode to dwarf planet 134340
Up to me to represent the underdog, even if it’s a heavenly body at the far reaches
of our solar system. pluto knows nothing of our obsessive need to define it, and i
don’t suppose it would care much even if it did. pluto is what it is, and that never
changes, no matter what label you attach to it. a lot of my very favourite people
are like pluto. i’m like pluto. maybe you’re like pluto, too. this is not really a poem
at all, just a list of applause lines, but it always seems to stir up emotions. you
wouldn’t think defending a planet would rouse such passion. without pluto, my
very excellent mother cannot send us nine pizzas. fuck that. i love pizza.
incantation 4: redneck
Totally get so tired of white poetry slammers complaining about how they are
not allowed to pull the race card. idiots. but i also get tired of people thinking
that just because my skin is white that my family has never had to struggle with
prejudice in this country, as if being white insulates us from persecution. it’s
simply not true. ask the irish in new york city in the 1890s. ask gay people or
women or anybody in a wheelchair. discrimination isn’t confined to race because
it has no boundaries, it’s just about ignorance and hate, and you can hate anybody
for any reason, even when you have to invent that reason. my family migrated to
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the fields of central california during the dust bowl, and okies were treated like
lowlife scum. everything in this poem actually happened to my family. in fact, my
mother’s mother lived in one of the work camps featured in steinbeck’s the grapes
of wrath. this is a tough poem to sell, though, because my family was poor, but
they were white, which means they could clean themselves up, put on a nice shirt,
polish their shoes, and pass as the very people who oppressed them, and they
were eventually able to move out of the dirt-floored tent cities and get better jobs,
buy houses, raise families, go to school, all that. i’m not trying to compare my pain
with anyone else’s, i am simply trying to illustrate that prejudice isn’t limited by
ethnicity or skin colour. i feel like this poem still needs a massive rewrite though. i
don’t consider it finished. it’s a tough poem to pull off, and i’m not sure it works,
but i am so tired of trying to make it work. i really need to fix it.
falling in like
Obviously, nervous crushes are my lifeblood. i love the idea of liking someone so
much you just lose all your cool, leaving you feeling completely awkward and awed
by the intensity of it all. this was written as a collabouration with zara, who is my
very best friend in the world, and who i used to date. we were instant messaging
back and forth with these lines about what we would’ve been like as kids with
crushes on each other. i wrote down the best ones and made it into this little ode
to puppy love. zara came up with the ideas about quizzing each other with dueling
dictionaries, trading the jelly sandwich, the green crayon, the chicken pox, and
making the valentine’s day card with sparkles and glue, then i rewrote them and
added my own stuff. i just love this piece, and it remains one of my most popular
performance pieces amongst speech kids. in fact, it has been used in a number of
weddings, too, including one where the groom had me hide in the bushes during
the ceremony until the right moment when i walked behind the bride and began
to read it. she started to cry the moment she heard my voice. i didn’t even know
the couple, but they had somehow found my work online, and i got all choked up
as i read it. i kept thinking about how lovely it would be to read this poem at my
own wedding someday. oh bother. by the way, ish kabibble was a comedian and
cornet player in the ’40s and ’50s, and i’ve always thought it was the funniest name
in the history of the world. i first heard it on a teevee show called make me laugh
where comedians would have one minute to cause a contestant to crack up. this
one guy stared in silence at the woman sitting there with her mouth pressed shut
for nearly the whole minute, and then he asked, wanna know the funniest word
of all time? he paused, then he said, ishkabibble. the lady lost it, and so did i, and
i’ve always remembered it. it’s good to finally find a place for it in my work. i hope
people everywhere start saying it on a regular basis from now on.
to the barista at the cafe down the street
For real, this didn’t happen, but i did throw a cordless telephone at the face of a
male barista once. i had been in a full-scale war with my roommate at the time, and
i needed to call the cops, and the cafe was the closest phone, but the fucking dude
unplugged the phone in the middle of the call since it took more than a minute.
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neurotika
Far too excessive, this one. i don’t rock it often. it’s just too over-the-top and
outrageously bitter, which is part of the fun of performing it, but i tend to yell the
entire time, plus it’s just so negative. i’d have to be in a rowdy bar crowd full of
people talking over all the poets before i kicked it. bitterness is a natural defense
mechanism when you’re all butt-hurt about love. it’s easy to get into so many
intensely dramatic relationships that you finally mistake drama for love. then when
you actually meet a nice person, you get bored because you’ve replaced danger for
passion. i’ve had relationships where it’s a rollercoaster, just awesome maniacal
highs that are exhilarating followed by crashing lows where you fucking hate each
other. the best thing about those relationships is usually the skin-ripping sex, but
mostly everything else about dating crazy people sucks, especially if you happen to
be the crazy one. the line about the horror is taken from apocalypse now. they are
the last words marlon brando speaks as he dies at the hands of martin sheen. that
movie is so bad ass. i love the slo-mo explosions to the end by the doors.
mixtape genius
Unfortunately, every time i read this poem, i feel like it’s another failed poem, so i
rarely read it. i wanted to write something about the joy of music, about the art of
compiling the perfect mixtape, the craft of conducting a symphony of emotions,
the arcing rise and fall, the tension and release, the afterglow, but it ended up
being this pseudo hip-hop braggadocio thing with silly wordplay. i punked out,
and now i kinda hate it. every once in a great while when i get an assful of swagger
and there’s a hot bar crowd drinking and talking shit, i might bust this one out,
but i have to really be feeling sassy, otherwise it falls flat and i feel foolish. fuck
this piece. having said that, i really am a mixtape genius. my mixes will impregnate
you bam! just like that, a baby will just pop out of you the moment you press play.
that’s how good they are. they are so good, thay will impregnate you with 10,000
poet babies! 10,000! check out the link on my website to 8tracks.com.
mementos
Could i be so good at performing that i could read from a phone book and
make it interesting? i actually did that once at a reading in costa mesa, california.
i presented all the z’s in the orange county phone book. and it was hilarious.
and then i thought... hmmm... wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to write a
performance piece made up of just nouns and adjectives, like a shopping list, so i
did it, i wrote a shopping list poem called receipt found in the parking lot of the
super walmart, and it was actually kinda awesome. so, i gave the format another
try with this list of things that no longer exist or are rapidly disappearing. i wanted
to evoke a playful sense of nostalgia, see people nod their heads and smile as i
listed each thing, then suddenly reveal, in the end, what it is really missed. the
trick to a piece like this is the clustering of the individual items and the transitions
between one group to another. i like it. it’s full of saudade. look up that word
on wikipedia. it’s my favourite word of all time and i try to infuse my work with a
sense of saudade, even the funny stuff, especially the funny stuff.
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the crush
Killer what you can find if you scour your old notebooks. This poem began as a
simple line: that cute girl you have a crush on is afraid of you. it was part of a
series of about 160 sayings i called aphorisms that i printed on bright pink paper
and posted on all the bulletin boards at my college campus in chico, california.
they were meant to be seen all over the place and offer no explanation as to their
meaning. i wanted them to instill a rising paranoia in the people experiencing
them. i would eventually print these aphorisms at the bottom of each page in
my greatest hits collection. anyway, i had these sayings around for 12 years or so,
and one day i finally turned that one line into this poem. i didn’t really put much
thought into it. the poem kinda wrote itself. i like it, although it is quite menacing.
i tried to write it in such a way that you could either think the man is a creepy
stalker dude or the barista is over-reacting to someone who is just awkward and
means no harm. speaking of those aphorisms, i found out years later about a visual
artist named jenny holzer who had done something similar called truisms, only
she had done it years and years before me. she is now one of my favourite artists.
she did it with fliers on telephone poles, then graduated to huge electronic signs
and projections on the sides of buildings. fantastic stuff.
she never really loved you
In the beginning, this was another one from that series of aphorisms, just like the
crush, and just like the crush, it was pretty much written off the top of my head
in one sitting. i think young men in relationships are some of the most willfully
ignorant people on the planet, at least young american men. you spend a whole
year telling them what you need from him in the relationship and how you are
unhappy, then, finally, when you break up with them, they claim to be surprised.
beardo
Need to respect the beard! if you look at photos of me over the past ten years, you
will see an ever-changing array of facial hair styles. since i can’t have me no afro
puffs or pigtails, i rock the fu manchu and the mutton chops. near the end of 2008,
i grew a massive beard, just massive, this huge living thing that grew untrimmed
for eight long bushy months. it was meant as a giving up, as a throwing up of the
hands, as a surrender to the fact that i wasn’t getting any girl action anyway, so fuck
it, i might as well make myself as unattractive as possible. young white dudes were
hella impressed. i lost count of the indie rock white guys who gave me props when
spying my beard while walking through the market or chilling in a cafe. this was the
first poem i had written after a long dry spell. as you can see from the timeline of
poems in this book, there are only five poems from 2007-2008, and they are most
certainly not up there with my best work. by the time i got to mid-2009, i hadn’t
written anything in a year. i was all dried up and felt like i had run out of ideas, as
though i had written every poem in me. thankfully, i wrote this piece, and it was
the start of a fertile period that birthed some of my very favourite slam pieces ever.
i debuted it at the 2009 finals of the austin poetry slam, and i made the team with
a second place finish. it was the first time i’d been on a team since 2004.
