Friday, September 12, 2014
Here’s Another One: Gross Violation of International Law
Friday, August 22, 2014
dialectalogue (1)
capitalist publishing llc
paycheck
man of steal
garbage
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
She got a small booty so i call her tina
Girl so bad her first name Osama
She been give good neck, last name bin llama
Assassinating precedent after precedent but never Obama
Don't give a fuck but she always do ya in the end like Tony Montana
Monday, July 7, 2014
enhanced interrogation/fourth of july
stars pouring from eyes striped red across the inky navy field
of his vision.
those eyes closed. peace.
the door slammed open with a sudden bang, like fireworks
and bright light lit his hair and face up
like an entertainer on stage,
like an American Idol.
the star spangled banner whistled through the door,
through their straight teeth. they smiled wide and said
"we've got a treat for you, partner!
something hot, and honest!
nothing so honest and true
and American as apple pie."
and those good strong soldiers came and grabbed him with arms like football players,
and tied him down with the knots they learned as boy scouts.
and they pushed in a cafeteria lady's cart
and they joked about "mama's cooking."
and he thought at least it's not the water again. at least it's just a joke.
it was hot, honest American apple pie.
it was honestly hot, anyway. and they packed handful after
handful of hot, honest apple pie into his mouth and didn't stop
until his stomach was so hot and so honest
that he couldn't have lied about cutting down a cherry tree.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
do you trust your government?
I do! I do trust my government.
I trust my government to continue
the way it has been going.
That is, I trust my government
to have some difficulty in
maintaining a positive public opinion.
I trust my government to
vocally oppose racism and
gender and income inequality,
discrimination, poverty,
murder and war
and to persist in putting
the "institution" in that multifarous
institutional.
Most of all,
I trust my government to fail
to accomplish what
the people who make up
the government
believe is right.
And no, I'm not worried about
the newly elected
with their new ideas
changing my government
for the worse
to suit their agenda
because I trust
my government to be incapable even
of consistently accomplishing evil.
anxiety
I don't tell them, and I sure don't tell her.
I work hard to keep myself bound together, finger
page after page and I raise my cover against the rain
and I book before I crack up and break,
shatter and shake, rattle and quake no. wait
like the ground that embarrasses fate
let tears roll over and off, bourgeois water and gauche,
a socialist who knows only labor and cost.
standing shattered and blurry
on the corner of decision and hurry
on the corner of chaos and Division
on the corner of heartburn and excision.
The truth is that I've clammed up and quieted
the truth, that I'm violent and riotous
stupid and useless, rage to rule by ruthless
putrid abusive putative measures
I'm sure I hide inside my sweater
where I can't see or feel them. I worry
what I snort between my ignorant visions
in indecisive derision
at the pleasantries that escape inhibition
is like a dog biting a handful of provisions
I'm guaranteed to worsen by worrying my social position
an honest thief
to brake, and slow, and stop
and strip keys from their ring
and throw them haphazardly into
the wide open lock of the world.
to walk south
down the Pulaski skyline
that bourgeois revolution,
that polish caballero, my head holding ideas over it
like Hitler held tanks. That brazen defiance in the face of total
inadequacy. That American dream, that sleepy sneer.
That bridge that wasn't even new in 1930,
that bridge that couldn't do it's job when it was built.
to walk past that land of opportunity,
and to walk past Newark,
and to walk past Trenton,
and to walk past Camden.
and to walk past terror,
and addiction, and corruption,
and racism, and inequality,
and rape, and money,
and Patterson,
and find a field, dusty brown, no more green
in which to stagger and starve
and steal oneself
and live outside labor
finally an honest thief.
fifteen minute break
that you have never seen
such a beautiful sight
as sunlight filling globules
of gravity-stricken water
hovering like a ship in a bottle
three feet over my outstretched hands
for even this brief a moment in time.
I am a
big, sexy man
with
big, sexy hands
That snatch
this water-bottle out of the air as it falls.
The slosh inside slowly regains its faculties
Drips down the sides of the bottle
and settles back into the wave
I create walking down the path.
I tighten a bicep and curl
the bottle back into my line-of-vision
but the sight pales in comparison
To the taut, tanning skin of my heavy, heavy arms.
I sweat quietly, comfortably in the July hum
and suspect I am wasted inside,
as the air conditioning is wasted on my
massive, healthy bod draped in work cotton.