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how to make love
Goodness, this poem has gone through so many different incarnations! it was
originally written for my best friend (and former girlfriend) zara to give to her
then-boyfriend, who was, how shall we say, a knucklehead in the bedroom action
department? i gathered all the info about her relationship, added a bunch of stuff
i had learned about communication and conscious loving, and i made this list.
but oh the scandal! oh the uproar! what i thought was a fun poem using comedy
to address a sticky but important subject turned into this shitstorm of people
accusing me of trying to write a one-size-fits-all manual for all women, like a list of
buttons to push to turn any woman on, and that was not at all what the poem was
about, not even close, in fact the exact opposite. i rewrote it and rewrote it, tested
it out and tried it in front of audiences all over the country, then went back to the
drawing board again and again. the last edit happened while i was sitting in a hotel
jacuzzi at the 2009 national poetry slam, and some random dude just kinda slid
over next to me and without invitation started offering his critique of the poem.
he had seen me do it earlier in the day, and he just let me have it for this one line
he didn’t like and demanded that i change it. i was not open to getting input from
anybody else at that point because i was fucking tired of people having problems
with it, so i just freestyled a replacement line off the top of my head to shut him
up, and he stood up in the middle of the jacuzzi and applauded me, saying it was
perfect. and i had to give it to him... it actually was, and it was way better than the
original line. fucker. the new line in question is #3. what you see now is the final
version of this rant, and i have now stopped getting complaints. it has been road
tested across the country, and it regularly garners the loudest and most sustained
response of any poem i perform. i get people coming up to me after i perform it
asking for copies to give to their teenagers (and boyfriends and husbands!) oh, and
remember the boyfriend of my best friend for whom i wrote the poem originally?
i asked zara to bring him to the first poetry slam where i would be debuting this
piece, and the whole audience went insane for it, but the boyfriend? he played
scrabble on his iphone the whole time. she dumped him a few weeks later.
what i mean (when i say i love you)
Though i aspire to living this poem, i often fall short of the ideas expressed in
it. i think had i been able to live up to this poem before i wrote it down, maybe
some of my best relationships would have lasted longer. i don’t know. maybe i
was retroactively trying to be a much better boyfriend through writing this poem.
maybe it was written as a reminder for the future, something to which i could
refer when i finally do enter into another relationship. the original version of this
piece had way more stuff about never letting go, about always loving you, about
how your name will be the last words across my dying lips, that kind of happy
horseshit, but i thankfully cut all that nonsense out and let it be sweet and positive
with a touch of loss, let it be about keeping your chin up despite the sadness of
losing someone. i like this poem a lot. i like the ideas expressed in it very much.
funny thing is... i think the most powerful line is the one about you’ll always have
someone to pick you up from the airport. no one else seems to feel it as much
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as i do, but i refuse to change it. having that special someone pick you up after a
long flight, seeing their smiling face as you descend the escalator to the baggage
claim area, holding each other while surrounded by other travelers, walking hand
in hand to short-term parking... that’s the real deal, man, like the opening scene in
love actually. i fucking hate flying, and i have to do it a lot, and one of the things
i hate most about being single for so long is not having someone to pick me up
from the airport. now i have to take the shuttle.
pretty girls make me sad
Hate to say it, but most everything i say in this poem is absolutely true. i find
myself hoping someone will feel my words so deeply they will just know... i am
the one... and they will seek me out and find me and hold me and never let me
go. sometimes it gets so bad, just looking at a pretty girl makes me feel horrible.
what’s the point of even trying? why bother talking with her? i am lame and ugly
and weird and intense and only mildly possessing of anything resembling talent,
and she would never like me in a million years. sometimes it feels that way. at
least, the character in the poem feels that way. this is my favourite of my recent
poems. i think it’s poetic and has lovely images. i’m really proud of it. the last line
i put in was i used to wear my heart on my sleeve, but it made my wrists too
bloody. that line came to me several months after i had finished the poem, but i
managed to slip it in. of all the lines in the poem, that one gets the most response.
oh, and the no, said the steam shovel, i am not your true love part is a reference
to a ubiquitous children’s book called are you my mommy? the steam shovel in
question was actually called a snort in the book. the folly of young men is wasting
too much time looking for the one rather than learning how to be the one.
my undying love
Even though i am wary to admit it, i was inspired to write this by the walking dead
television series on amc. i was trying to find the perfect metaphor for holding
onto feelings for a lost love way longer than is healthy, so long it starts to hurt, so
long that it starts to kill you and prevent you from ever meeting someone else or
moving on. and then there it was, the perfect metaphor: the zombie apocalypse.
this poem fucked me up for a few weeks after i wrote it. the deep-felt knowledge
that i still had unresolved feelings for a past love that were not unlike a freakin’
zombie apocalypse really weighed on me. i went on anti-depressants after i pulled
myself out of the resulting funk inspired by this poem, and i’m still on them. this
poem is a difficult sell, because it’s got to be equal parts sincere and silly, like it’s
supposed to be a little funny because it’s about zombies, which are ridiculous, but
it’s supposed to be heartfelt at the same time because if that shit were real, this is
exactly what you would do, you would make finding your lover the entire point of
your existence. i want the audience to giggle at the zombie references, but at the
end i want them to go aww. i want them to laugh and cry a little at the same time.
it’s tough to pull off. i think i’ve only pulled it off once, and, i got it on video, so
check out the recording of it from fronterafest that’s on my youtube channel. it’s
a pretty decent performance, and the audience seemed to get it.
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confessions
Now, i gotta tell you, i met the kid during my summer 2011 tour. i still don’t know
if he’s my kid, but i met him. i returned to my hometown at the invitation of his
mother, the person who rid me of my virginity, and she brought me to her home to
meet him. he refused to speak to me. i was supposedly there with his blessing, but
when i walked into the room, he refused to even look me in the eye. after about
five minutes, he left the house without explanation. i have no idea what the deal
was, why he would allow me to come over and meet him if he was going to treat
me like i wasn’t there. what a mindfuck, though, to be told the man who raised
you might not actually be your biological father, that some faggoty poet guy you’ve
never met was the one who knocked up your 17-year-old mother, and now here he
is with a dna test in his hand. i just told him i was here if he wanted to get in touch
with me, if he wanted to find out the answer, but he has not contacted me since. i
turned this debacle into a story that was aired on npr’s snap judgment program.
the word
I slam therefore i am! poetry readings, both open mics and slams, have been my
church of choice since the early ’90s, the places i go to release my soul from
the chains that bind it, to confess my sins, to beg forgiveness, to speak boldly
with righteous indignation, to share my experiences as a fragile and fucked and
beautifoolishly flawed human being. i tried to honour that idea with this poem,
and, well, maybe it’s a little cheesy and obvious. the whole slam as church poem
has been written to death, but know what? slam really is my church, so fuck it, i’ma
say it, and if you don’t like it, well, then, you can just shut up about it.
dear white people!
Wonderful! another cliché for you! oh look, it’s a poem by a white poet trying to
prove to a black audience that he is down with the struggle by mocking white
poets who try to prove to black audiences they are down with the struggle. how
meta! having said that, i think someone needs to speak out about this brand of
stealth racism that even the most informed white people do without even realizing
it, including myself. i debuted this poem while touring the southern united states
in the summer of 2010. i visited lots of venues where i was the only white dude
in the entire venue and the only white poet ever featured there, and i found that i
had to earn the right to do this poem. if i busted it out as the very first piece of my
featured reading, people would suck their teeth at me, not knowing where i was
coming from. was this just another white poet doing a poem he thinks will endear
him to a black audience? however, if i whipped out a whole set of kick ass poems
that had nothing to do with racial issues, then i said something like, “well, i have
this new poem, but i’m not sure i should read it... it’s called dear white people.”
at that point, there would be cheers of encouragement to read it, and then every
single line would kill. i am telling you, this is a very difficult poem to write and an
even more difficult poem to pull off. when i write poems like this, my slam poet
friend phil west clucks his tongue at me and calls me pander bear. fucker. fuck that
short little motherfucker anyway. pander this, bitch.
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the burning bush
Oh, don’t you think i’m not serious about this. i really do think easy access to
online pornography has altered the way women, especially young women, look
at pubic hair. or, more accurately, how young male fantasies inspired by readilyavailable online porn have created expectations about what their girlfriend’s junk
should look like, hence the mass shaving of girl bits to mimic those images. you
know, in the end, whatever floats your boat is cool by me, but i just think it’s lame
to feel you have to measure up to such a blatantly male-driven fantasy. i had to
work a lot on this piece for about a year off and on before i got it where it is now.
for too long, it was just a lot of vagina jokes with no real purpose other than to
shock, i guess, and i wanted more out of it, to use comedy and maybe a little sass
to talk about something important... female pubic hair self-esteem? when i finish
the bit about eager beavers frolicking wild and free and looking like my face, i
open my mouth really big and stand there as the crowd screams in horror. realize i
usually have a full beard when i do this poem. yeah. you can’t unsee that.
caffeine
Uhm... fuck this poem. and i feel that way because the damned thing didn’t
work! there is this logic that only works in movies, you know, where the hero
holds a boombox over his head in the rain outside the girl’s window? and she
is so impressed by this romantic display of emotion that she runs into the rain
and leaps into his arms? well, in real life? standing outside some chick’s window
doesn’t get you the girl, it gets you a restraining order. movie logic stalker shit
doesn’t fucking work in real life unless you’re a beautiful ingénue like amelié,
but for the rest of us muggles, well, that shit most likely backfires. just ask anyone
stupid enough to shove an engagement ring into the hand of a girlfriend while
on national television. so yeah, this poem was written for some random cute girl
who was all, oh, i have these walls, i have these trust issues, i push people away,
blah blah blah, and i decided i could be rid of all that nonsense in the space of
one poem... performed in front of a packed audience... as she sat there listening...
okay, right now, i just sighed loudly and shook my head, like, in real life, like right
now as i just typed that. had i been lloyd dobler and had this been say anything,
she would’ve waded through the crowd up to the stage and yelled, i love you!
but in real life? not so much. it kinda backfired. it kinda freaked her out. duh. we
never got past flirting with the notion of getting together, and whatever potential
spark had existed before this poem pretty much died after this poem. i almost
didn’t include this piece so i wouldn’t have to be reminded of it, but then again, it
might be a good idea for me to never forget it. oh, and the it’s gonna be a bumpy
ride part was stolen from the shrunken head aboard the knight bus in the movie
version of harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. damn good movie.
embouchure
Lots of times, people ask me what i was like when i was a kid, especially students,
and they always seem to be surprised when i tell them i was the shy kid, the quiet
kid, the nerdy kid, that i didn’t have many friends, that i often felt isolated and
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lonely. i think a lot of shy people end up on stages, whether they become musicians
or poets or actors, and i am not sure why that is. for me, i was able to sort of create
a character who could do my speaking for me. it feels good to reach out to young
people and say, “if i can do it, you can do it.” it’s one of the reasons i often read my
poems from my little black moleskine notebook rather than from memory. it’s just
so easy to see someone on a stage doing a perfectly-memorized piece and think
i could never do that, but seeing me up there reading from my notebook is less
intimidating. everything in this poem is true, although people from high school
i’ve reconnected with on facebook have told me i was a funny little fucker and was
always cracking jokes, so maybe it wasn’t all miserable. i remember it as a lonely
time. thank god i discovered girls, or, more accurately, thank god i grew a pair and
started talking with them. about this poem... when i read it for audiences that are
primarily black, i change the poster in the speaker’s bedroom to a michael jackson
thriller poster, and it gets a lot of laughter. i don’t think mentioning rush would
work. is that pandering or knowing your audience? i can’t tell.
you
Don’t be gettin’ all righteous up in my face. realize this is a fable, a what if, a tale
of yearning and loss, a different way of looking at a story we all think we know.
not meant to offend. not meant to replace. not meant to mock. just something
to wonder about. it’s fascinating how very little is known about the husband of
mary, the carpenter named joseph. he is only mentioned in the very first part of
the new testament when jesus was a baby, and then he is never mentioned again.
in medieval art, mary is always depicted as this glowing young virginal teenagerlookin’ girl, but joseph is always this old white beard holding a baby jesus. makes
me wonder about the whole story, about the rest of the story.
jara
Randomly clicking around wikipedia by using the random article button over
and over lead me to an article on victor jara. i had never heard of him, but i read
the details of his life and death with my eyes pried wide open. it’s just so fucked,
especially when you consider the united states’ role in the chilean coup that lead
to jara’s death. and it happened on sept. 11, which is like, wow. i just had to
write something about him since i had never heard of him and his story was so
powerful, but man... it’s been tough going. i have been working on this piece from
time to time for two years or so at this point, and it’s still more of a passionate
essay than a poem. i have only performed it twice, and i got some good feedback
from people. it’s not like the stuff i usually write. i have a lot of work to do, but i
wanted to include it just in case i never get ‘er done. it’s flawed and unfinished,
but maybe people will learn about this lovely man.
bread and butter
Anytime i find myself thinking about something on a regular basis for years, i start
thinking about how i can turn it into a poem. i came up with the idea for this one
during the 2011 national poetry slam in boston where i was volunteering as a host,
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bout manager, and member of the scoring committee. i have been doing the bread
and butter thing ever since i saw that popeye cartoon all those years ago. my best
friend zara makes fun of me that i still do this, and she purposely fucks with me
by angling toward telephone poles and mailboxes and shit as we walk down the
street, and i always have to double-back and dance loops around garbage cans and
stop signs. i love having a superstition, though, even if it’s a token one, and i love
that it’s an old school one most people don’t even know about. you’d have to be
old enough to remember world war two and the great depression to know about
bread and butter. that pleases me. you can find the exact cartoon on youtube. oh,
and the stuff about memorizing the books of the old testament? true story. we also
listened to songs backwards to check for satanic messages. another one bites the
dust says start to smoke marijuana when played backwards! who knew? fear of
satan did not keep my friends and me away from this music, no sir, it provided a
buyer’s guide for the best music ever. i still struggle with god and my fear of death.
if you look at my poems from the beginning to the end, it’s a constant theme. i still
haven’t figured it all out. it still scares me.
molly
This kind of thing pops into my head all the time. it’s still so surreal to me that words
i’ve written in my notebook alone in the middle of the night can somehow end up
in someone else’s head, in someone else’s mouth. it is tremendously gratifying,
but also so weird to me. it’s all a bit of a mystery, where these words come from,
where they will end up, where they go after everyone who ever experiences them
dies. the title comes from the first name of an austin playwright who served as
inspiration for this piece. i saw a lovely mini-play at fronterafest in austin that
covered similar ground, and it totally made me think of turning the idea into this
piece. it took me six years. i have been thinking about it this whole time. it needs
to be condensed, but i like it. i like that it’s the last poem in this book. i hope very
much that it’s not the last poem in my life. i hope to write lots more. we’ll see.
04.05.94
Huge surprise to see this novella again! it used to be called endgame after the
lovely r.e.m. song from out of time. the first zine i ever did was fencepost. i was
the arts and entertainment editor for the student newspaper at california state
university, bakersfield, and i got together with my assistant editor david and my
then-girlfriend aronne to put together a rag covering local music in my shitty
hometown. when said girlfriend and said assistant editor started fucking each
other, well, i kind of had a hissy fit and quit the mag and started my own, called
thrust magazine, as in the thrust of an idea, not like pelvic thrust. i printed one
chapter of endgame in every issue as a serial, and i’ve separated the episodes here
with asterisks so you can peep the cliffhanger action. the story begins on tuesday,
april 5, 1994, the day kurt cobain shot himself while listening to automatic for the
people. radio and teevee news announced the body being found on the morning
of friday, april 8, and the newspapers ran headlines about it the next day. the
narrator is totally me, and the life it describes — minus the drugs and money
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— was totally mine in the early ’90s. the initials of the owner of the watch, who
was later revealed to have been killed, were the same as that cuckolding assistant
entertainment editor, and the names of the cops are borrowed from musicians in
industrial bands i like. the ex-girlfriend dara in the story is based on aronne, the
girl from fencepost. she and i became friends again eventually, and i showed up on
her doorstep in tears more than once. i think this story would make an excellent
movie. it reads like a love letter to the ’90s. if i had put more of me in the story,
though, there would’ve been no isaac. it would’ve just been me and whatever girl
i happened to be shagging at the time. well, shagging implies more than one-night
stands, and those were all i really had back then, lots of one-night stands. the
sad thing is that i never finished endgame in my zine. when i left my hometown
and moved north to chico, i reprinted each chapter week-by-week in the local
alternative rag, the synthesis, figuring the deadline would force me to finally finish
endgame, but when the time came to deliver the last chapter, i flaked. the editors
were so pissed. what you read now is the half-assed wrap-up i slapped on it years
later to get it done and out of my head. i kinda hate the ending, but i really love
reading the rest. it’s like reading diary entries. that was totally my life back then.
by the way, the rhythm in the beginning when isaac is playing drums — doomaduh-doom-doom duh-doom-doom-doom — is based on a spoken rhythm from the
song island groove from mickey hart’s planet drum album. i loved world music in
the early ’90s, and i had a vast collection of music from all over the globe. it’s funny
to read the description of the airport, as this was pre-9/11, pre-smoking ban, prehomeland security. i got the happy foot/sad foot thing from an interview with beck
in either rolling stone or spin sometime in the early ’90s. he used to live behind a
foot doctor with a rotating sign like the one i describe, and he said he would look
up at the sign upon first leaving his apartment and take what he saw as an omen
for that day. i thought that was a really cool little tidbit, so i stole that shit right
up. i also stole bits and pieces from my poems and scattered them throughout the
story. notice that the narrator is never named until dara greets him. that’s because
he feels like a nobody when he’s not in a relationship. he only feels real when a
girl’s around. gee, i know how that feels. i feel like that all the time.
p.o.v.
Eh... point of view, get it? i just now discovered this forgotten short story while
looking through old copies of the zine i published in the early ’90s. i had been
looking for a different poem that was deliciously awful, but i found this short story
instead. not a bad trade off, actually, since the other poem was perfectly wretched.
this piece is all about perception, hence the title, and it illustrates pretty accurately
how much i hated working in call centers as cubicle veal. the funny thing is that i
don’t think i had actually worked in a call center yet, since i had been working as
a desktop publishing expert ever since i had been fired from a chain record store
for stealing. the cube farms wouldn’t come until later, when i worked for xbox and
apple computer in austin. i am not sure where this came from. it’s supposed to be
a bit of brazil, i guess. p.o.v. is also the name of a danish film i was in briefly, along
with a number of bay area spoken word poets. they credited me as big popeye.
S
.
doug, cale, and the closet king
Really lame how close this story comes to describing my actual life. this was one
of the first short stories i had ever written that i really liked. it was for a creative
writing class at chico state university during my first semester there. the characters
are based on myself and a guy i knew from my hometown who moved to chico with
me, a drummer named cale wiggins. the character of doug is made up, but the rest
is a pretty accurate portrait of the first few months we spent in chico, just sitting
on the couch, watching jeopardy with the sound turned off, eating bad food, and
laughing big fat belly laughs. cale and i invented the game camper van on the trip
north from bakersfield to chico, and it has become a crucial part of every roadtrip
i’ve taken ever since. what i love about this story is how the two knuckleheads
make fun of the doug character for his eccentricities, anti-social behavior, and
freakish obsession with porn, but all they do all day is sit around and talk shit. at
least doug has a girlfriend. who’s the loser? the 1-800 numbers still work.
the girl on the bus
Just another creative writing class endeavor, this one from late ’94 when i first
moved to chico, california. i like this it, even though it’s verse, i think it’s very
poetic, and i read it at my first featured reading in los angeles. there actually was a
girl on the bus who was the inspiration for this poem, a very beautiful red-haired
girl named samantha who caught my attention on the way to campus on the bus.
when the story was finished, i gave her a copy. i can’t remember what, if anything,
she said in response to it. she was probably creeped out. i would later find out my
writer friend annie la ganga not only knew the girl on the bus but had also been in
a play with her back in chico. weird. all the stuff about working in a diner is made
up. i’ve never worked as a short order cook, but i worked as a dishwasher once at
a vegan restaurant for four hours. sucked.
sorrow, part one
Another creative writing class piece, this one written in the same class as the girl
on the bus in ’94. it’s just me thinking about the best dog in the whole wide world,
my german shepherd best friend chinook who protected me from loneliness from
’77 until my dad put him down in ’85. that’s a tragic story, too. ask me about it
sometime. i had a friend once named melinda who taught creative writing in a
prison for a time, and she told me of an inmate who had started a story with the
words harold had been rising through the clouds now for several hours. something
like that. i liked it so much, i stole it. thanks inmate guy! my mom really likes this
one. we have always been a german shepherd family. here are the names of all the
german shepherds we have had since i was born that i can remember: sugar, duke,
sasquatch, chinook, brandi, teddy bear, chinook #2, nicki, cody, sasha, and thor.
my dad’s dad had a german shepherd named duchess who was really sweet, too.
the latest dog to join the family is thor, who is a little puppy as i write this, and he
is such a sweetheart. my dad had to put cody down after only four years due to a
long-term infection that wouldn’t quit, and it was really rough for him, so about a
month later, he and my mom went to the puppy farm and got thor. the dark cloud
T
.