I am never too hot or too cold:
Ha-ha!
Yes,
I am a big, fat, muscular man.
millenial manifesto
This is no heaven; that will be when everyone dies over the age of twenty seven. But that's a joke just like everything else it turns out there was no cool even in hell and the only thing left is writing the next book on the shelf for another generation that doesn't know the history of its self. but in the leg stretch there's still that thought best the one that makes me think maybe there's a hope yet and maybe it's not you but maybe it is so sit down and wait for me baby let's fit some thoughts in
Sunday, June 22, 2014
suttungr vs the gods
Lo did Suttungr awake,
Near driven mad by the smell.
He lay facedown in a cowfield
His face puffy with drink, angry and hot
In a pillow of spew and cowshit. It
Was the dirtiest part of him
Besides his furs. The cows had come
Well past the noon of night
With their tongues out
To wash the cold off his
massive limbs. They had watched him
Stumble and retch, wrench himself
Out of the sky to lie groaning on grass
A giant wretch, near dead
With drink and in danger of
Waking up cold to the world.
He awoke among them
Well and truly licked by
Gifted beer and gifted mead,
Gifted too plentifully.
"Fuck,"
Said he. "I am hungover, verily.
Those motherfucking gods
Can really put 'em back."
Friday, June 20, 2014
Biography
I spent a year telling myself I should save it for later, that I was surviving my neighbors, that i would be alright if I just remembered to grip the taper and sip the vapors of the burning bible paper. After all, where there's smoke there's fire; but what i learned from putting the cart before the horse (of course) is that too much smoke makes it hard to see what stoked your ire. I finally got the hell out of Dodge by simply walking off the job, leaving the harpies of house and home to sleep in the bed they'd made for themselves.
Finally free, I met Mandy and put on a hot attraction via enfilading fire: I just kept shooting my load until the job was done in that shotgun furnace of a room, filled with sweat and stink and the closeness of camaraderie. In May I sucked up the flowery fragrance with both nostrils, let my fancy lightly turn. my grip loosened, the taper occasionally fell and voila! Autumn. The Fall came and I was still employed.
Sometimes I laid my head against the grey and chalky walls of my cubicle and wondered what it would be like to be buried underneath them; to be a stone column in my building 9 hours a day for 50 years and then to die at the end and have heavy slate piled on my head to hold me down. I would be more legible then, with my name and my death date the only thing left to tell about me.
Fear told me to live and so I did: that Autumn I found courage in cider and the time to roast pumpkin guts - found love in small titties and a big heart. I ate nuts and berries and Velveeta and beer and grew fat and hairy for winter, like a skinny bear with a slowly disappearing buttocks. Humanity joined me and no one saw us change like caterpillars in our winter clothes, no one saw our bodies under our stolen skins.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Prizewinner
Their smiles are all teeth
as they accept the token from the mopheaded degenerate
crushed behind his register.
But it is with arms like umbilical cords
And wiggly weak bodies
That they nervously tote their prize
until they can drop a firm hand
on the shiny red shoulder of their
first skeeball.
all the way down the lacquered wood ramp the ball is handed
deliberately from parent to teacher
doctor to priest
to the waiting college professor
who shines up a glossy red coat
on the ball that has felt sweat
and dead skin and moisturizer. And
he drops it in, into the center circle.
One hundred points (100). Bullseye. Jackpot.
Lights blare and music rolls
like a skyburst, inevitable but shocking,
as the led display shows the same old score
in bright red block letters:
HAPPY GRADUATION
Saturday, June 14, 2014
the world of television and beds
young people are not animals, never slaves. They are free.
Let me give you an example:
today you watched Futurama
from two a.m. to two p.m.
with a slight instinctive unease:
the stickiness of your blanket to your knees,
a growing warmth in your pillow case.
But you persevered
and kicked those school papers off your bed,
struggled mightily to continue doing nothing, kept your feet
from hitting the warm nut-jungle air
of your room. You stayed under your blanket.
If you think that was a good time
I think I heard your stomach rumble just now:
or anyway,
I remember that it's there.
Now:
a greasy tub of off-brand cheese doodles,
Totino's Pizza Rolls,
Hot Pockets
not Chinese food, because you will have to
get out of bed
and meet someone new.