.
following my dad has been magically lifted through his interaction with this little
black and tan dog. it’s really sweet to watch them play. i love the smell of puppy
breath, the sharp points of their little teeth when they playfully bite you, and the
way the older dog sasha scraps with little thor so gently, lying on her back with
her long mouth open and her legs flailing as tiny thor acts like a little bad ass and
wrestles with the loose skin of her neck. so cute! my kitties are 13 years old, and i
don’t wanna even think about their eventual demise. i love them to pieces, and i
hope they break 20 and keep going! i will keep them alive until they are just skinny
bags of bones lying on a heating pad all day. mah bebes! i love them so much i
want to eat them up! nom nom nom!
my very first real live nekkid lady
Culled from a collection of work stories i put together for a zine series i was
planning called 33 job and several nekkid ladies. i was going to write a story for
every job i had ever had, and it was weird, because there seemed to be a nekkid
lady in almost every story. the first issue covered my first eight jobs, but then i
never returned to the project for some reason. i have had a lot more than 33 jobs
at this point, but luckily no jobby jobs since about 2007. it’s just been poetry since
then, poetry and the occasion freelance writing gig. i like this story. my favourite
part is when the dudes in the van were declared not a fag if they got a lot of
peepholes in a given night. young boys becoming young men via homophobia.
how i escaped my shitty little town (a true story)
Kinda inspired by a true story, but thank goodness not my own. i read something
in my hometown newspaper about these local kids who tried to rob a bank using
the drive-thru window while one of their cohorts was working inside. of course,
they got caught, the dumb asses, but the whole thing seemed like such a desperate
act, such a cry for escape to me. this piece came out of it. i have only ever read
this poem out loud a handful of times since it’s so long. for a while, i was trying to
read it at the austin poetry slam in three chunks, one per round of the slam, and
i would tell the audience they couldn’t hear the next part unless i made the final
round. i thought it was a sure thing, but each and every time i would do it, i’d miss
the third round by a tiny bit and never get to finish the poem. i tried, like, four
times in the ten years i was in austin, and i never once made the final round with
it. the character of grape ape reminds me of my sister’s loser ex-husband.
garanimals
Oh garanimals... i don’t think my mom ever bought them for my sister and me
because they were too expensive. i thought the tags were so cool. i wrote this as
a column for the opinion section of the university newspaper in chico, but i have
read it numerous times at poetry events i’ve done over the years. i have a ton of
those columns and journal entries i’ll be putting into a collection once i am done
with this one, and garanimals should probably be in that one rather than this one,
but it’s sweet and nice and sincere and sad, so what the hell, it stays in this book.
i’m still looking for my orange-striped duck-billed platypus.
I
.
everyday magic
Found this one again when i scoured my hard drive for long lost bits and pieces i
had forgotten. i like it a lot, actually. people always talk about which superpower
would they have, flight or invisibility? but what if your superpower was some kind
of mundane thing, like being able to conjure a cup o’ noodles once a day? what if
that was the only magic you could do? at first, that shit would be amazing! you’d
be the only person in the whole wide world who could actually conjure something
from thin air. you would show off your talents on all the talk shows. but then...
you know... how many times can you do that trick if it’s the only trick you have?
how could you make a living with it? how long would people give a shit? if you
could create thousands of cup o’ noodles at once, you could feed the hungry, but
just one at a time? i think we all have hidden talents that are kinda useless. for
instance, i can whistle and hum at the same time. it sounds like a detuned radio. i
have known people who can make their tongues get all twisty and back-and-forthy
on the tip, like it’s a piece of ribbon. i knew a girl with a third nipple once. it was
on her rib. an actual nipple. her last name was tickle, and people called her third
nipple tickle. she wouldn’t let me touch it, though. i wonder if my poetry is like
this story. have i been conjuring the same shit over and over and calling it new?
god, i hope that’s not what i am doing. i suspect it might be, sometimes.
the butt triplets
Four square was my jam back in the day, but i wasn’t nearly as good as the kid in
this story. i borrowed heavily from my own life for this story. we moved from place
to place as my dad was transferred from one navy base to another. i went to three
different schools in two different states just to finish 4th grade. we moved a lot,
and the first thing i would do at any new school was check out my favourite book
from the school library, my side of the mountain, by jean george. i love that book
and reread it every few years. i remember being disgruntled when i found out the
book had been written by a woman. a woman! as for this story, the names came
first. i used to joke that i had known these triplets from school named bertha,
buelah, and bathsheba butt just because those are such hilarious names, so i kinda
built the story around them. i got the name for the schlebotnick from charlie
brown’s favourite baseball player, joe schlebotnick. this is my best-loved thing i’ve
ever written, and i’ve never tried to get it published. what would be the point of
begging someone else to publish my shit when i sell every copy of every chapbook
i print myself? who cares if they get it on the shelf at barnes and noble? have you
seen how tiny the poetry section looks in a bookstore? that’s because no one buys
poetry off bookstore shelves. me? i sell out of books nearly every show, and i sell
hella books through my website. fuck the system!
mosaic
I forgot about this short story until i started putting this collection together. i
found it while searching through my hard drive for lost pieces, and i sighed and
smiled when i discovered it. i wrote it after the death of jen, the girl i dated in
college who was so lovely and who died so tragically. i am basically the character
C
.
of ethan, and when i came up with the idea for this piece, i actually took polaroids
of people to accompany it, all these little instant snapshots of people looking sad.
i would include them with this collection, but i can’t find good scans of them, and i
seem to have lost the originals. (found them!) i chose the name ethan for the name
of the main character because a friend i used to have named melinda once wrote a
short story inspired by me called ethan in his orbit. it skewered my dalliances with
the ladies in the early ’90s, and it was a real tough love move, chastising me for
tearing through the loins of so many coffeehouse girls. it was brutally accurate.
temp hell
No way do i like looking for jobs, and i’ve never had a harder time looking for
a job than in austin, texas, where the job market is crammed with out-of-work
techies who can type faster than me, know more software than me, have better
graphic design chops than me, and have way better references than me. i took
this evil test at a temp agency, and it was very nearly as bad as what i’ve depicted
here. in fact, the first few questions are taken verbatim from the actual test i took.
i was really laughing out loud at it, but i knew i had to pass it, so i was all trying
to second-guess it and shit. it sucked. some of the questions simply had no right
answer, so i couldn’t figure out what they wanted, which was probably the point. i
passed it, though, and was put to work stuffing envelopes in a warehouse with no
air-conditioning for eight hours a day. i had to pass a test to get so many paper cuts
my fingers looked like venetian blinds? fucking hell! this started as an entry on my
livejournal, but then it got all magically-realistic on my punk ass. i hate jobs. i hate
realizing you are working to line someone else’s pockets while you struggle.
the lord of the breakfast club, parts one and two
Stupid shit like this will never change the world, but they still crack me up. i just
googled the screenplay for the breakfast club and altered the dialog to fit the lord
of the rings. you should’ve seen my harry potter picture show riff with voldemort
as dr. frank n. furter. it had a song that went let’s do the avada kadavra again!
microwave
I came up with this while cuddling my then-girlfriend zara in my tiny bed in my
tiny apartment on fruth street in austin, texas. we were so enamored with each
other then, still deep in the throes of that magical time when you first start seeing
someone and already know you are head-over-hills crazy about them. i started
joking that if she were my tumor, i would comb her hair and brush her teeth for
her, and we just riffed back and forth from there, trading funny lines. zara is kinda
quiet and shy from the outside, but once you get to know her, she is very quickwitted, so the conversation was hilarious. i wrote it all down the next day, and this
is what came out of it. we performed it once, too, at an open mic play event called
no shame theatre with two mutual friends of ours, and everyone really liked it. i
think we both were kinda intoxicated at having made something creative together.
i wrote some of my best stuff while we were dating, and she is still my very best
friend to this day. i hope she will be my best friend forever.
S
.
.
seesaw
Dookie. this came out of my head just about the same time as microwave, but it
wasn’t nearly as good. i wrote it for me and a guy i knew at the time to perform at
an open mic no shame theatre show. you’d just put your name on a list, and you’d
get five minutes to do whatever you wanted. some of it was shit, but some of it was
brilliant. this little playlet was inspired by the saw series of torture porn movies.
it’s okay, i guess. my favourite part is when the wannabe serial killer says maybe
he should go back to grad school and finish his thesis. that cracks me up for some
reason. i never finished my bachelor’s degree in journalism because i dropped out
of school to become a full-time touring poet, and i’ve often considered going back
to finish it. i might. i just might, although the newspaper industry has collapsed.
michael6
Eccentric and crazy and almost assuredly a closet pedophile, but that wierd
brother’s music kicked ass. there was this guy named gabe in my creative writing
class back at chico state university, a cool kinda quiet little dude enamored with
all things computer related. he had this piece that contained exactly one sentence,
but each word had a footnote, which in turn had more footnotes, and it was the
footnotes that told the whole story. i printed it in an issue of one of my zines in the
’90s, and i thought it was such a good idea that i stole it and made my own version
of it. so, thanks gabe! michael jackson had been alive when i originally wrote it, but
he passed on between then and now, so i had to make some tweaks. it was such
a shame that he died on the cusp of a solid comeback. i was cheering him on and
was shocked by how much his passing affected me. everything from off the wall,
thriller, and bad is such good music.
MY NOTEBOOK
!
addendum
turns out, there was more.
since i put this book on the shelf and considered it finished, i have
written a precious few new things — mostly unpolished snippets
from my journal — found some other things, and discovered two
old notebooks from junior high school.
if this collection is truly to include everything i’ve ever written,
then it must include these pieces, most of which are dreadful, to
be perfectly honest. i offer them up solely for you to mock and to
serve as an example of how bad a person can write at the beginning
and still manage to somehow create work that reaches beyond
themselves and touches the lives of others in a meaningful way.
that is not to say that my shit is “the shit,” but it has found its way into
the heads of more people than i have met despite its shortcomings,
and that is an amazing and humbling thing.
being a lazy bastard, there is no freakin’ way i am completely
redesigning this whole book just to add this dreck, so i am taking
the easy way out and sticking it right here in the back with no
commentary whatsoever. do what thou wilt.
aretha, my dear sweet kitty, passed in april of 2013. i held her as the
last moment came. i stroked her face and looked right into her eyes
and told her i loved her over and over until it was done, then i gave
her a place of rest amongst the trees in my sister's backyard. she was
in the middle of her 14th year. she was a kind and gentle soul.
theo is still kicking at 15, and now he has two new roomies in the form
of ella and etta, twin tabbies who are 7 months old as i write this.
november 3, 2013
i
ii
pets (1980)
dogs are so cool,
even when they drool.
cats are neat,
with their little feet.
fish are nice,
all peppered with spice.
i really like pets,
they take away my threats.
iii
warmth (1980)
warmth is blue
smells like wool
feels like a puppy
tastes like buttered toast
sounds like a sea breeze
iv
perfect day (1980)
a perfect day for me
is when i ever see
a tall and beautiful tree.
then i would climb its trunk
just like a long-tailed monk
and jump and fall kerplunk.
then i would be a spy
way up in the bright sky.
getting shot, for a sec, i’d die.
this is the perfect day, you see,
because i’d like to be
a spy up in a tree.
v
clouds (1980)
white cotton
floating and swirling
knight of the air
clouds
vi
girls (1980)
girls are chic
so unique
they got class
laying in the grass
vii
disco (1980)
lights
fluffy smoke
dancing and boogying
john travolta studio 54
disco
viii
headaches (1980)
headaches make people crummy,
makes you feel like a big dummy.
they really make you wanna cuss,
squirm like a worm and fight and fuss.
whenever you really want to play,
everything turns so dark and grey.
to wrap this up, i want to say
that i have a headache today.
ix
matt (1980)
once a cat named matt
found an old brown hat
and so then
without a din
there he contentedly sat
x
earth (1980)
universe
blue marble
spinning orbiting
will it ever stop?
earth
xi
pizza (1980)
triangle
tasty toppings
baking and eating
i love porking out on
pizza
xii
comb (1980)
long
black teeth
parting and straightening
in one hand you have a
comb
xiii
love (1981)
love is light blue.
it smells like a rose
and tastes like sugar.
love feels like a crackling fire on a cold day
and sounds like singing birds.
xiv
me epitaph (1981)
under this stone lies malcom mckate.
he got killed while out on a date.
he tried to kiss his lady dear,
and that’s the reason he is here.
xv
r.i.p. (1981)
here i lay
all shriveled and dead,
fell on the ground
and cracked me ‘ead.
before they gave me
stitches seven,
i arrived
up above in heaven.
xvi
fred (1981)
my dog fred
has a lot of fleas in his hair.
he scratches all day and night.
sometimes
he’ll knock the fleas off
into his food dish
xvii
waves (1981)
glass
shiny foam
moving undulating
a big salty wall
waves
xviii
haiku (1981)
ever-moving wind
always swirling and swift
picking up the dust
xix
my eraser (1981)
my eraser is pink.
it is soft yet firm.
it erases fast and easily.
missing chunks tell of mistakes gone past.
it spends cold nights in my locker.
pen marks make it look like a car.
pencil stains make it misty and grey.
gathers lint in my pocket.
xx
dogs (1981)
dogs are friends.
they romp and play throughout the day.
dogs get the newspaper on those
cold mornings.
they are loving and
understand you best.
xxi
my lover (1981)
my lover is a goddess among goddesses.
her eyes are like limpid pools
of sparkling champagne.
the body of this immortal venus makes
farrah, bo, and cheryl look like mud.
she make my heart thumpity-thump
with all the force of explosive waves,
and i’ll love her until
my body rots.
xxii
wish #1 (1981)
i wish...
i had a cabin
in the woods
by a babbling brook.
i wish...
i could breathe
underwater and swim
with the whales
and the fishes.
xxiii
ted (1981)
there once was a guy named ted
who was sick in his hospital bed.
the doc came in
and turned with a grin
and said, “that poor kid’s dead.”
xxiv
wish #2 (1981)
i wish...
i had a dollar
for each time
sid told a dumb joke.
i wish...
i could live
on mars and
be a martian.
xxv
hate (1981)
hate is dark red.
it sounds like screams
and tastes like motor oil.
it smells like blood
and feels like a sharp knife.
xxvi
school (1981)
School is like
Cactus thorns,
Hard and
Ominous. John
Ogle doesn’t
Like the
Dirty rooms
And
Yucky teachers at
School.
xxvii
sun (1981)
a disappearing sun
setting behind the ocean
boils the clear blue water
xxviii
the drumma (1981)
once there was a drumma
who thought life wuz a dumma.
so every day
when he’d play
he’d practice being glumma.
xxix
mountains (1981)
nature’s
big structures
towering and rolling
they are filled with indestructible power
mountains
xxx
the stream (1981)
stream
dancing swiftly
winding and twisting
through the forest
POLLUTION
taking away
the beauty
xxxi
spinach (1981)
spinach
greasy slimy
stinking smelling sliding
it’s going down my throat, help!
xxxii
elephant (1981)
Elephants
Like to Eat
Pink petunias but
Hate dogs who
Annoy their
Noses
Too long.
xxxiii
goodbye cruel world (1986)
then he took the gun
from the shelf against the wall
put the barrel to his head
prepared to end it all
“there’s no light within my life,”
he whispered ‘neath his breath.
“the only way of true escape
is in my quiet death.”
“if i live just one more day
Alone and Disillusioned,
i’ll lose my mind, if not my soul,
and reach the same conclusion.”
“this is the end of Cat and Mouse;
you don’t need this bad mood guy.”
he closed his eyes and sadly smiled,
and bid this great cruel world...
xxxiv
endless highway (1986)
i was travelling down my chosen path of life
or should i say
the path that life had chosen for me
it all had lapsed into a quite predictable state
and might i add
my horizons held no futures no security
and then one day i turned to find
a ray of hope some peace of mind
and strength enough to put it all behind
you were right here at my side
xxxv
not enough (1986)
it’s not enough just to live
it’s not enough just to live within laws
it’s not enough just to die
it’s not enough just to die for a cause
there’s more to Black than White
there’s more to Love than Pain
there’s more to Home that brings you back
than you can e’er explain
there’s more to hate than fear and loathing
there’s more to wolves than sheeps’ clothing
there’s more to laughter than a smile
there’s more to time than spinning dials
i keep telling myself with each and every breath
there’s more to life than death
there’s more to life than death
there’s more to life than death
xxxvi
3:17 a.m. (1986)
is your Is
your Wish It Were
and is your If
your Hope It Won’t
and was your When
your Should’ve Been
and is your Know
your No You Can’t
wipe the I’s
from your tears
for the years
you’ve left behind
are yours to keep
and none but yours
to weep
xxxvii
the door (1987)
garden
not Garden
Green
shriveled up
blown away
door
not Door
just wall
disguised
book
supposed to be
More
just another book
empty cup
they said would Overflow
when Opened
door
to garden
with book in hand
but did nothing
slip
from hands
break
into a thousand chapters and verses
that blew away
with rest of garden
Cut
from cup
xxxviii
bleeds
and bleeds
deepwoundneverheal
soul
not Soul
crushed
by weight
of void
fills with Nothing
nothingmore
xxxix
spiv (1988)
you cancerous cyst of a man
with a copy of DER STUEMER
in one clenched fist
and VOLKISCHER BEOBACHTER
in the other
pretzel-lipped right-winger
in Doc Martens
and braces
threaten me
with a steel comb
at an Arsenal match
and i’ll beat
your skinned head
with a cricket bat
you fascist cue ball
colour hater
i hope
you drive your LAMBY
into a brick wall
pork pie and all
FUCK your narrow mind
and FUCK your pseudo working class ethic
because it’s all BULLSHIT
it’s not a way of life
it’s a way of DEATH
it’s BULLSHIT man
and although i ain’t no fan
of the queen
or her prime minister
of their occupation of northern ireland
i ain’t going around
beating on the heads
xl
of passing innocents
just because i’m pissed
so grow some fucking hair
on that fucking head
and learn to live pal
or you’re going to DIE
xli
vertigo (1989)
cold
grey mould
funguss creeping forehead stain
inventive
and precise
the dialect of death
drips
from the dead man’s lips
xlii
viscera (1990)
i wisp through life making and unbreaking connections getting
involved in and dissolving disposable relationships bags of
garbage in wake of a freighter i pass through crowds like a piece of
undifferentiated nothingness through holes in the peoplemass that
open and close and open again only big enough for one and i dive in
not touching anyone those travel fastest that travel alone but it gets
oh so very lonely at times and soon you find that you can no longer
deal with another person’s presence movies alone and tables for one
and music and books and computers can only go so far before they
just don’t do it anymore i want to touch someone i want to be near
someone i want to talk to someone but the thin cellophane that
covers the quivering black rot inside me is easily torn no matter how
colourful it may seem from without and once a person gets though
the gurgling reality that is me wants to engulf the person and hold
them so tightly that the person cries and screams and flees and more
often than not hurls harsh words like rocks like bricks i can’t i don’t
know how i need help but don’t know where to go where is GOD
in all this the thought that fill my head scare me how can i think
that why would i think that is that GOD laughing or is that me going
politely insane i don’t need a gun i’ve got you i don’t need a noose
i’ve got you i don’t a deep breath filled with saltwater i’ve got you i’ve
got nothing nothing but you
xliii
passport (1990)
my stomach hurts in fact it’s not really my stomach it’s in there
somewhere in the same general area it’s like my intestines or
something in there somewhere it’s a pressure like gas only it’s not gas
although i do fart a lot but then that’s all i ever do i can never take a
decent crap i’m all stopped up inside so much so that i can’t eat very
often and when i do it’s in very small portions that leave my stomach
feeling bloated no matter what it is i eat it’s upset in there sometimes
i can’t have a decent bowel movement for a week or so and it must
all be inside there somewhere yet it won’t come out and when i does
it comes out in spurts like a busted water main but if it’s so watery
why is it all stopped up in there that’s what i can’t understand and
why is it that blood comes out too and i don’t even have to force it
when it comes it just comes all by itself and yet there’s all this blood
with it and it’s dark muddy blood that comes out in lumpy chunks
that stink to high heaven boy do they stink and all i can think is that i
might have the one unmentionable thing that my minds keeps going
back to like the years of growing up on fast food and junk food and
boxed food and the bagged processed preserved sprayed i want it
hot i want it now pop it in the microwave on high for thirty seconds
instant gratification mental masturbation ruined generation that
i’ve grown up a part of has been the unknowing uncaring corrosion
that’s caked on the insides of my old red flaked pipes and drags me
closer and closer to jesus i can’t even bring myself to say it my own
personal death of my very own not a statistic not an obituary in the
town paper but the puff that snuffs the candle flame i’m holding ever
so loosely in my very own pale white hand and i can’t even say that i
didn’t know because i guess i did i just didn’t think about it you are
what you eat and i’ve been chewing on coffin nails and spitting out
teeth and i’ve lost so much weight even auschwitz wouldn’t want
me and i can barely keep my eyes open i’m so tired all the time it’s
not fair this society is killing me and it’s spoonfed me this shit in an
intravenous rush of colourful carcinagenic compounds wrapped in
xliv
smiling styrofoam containers that last longer than most civilizations
well if they didn’t make it i wouldn’t eat it and if we don’t eat it they
wouldn’t make it and can you pass me another nail on rye and tell
my mother i’ll be coming home late tonight?