You know what's good for you:
You'll keep your cheesy fingers off your crusty keys, partner
You let those episodes roll along uninterrupted and
"mmmmm," how your nose will delight
As your stomach slowly roasts under your laptop battery.
Now doze.
Repeat. Futurama is in it's third season
but what season was it in when you started?
your legs are swimming in sweat like dead porous whales
and the old urge to accomplish adulthood rises in you
like a lesser man's gorge at the sight of your bed.
can you overcome your self? can you overcome me?
it is your choice: no bell will ring to tell you to shower,
to eat, to sleep, to move, to achieve. You will have to do it yourself
no one can do it for you, and unless you ask no one will help. So,
why don't we compromise; you can compromise your health and I will too. Meanwhile,
compose an e-mail to your psychologist
the title will be: "I still can't go to sleep."
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
yeah
and i plan to be too dumb to criticize
so i guess i got that going for me
Monday, June 2, 2014
skald
i am suttungr the giant
and i am older than age
wrapped in skins i stitched
by hand, in it a club of gnarled oak braids
i have lived before glory
and known no heroes days.
now i walk in their meadhall
my horn overfilled, but no cup do i take
they call themselves gods
but god sits in another plane
and he is neither fair nor blond
but thick and fat and terrible plain.
a terrible mallet chained to his wrist
over the crystalline lattice of metaphors make
and he lets it loll over the gods
their halls, thrones, glasses edged in gold and scraped
clean by elders ken, by hammer and pick and
man and woman and child gone already to fate.
on a day i will wake up face down in a cowpat
cold and licked by cattle in a dranksick state
and look about me and see that the gold is in the ground again
with the old bones, and the clock's weight
and there will be no gods to question suttungr the giant
for i am older than age
Sunday, June 1, 2014
bulimic sifu
but truth is never a spectrum, oh truth is hot and bothersome, holding truth, being right. sexy and frustrating, oh so frustrating. these are the words spoken today and the words that readers hear: frustration is sexy. sexy is frustration. being right is sexy and being right is frustrating. being frustrated is right. being sexy is frustrating. but writing can be very satisfactory, and a really good written lie is to truth what orgasm is to frustration; because frustration is complicated, and nothing simple was ever really true.
i imagine a monastery, a gathering of students and journeypersons and teachers and masters. a wise elder approaches, to general apprehension. a silence rolls through the crowd like the opposite of a wave, like the end of sound. wonder abounds: she has not imposed herself on the world so very many times. her robe does not flap. she does not leave footprints. when she reaches the chess set in the center of the room she astounds: there are two chairs set on either side of the chess set, but she sits in neither of them. her eyes are like dinner plates, her mouth wooden, lips closed. Her tongue slides out like the swift hand on a grandfather clock, swinging around pursed lips. Her latex-gloved hands pick up the first piece and she begins swallowing them whole, until the board is empty and her stomach is painful. She turns towards the students with pain and suffering in her eyes and vomits. this antsy kasparov, this rubber-gloved grand master, she picks up each sticky piece and wipes it clean until she can strip the gloves and bag the paper. the students applaud. her essay goes largely unread, but it sits on many bookshelves. on most copies there is a sticker on it that covers the first three letters of her name: it is the Pulitzer prize.
i ask without knowing the answer: why praise the falsehood of rare truth? why write as the bulimic sifu, who eats up truth and vomits it back in a gallant mess. am i to imagine i am not imagining? is my body imposing on you its existence when my eyes make alchemy of sights seen? i hear your complaints like a pestle on wood. i feel you smash and grind the paste into me and make mention of my slowly appearing wooden specks, my imperfections that the paste did not ask for. perhaps your stick tickles the compound and tries to purify it in the disguise of your eyes, motes softly reflected as you add splinters with each swing of your axe, timber. reporter, reporter. see that the conversation between you and me should never be the truth. treat me like a societal problem and just let me lie.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
buck
but my worth is written on my paycheck, written in my clothes, written in the cut of my hair, the shape of my beard. Written in my cigarette, my blackheads, in my oily skin. Written in the weird lovely calluses on my hands, my open collar, my $20 pants. Written in my face: I am worth a buck an hour, or a multiple of said dollar. Pay me what you will, you pay for nothing but a third of a man. you pay for nothing but a third of a man this day.