xlv
cut-up poem (Bactrim - a sulfa drug ) (1993)
empty as a pane of glass
bus stop people argue
with themselves
in hopes of being overheard
(she didn’t just rebound, she ricochetted)
twist and turn and burn the past
cast away the casings covering
the soul of the answers of the issues
a facade
counterpoint and point your
fingers to the malingering mirror image
blank-eyed
on your white-washed walls prison
walls gathering dust of non-use
it’s no use
turn away
closer your
eyes
and walk
away
xlvi
the ballad of michael (1995)
The click-clack and scrape of dishes and silverware on formica
countertops. The rocking hinge swish-swash of the bathroom door
as it opens and closes again. The smack of some old toothless cat
snacking on scrambled eggs and cheese while his frumpy wife dinkdinka-dinks her spoon on the edge of her coffeecup.
Michael bobs his head to the rhythm he hears, no emasculated
Muzak piped over coffeshop loudspeakers, but the rhythm of life
surrounding him. Even the menu’s stains and tears have their own
beat, and his fingers keep time on the counter’s edge.
Puh-puh-puh-pizza pie. Ham-buh-burger with cheeeeeese. Home
fries, diggety-home fries.
“Do you mind?”
The three-piecer sharing the lunch counter to Michael’s left is
not amused in the slightest; his swollen jugular pulses off-time. He
ain’t diggin’ in to Michael’s shindig.
“Sorry, Bruddah,” Michael sighs in lilting white boy pattois. “De
riddem’s in I, and she gwan come out.”
Suit Boy’s not buying the patented lopsided grin of Michael. He
hurrumphs and butts a stubby Lucky Strike into his plate of corned
beef and hash... exit Suit Boy. Michael just smiles, listening to the
rhythms inside his head.
“What’ll ya have?” says the waitress who’s tag anounces My Name
is Jane. She’s ready for an order, pencil erect.
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Michael, flipping his cowlick from his
left eye with his right hand. “I’m kinda feeling like a fruit cocktail.
How’s about a fruit cocktail, but without the marischinos... You
know, red dye #5. Cancer.”
The waitress hesitates a moment, her eyes pierced by Michael’s
baby blues, then scratches her notepad with her pencil.
“Oh yeah, and can I also get a Coke? With vanilla, if you’ve got it.”
Michael’s head tilts downwards, eyebrows arched, his eyes looking
up into the face of Jane. “You do have vanilla?”
xlvii
“Yeah,” she sighs. “We got vanilla. You want vanilla?”
“I needs me some vanilla something awful, sister, and you gots
what I needs.”
She stares at Michael, the ghost of a smile haunting her face,
scratches again on her notepad, then turns away as Michael adds,
“You know, this place never changes, does it?”
She doesn’t respond, as if she hadn’t heard, but her slight
hesitation before she hands Michael’s order to the cook tells him..
She did.
xlviii
apologies to allen
or my inevitable “fuck slam” poem (2013)
poetry slam, i’ve given you all, and now i’m nothing. national poetry
slam, 112.7, august 14, 1999. i can’t stand my own words.
poetry slam, when will we end this competition? go fuck yourself
with your 10-point scale. i don’t need it. don’t score me. i won’t write
new poems until i have something worth carving into the side of a
mountain with my tongue. this is not a metaphor. i am done.
poetry slam, when will you be poetic? when will you strip off your
pretense? when will you stop staring into stopwatches? when will
you be worthy of your million youtube views?
poetry slam, why are your chapbooks full of soundbites? why did you
stop shouting protest poetry at the white house gates the moment
you were invited inside? i’m sick of your self-righteous indignation.
when can i go into the supermarket and buy what i need with haiku?
poetry slam, i am not polished enough for your world. your
narcissism is too much for me. you made me want to be a rock star.
there must be some higher purpose than making poetry def, than
dyeing our writing the same shade of bloody.
marc smith is still in chicago, but he’s left us, and i don’t think he’ll
come back. it’s sinful. are you turning holy poets into sinners? have
you become some form of practical joke? if points are the only
point, there is no point. i am not ready to give up my obsession with
creative expression, but poetry slams are pointless.
poetry slam, stop dragging me back to the stage. my interest in you
as an art form is falling. my delirium tremens are so bad i can’t paste
a broadside on a barn. i haven’t read vanity presses for years, every
day somebody prints another press release and pretends it’s a poem.
xlix
poetry slam, i feel sentimental about open mics. i used to go to open
mics all the time when i was a wide-eyed poet boy, and i’m not sorry.
i did lines of poetry every chance i got. i sat in my apartment for days
on end and planted roses in my darkest notebooks. i’d worship at
coffeehouses every week, drunk on the words of others, and wake
up in bushes with sonnets bruising my neck, pen spent, notebook
down around my ankles, mind made up to make more trouble the
next week and the next.
you should have seen me reading bukowski like a street preacher
passing tip jars, smoking cloves and shooting old crows, flinging
epithets as prayer requests.
my therapist thinks i have an oedipus complex, but i’m simply
entertaining my matricidal tendencies. i refuse to read the emcee
spiel again, to convert my mystical visions and cosmic vibrations into
3rd round 30’s and 1st place pocket change.
slam poets whip out their scars for judgement and validation, and
those with none or not enough drape themselves in the sorrows of
others stolen from headlines. they shove weeping wounds both real
and imagined into the faces of audiences and demand a score. this
isn’t poetry for points; it’s therapy at gunpoint. poetry slams are no
longer about poetry: they are the pornography of victimhood.
poetry slam, i’m addressing you. why are you allowing our creative
community to be run by sun-tsu quoting starfuckers pontificating into
mirrors and drama queen character assassins quicker to light torches
and launch social media campaigns than engage in conversation?
i’m obsessed by my reflection. it sneaks peeks at me when i slink
past bookstore windows, when i pass through sliding glass doors
at the public library. it’s always cocking fingers at me, daring me to
take responsibility. slam poets are so serious about their sincerity.
everyone’s seriously sincere but me. it occurs to me that i am poetry
slam, and i’ve been talking to myself again.
l
my inner demons are rising against me. i haven’t got a chance in hell.
i’d better take stock. my inventory consists of an ancient resume with
faded references, 117 vaginas, 10 exes (only one of which still speaks
to me), 14 self-published collections of mating calls and damnations,
and 44 states with my steel-toed bootprints across their backs.
i say nothing about the thousands of greyhound buses that ferried
me between couches across america so i could slice my wrists nightly
beneath houselights for alms and promises and the fleeting hope for
heartfelt connection.
how i told you how much you made me hate my own name?
i’ve been banished from cafes, black boxes, museums, in the mission,
deep ellum, the pearl district and soho for no damn and damn good
reasons, and i think my adopted hometown of austin is the next to
go. my ambition was to be universally loved and respected, but now
i’d settle for being accepted.
poetry slam, how can i do penance when you won’t even hear my
confessions? why should i write anything holy when you offer me no
chance at redemption?
i’ll keep twisting notebook pages into crowns of thorns and letting
the spatters coagulate into prayer, but i’m not so eager to compare
scars with you anymore. they all look the same after a while, and
everyone’s are so much deeper than everyone else’s.
poetry slam, i’ll give you back my trophies and laminates, my t-shirts
and poet bags, the headline tragedies twisted into strategies, the
2,500 haiku and counting, the silent miming against alley walls
while muffled poet voices fall on deaf ears, the sidewalk cyphers
outside just-closed coffeehouses spitting rehearsed freestyle rhymes
to half-ass beatbox beats, mean-mugging poetic opponents instead
of cheering poets who own it, demons disguised as dreamcatchers
trading my visions for nightmares, dented bullhorns gifted by god
and abused to rally troops who wound those with whom you feud,
li
talk shit hit send, facebook, newsgroup, website forum, myspace,
building bridges with chapbooks so matches catch faster, the judges
fucked me tonight, the score creep fucked me tonight, the draw
fucked me tonight, i was robbed, i’m bailing before the first round
ends, bailing when i can’t get my name on the list, bailing because
they won’t let me sacrifice, fuck the cool kids, fuck the cliques, fuck
the EC, fuck NPS, fuck WOWPS, fuck IWPS, fuck NUPIC, fuck CUPSI,
fuck BNV, fuck HBO, fuck everything, fuck me, fuck me over.
i am not your fucking poem. i am not your rallying cry. i am not your
bogeyman. i’m not your poster child. i am just a writer. i write. and
i perform what i write. and that’s all that i do. and that’s all that i’ve
done. and what i have done has nothing to do with why i can’t sleep
soundly at night and more to do with mirtazapine, effexor, celexa,
welbutrin, sertraline.
poetry slam, i am done washing your feet for sins you’ve assumed
and now i wash my hands of you. you’ve shit in my bed and forced
me to lie in it. just leave me alone to lick my self-inflicted wounds
you’ve infected and i’ve let fester with blame for every misguided
thing i’ve never done. i no longer know the difference between you
and me, so i’m leaving both behind.
my sociopathy blinds me to any good i’ve done in spite of you.
poetry slam, i’m putting my offensive shoulders to the wheel, and
grinding my poems to powder milk. mix them with crocodile tears
and drink, then wipe them from your upper lip and be done with me
as i am done with you.
lii
open letter to white people in horror movies
(2013)
1. Do not go camping in the creepy woods. Avoid camping in the
creepy woods at all costs.
2. If you do go camping in the creepy woods, do not under any
circumstances do so in a creepy abandoned cabin.
3. If you make the inexplicably short-sighted decision to go camping
in the creepy woods in a creepy abandoned cabin, and if that creepy
cabin smells like death the moment you open the creaky front door,
just turn around and go home.
4. If you don’t go home and instead decide to actually spend the
night in said creepy death-smelling cabin in the creepy woods, and if
you should find a large blood stain leading to a trap door in the floor
secured with an ancient looking lock, do not break open the lock
and open the trap door.
5. You just broke the lock and opened the trap door, didn’t you?
Stop. Now. Go home. Do not under any circumstances climb through
the trap door and traipse down that rickety staircase into the dank
basement from which issues forth that putrid stench you noticed
upon ignoring me and entering the…
6. What the fuck are you doing in the basement? Are you insane? Well,
now, I hope you are happy. See all of those dead animals hanging
from hooks? Hear the swarms of flies? Smell the decay? Oh, I have
an idea, why don’t you take a look around? I mean, fuck it, why
not, you’re already here, right? In fact, look for something like, oh,
I don’t know, a creepy book bound in what looks to be human skin
and wrapped with rusty barbed wire. And you should read it… out
loud… especially if it’s in Latin.
liii
7. What the fuck are you doing???!! I was being sarcastic, dumb ass!
Put the book… Don’t open it! What are you… Are you actually
reading Latin phrases from the book bound in human skin? Really?
What do think it’s gonna…
8. I fucking told you. But did you listen? Oh, no, who the fuck am I?
Just some sad voice of reason trying to ruin your good time. I will
tell you exactly who I am, Hula-Hoop Hips: I’m someone who ain’t
having their soul torn apart by some evil black magic bullshit I was
foolish enough to summon, that’s who I am, Sunshine, I am sitting
here surfing the Interwebs while you get your extremities ground
into hamburger by cackling demons.
9. You fucking moron. Tell Hitler and Ronald Reagan I said hey.
I hope an eagle eats your spleen every day for eternity.
10. No, actually, you know what, my bad, do all that stuff. YOLO. It’s
probably all gonna be just… fine… If you don’t, it’s just gonna be a
small group of insanely sexy young white people — and maybe one
vaguely ethnic hot chick who could be Indian, Mexican, or kinda
sorta maybe Black because she has little dreadlocks, but it doesn’t
matter since she’s gonna die first anyway — staring at a creepy shack
in the creepy woods for about two seconds before saying, “Oh, hell
no,” before turning the car around and driving back home. How
boring would that be?
liv
how to make love, part two (2013)
if i had a daughter, and she came to me as a young woman and asked
me for advice about sex, this is probably what i would say.
1] can’t you ask your mom about this stuff?
fine.
1] you are never allowed to have sex under any circumstances ever
ever for your entire life especially not with boys. period. end. this
poem is over.
just kidding.
1] buy condoms. buy them and keep them with you at all times, and
make sure he uses one every time. this does not make you a slut.
this does not make you a whore. this makes you prepared to make a
decision that could change your life forever.
(footnote: if he tries or even suggests having sex without condoms,
kick him out of bed and never let him back.)
(second footnote: there is no such thing as safe sex, only safer sex.
before making a decision about your body, do your research.)
2] foreplay is for more than initiating sex. everything is making love.
kissing. touching. caressing. holding. laughing. listening. it’s all
making love, and very little of it has anything to do with being naked.
most boys need to be taught this lesson. for the benefit of every girl
they will ever meet after you, be prepared to teach them.
3] intercourse is not the only valid form of sex. there is outercourse,
dry humping, heavy petting, using your hands, using your mouth,
lv
using items that were specifically built for the purpose of pleasuring
one another. none of these will get you pregnant, although some
might expose you to STI’s. before making a decision about your
body, do your research.
4] masturbate. a lot. if you learn how to pleasure yourself, you won’t
need to rely on anyone else, and if you choose to share your body
with someone, you’ll have the vocabulary to gently guide a clumsy
lover down the right path.
5] your body is beautiful exactly the way it is, and you do not
need to change it in any way to make yourself worthy of love and
respect. anyone who would demand you change your body to please
themselves is not worthy of your love and respect. love yourself first
and everything else will follow.
6] kiss a girl just to see what it’s like. if you like it, do it again. if you
like it a lot, do it some more. if you like it way more than kissing
boys, then keep on kissing girls for the rest of your life.
7] consent is one of the most important things you can give a person,
and no one has the right to take that away. anything other than “yes”
means “no.” silence is not consent. being too drunk or drugged
to say “no” is not consent. dressing or acting a certain way is not
consent. surround yourself with people who understand this and
report those who don’t.
(footnote: it’s perfectly ok for “yes” to become “i’m not sure” or
“no,” and your partner must follow your lead. if they don’t, claw
their fucking eyes out.)
8] talk about all this stuff with your best friends, both male and
female. there is nothing taboo in learning about your body and how
it works and how you want it to be treated, but so many people grow
up having no idea they have the right to dictate what happens with
their own bodies. be an advocate and an ally and do not hesitate to
help someone in need of this information.
lvi
9] if you should become pregnant, don’t freak out. okay, freak out,
but then come to me and we can figure it out together. i will never
be ashamed of you or judge you harshly for coming to me with your
truth, so know that i am here for you. if you don’t feel comfortable
coming to me, please go to someone else you trust. you don’t need
to deal with this alone.
10] do not compare your body or your attractiveness with
advertising, pop culture images, or internet porn. very little of that is
an accurate depiction of sex, sexuality, gender, or love. most of it is a
male-centered fantasy full of unhealthy ideas about desirability, body
image, and self-worth meant to make you weak so someone can sell
you something that tricks you into feeling confident. don’t buy into
the misogynist culture that surrounds you. fight it.
11] gender and sexuality are not binary. you can be male, female,
gay, straight, cis, trans, butch, dyke, femme, top, bottom, tomboy,
poly, asex, intersex, genderqueer, drag king, faux queen, lipstick
lesbian, or anything else you can imagine or invent. gotta try ‘em all!
lvii
survivor (2013)
you are right here right now reading this, which means you have
survived it all, everything, all the pain, the suffering, the insecurities,
the break-ups, the fuck-ups, the diagnoses, the depression, the
failures, the embarrassments, the mortifications, the crying jags, the
drunk dials, the crimes, the punishments, the lying, the cheating,
the stealing, the blame, the blame, the blame… you survived it, all
of it, you picked yourself up and you shook yourself off and you
kept going. now you’ve made it here, and that means something.
and even though you might still be stuck in the middle of something
bad — and there will most assuredly be more hard times ahead along
with more good times and everything else in between — right here
and now you are chilling with me inside this book and none of that
other crap matters. you’ve weathered every storm, and that takes
courage and strength, so be proud, homie, and keep on keeping on.
survive. thrive. be at peace.
lviii
bitter men (2013)
no one in the whole wide world hates the internet more than sydney
mossman, the last door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in america.
as door after door is shut politely in his face, he can hear the laughter,
the snorts of derision, the mockery, and his gravely voice trails
behind him as he trundles down the street with his thick, leather
bound samples, whispering, “goddamned internet... goddamned
internet...” sydney’s hatred for computers and the world wide web
is matched only by that of his dear friend simon goldfarb, the last
travel agent in the entire state of florida. together, these two are the
bitterest men in all of america.
lix
come at me (2013)
go ahead and shoot, girl, this bulletproof heart has been torn
apart and stitched back together again with so many songs, books,
poetry, snapshots, rock shows, art galleries, black box theatres, and
greyhound bus depots that there’s far more beat than meat beneath
this breastbone. it’s a wonder it still works, but work it does, so take
your best shot and aim for the notebook tattooed on my chest. if
your lipstick leaves anything less than a scar, i’ll hardly notice, so kiss
me like you mean it, hold on tight, and don’t you let go no matter
how hard i plead. with you.
lx
the tender trap (2013)
i want to kidnap someone, a really cute someone who is soft and
willowy and smell-goody only not like actually kidnap them but
like cuddle-nap them like snatch them up and make them wear soft
flannel pajamas and fluffy monkey slippers and take them to a secret
location with a room filled with billowy pillows and down comforters
and soft lighting and nick drake music and then be all, “muah-ha-ha!
i have you now!” and then give them a really good full body massage
that wasn’t gross and sexual at all but just like really warm and deep
and relaxing and they would be my snuggle slave only i wouldn’t
restrain them in any way and they could leave any time they wanted
and i wouldn’t even really force them to come to the secret location
in the first place because they would want to come and actually i
don’t want to kidnap anyone at all what i really want more than
anything is to be boo-boo’ed up with someone lovely again.
lxi
the dash (2013)
the surface of your headstone will be carved with your full name.
this name represents you. beneath it will be two dates separated
by a dash. the first date is the year you were born. the second is the
year you ceased to exist. these dates represent your entire lifespan.
the dash between the two dates represents everything you did with
your life from the moment your tiny lungs powered your first wail at
the spank of a doctor until the instant you exhaled your last rattling
breath. your name was given to you, and you have no control over
the dates, but the dash is on you.
lxii
willfully ignorant (2103)
conservative republicans have done an amazing job of separating
fact from faith. facts are meaningless in the face of faith. facts can
be disputed. proof can be challenged. studies can be called into
question. evidence can be impugned. facts prompt discourse and
hold the possibility of minds changing, viewpoints altering, opinions
evolving, and all of this is anathema to the grand old party’s base
who want very much to stay exactly where they are without budging
because they have something more important than fact, and that’s
faith in their unassailable truth. faith doesn’t have to be proven. a
feeling in your gut can’t be refuted. reality is trivial compared to
faith, and facts are easily replaced by self-serving ideals that support
whatever fears and prejudices are currently motivating the faithful
to vote. true dialogue can never truly exist because communication
needs a common framework within which to explore ideas, but all
opposing viewpoints are squelched by screaming pundits and party
hardliners who simply repeat talking points until all who disagree
finally throw their hands over their heads and walk away shaking
their heads. they’ll manufacture facts where there are none to justify
doing whatever the hell they want and dismiss or ignore provable
evidence that doesn’t support what they believe. nazi propaganda
chief joseph goebbels said it best: “If you tell a lie big enough and
repeat it long enough, people will eventually come to believe it.”
lxiii
weeping and moaning and gnashing their teeth
(2013)
i don’t really grok people who struggle their whole lives trying to
figure out existence, to tear away the mortal veil and glean the truth
hidden behind it. reality is exactly what it is or isn’t and nothing
more and nothing less, and your understanding is not required for
the universe to work exactly the way it is or isn’t designed. humans
have been pondering the mysteries of consciousness for eons, and
they are no closer to answering any of their biggest navel-gazing
questions. scientists still can’t explain what caused the big bang or
into which empty space the expanding universe is expanding. release
hold on your need to know the secret of every magic trick and simply
allow yourself to be filled with awe. who or what made that big-ass
oak tree? who cares? it’s right there in front of you waiting to take
you into its outstretched arms so you can sing with its leaves in the
wind. what happens after you die? who knows? who cares? it’s going
to happen whether you accept it or not, like it or not, understand it
or not, so let go of it and let it be. if you receive a brilliant present on
your birthday, you’re not going to waste time weeping and moaning
and gnashing your teeth about how sad you will be when it’s gone,
no, you’re gonna rip it open and play with it until it breaks. life is
like that, the very best birthday gift ever, so stop trying to figure it
out and just enjoy it while you can. you can live your entire life being
completely confused about mostly everything and still be happy. in
fact, it might be the only way.
lxiv
my drug of choice (2013)
nothing reaches past all my bullshit and claws straight into my
soul like music. i get absorbed completely and exist in the spaces
between the beats, utterly surrendering my emotions to dance on
the marionette strings of rhythm, melody and harmony. i vanish. the
guitar is my wail, the drums are my fists, the bass is my heartbeat,
the electronics are the lightning strikes between synapses in my
cortex. effexor, remeron, celexa and welbutrin have got nothing
on excision and skrillex and boys noize and deadmau5. seratonin
bathes my brain when i plug in my eargoggles and strap on my big
fat padded dj headphones. not even rain can touch me. the whole
wide world moves in slow-mo outside the armor of my music when
i’m gone ghostly and waft like incense smoke between shoulders in
crowds and gatherings. i am nothing but a shimmer in bus depots
and airports and train stations, a pale shadow, a waterstain.
lxv
every poem is a mating call (2013)
my poems are roadmaps to my embrace scattered by the wind
and hoping to find purchase in your heartbeat and guide you finally
to my empty aching arms
lxvi
dream logic (2013)
i had this weird dream where every person with whom i’d ever had
sex was in the same room, and it was packed with women, shoulder
to shoulder, and they were all really mad at me, and their voices
filled the air with accusations and incriminations and aspersions
upon my character, and the consensus was loud and negative and
full of pain and hurt and regret, and it was all aimed at me like a
quivering swarm of red laser dots on my forehead emanating from
117 pointed fingers, and it was all completely justified, and i couldn’t
defend my actions in any way, and the only thing i could think the
entire time they were all venting at me was, “i have seen everybody
in this room naked.”
lxvii
the first rule about talk club (2013)
you know what would be cool? instead of strip clubs, you could go to
conversation clubs where you watch people on three stages telling
stories. if you really wanted to get some juicy tale from your favourite
speaker. you could pay for a one-on-one table talk. the spoken word
artists would flaunt their educationally-enhanced vocabularies and
acrobatic use of metaphor, stripping away all unnecessary words
to reveal the naked core of truth and exposing their most private
thoughts. the talkers would mostly be college students working for
tips: good books to read; amazing foreign films to watch; museums
with new exhibits. the clubs would be byob — bring your own
ballpoint — and when the talkers offered to give you multiples, they
would mean multisyllabic wordplay. there would, of course, be a
v.i.p. lounge for very intimate parley with your favourite talker or
a spirited match of scrabble where each round you could make it
rain with letter tiles. patrons could order up a poll dance where
talkers quiz the audience about their beliefs to further encourage
open debate, and customers who fancied steamy intercourse could
ask their talker for aural sex in a private booth. there would even be
glass-walled peep shows where shy viewers could watch two talkers
discuss any subject they suggest while pressing pencil to paper.
lxviii
the one (2013)
i have spent so much time trying to find the one, that mystical artsy
intelligent sweetheart with a warm sense of humour and compassion
for this weary world and all its lonely inhabitants, someone achingly
lovely in a way the mirror rarely recognizes, a fierce lover with strong
opinions and consuming passions who is caring and giving without
being gullible or foolish or feckless, a wise partner in crime who calls
me on my bullshit but does so gently and without attack, someone
who will love me forever and never leave me and will always be loyal.
i may have met this person already, we may have met a thousand
times, but i wouldn’t have known it because i’ve wasted so much
time trying to find the one instead of learning how to be the one.
lxix
swmcam (2013)
i am a straight white middle-class american male. straight, but not
narrow in my interpretation or acceptance of the myriad ways humans
express their love for one another. white, but not monochromatic
in my celebration of cultures and ethnicities other than my own.
middle-class, but not classist in my pursuit of experiences shared
amongst people regardless of their tax bracket, politics, or education.
american, but not nationalistic in my pride and shame in this country
or my devotion to the notion that we all live on the same planet
regardless of lines on a map and so share the same fate. male, but not
misogynist or patriarchal in my relationships with women — whether
romantic, platonic, professional, or adversarial — and not phobic
about forms of gender expression that may be different from mine. i
am a straight white middle-class american male, and i recognize the
wealth of privilege this gives me, and while my hands most certainly
do not hold the reins of this country, they most certainly have a lot in
common with the well-manicured hands that do, and i can choose to
deny that fact or use my position in society to promote equality and
understanding between people regardless of who they are or where
they’re from or who they choose to love.
lxx
curriculum vitae (2013)
my resumé is in the quickened beat of your heart, the sharp intake
and hold of your breath, and the gengle release you feel as the wight
of your world slowly lifts from your shoulders and evaporates into
satisfied sighs and smiles. which is a fancy way of saying i haven’t
had a job since 2007, and i am a loser wannabe poetaster with no
money or girlfriend who lives on his sister’s couch. but, you know, it
sounds better when i say it the other way.
lxxi
just be (2013)
everybody pretty much likes you just the way you are, and the ones
who don’t are mostly dicks, and the ones who aren’t dicks never
really gave you a chance, and the ones who did give you a chance
and aren’t dicks and still don’t like you might like you better now that
you have grown up and matured and learned from your mistakes,
and those who would still dislike you no matter how much you’ve
changed and have every reason to continue not liking you, well, it
happens. a life spent trying to convince everyone you meet that you
are a good person is a wasted life. those who love you don’t need
convincing, and those who don’t won’t be swayed, so just be. what
other people think of you is none of your business.
lxxii
the end, finally, after all this time (2013)
every person ever born on this planet will eventually die. you will
die. i will die. everyone you know will die. death is a natural and
inevitable part of life, yet we humans (we americans) avoid thinking
about it until the very end. we are so afraid of death that we push
our elders to the shadows of society so they won’t remind us of
aging, and we exalt all things youthful and sell and buy products
to help us reach for this fleeting goal of perfection far after it is
relevant. we invent religions that promise life after death and
neglect the present for an improbable future. we drink and drug
ourselves numb and distract each other with happier and more
successful cinematic versions of ourselves. our children should be
taught from the first breath to the last that death is not to be feared
but embraced as a crucial part of the human condition. let us create
new rituals that celebrate the end rather than pretend it will never
come.
lxxiii
lxxiii
big poppa e is a three-time veteran of hbo’s “def poetry” series and a
national poetry slam champion. he has been performing his work for
live audiences since 1992, and he has been paid to read poetry in 44
of the united states of america as of 2013. the only states he has left
are wyoming, montana, south dakota, delaware, new hampshire, and
west virginia. bpe has two cats named aretha and thelonious. they are
14-year-old tuxedo cats. they used to go on tour with him in a black
ford windstar mini-van, but now that gas prices are so high, they mostly
stay at his sister’s in wichita, kansas, when he’s on tour. big poppa e has
spent thousands of hours on greyhound buses from seattle to orlando
and back again, and he has lost track of how many couches he’s used as
beds. he is a mostly nice person who is kind and giving and loving, but
he is a bit troubled by depression and anger issues. sometimes he hits
“send” too quickly, then deeply regrets it. he mopes a lot and feels sorry
for himself too often. he is pretty funny and a great conversationalist,
but he is also quite shy and frequently uncomfortable around people.
he is often lonely, but ofttimes can’t bear the presence of others, so
he’s kinda fucked, but he is capable of such beauty sometimes, such
calm, such warmth, such humour. he is fragile and fucked, tortured and
lovely, extraordinarily flawed and occasionally brilliant. writing is pretty
much the only thing he’s ever been good at, but he can make a mixtape
that will break your heart and fix it for you all over again. kiss. ❥ bpe
lxxiv