she was red with love,
full of it; the feeling oozed from her skin
and dripped from her laughter like honey.
love stuck to the walls of her home
and she painted with it;
her life was a canvas and red was the colour
and your hands were her paintbrush.
i guess you didn’t realise
that her colour stained other people.
(his lips used to be blue but they’re purple now.
they probably taste different too but
you never asked her if they tasted sweeter than yours)
your own skin was the colour of moss.
dirt was under your fingernails.
your hair was full of splinters.
her hair was always so soft
even when you ripped it out of her.
she’s all red now.
even her throat is smiling.
she still laughs in technicolour.

Here we have knives
here we have a garlic clove
pass it on to the next target and mentor
perhaps it is turnip's turn
possibly a dreamcoat

you know
I haven't eaten you in weeks
this last decibel from my banjo-guitar is joyous and ruggedly pleasing to my pear ears!
and I don't feed on mortals

steep is an overshot
this cliff will knock you backwards, refreshingly
teetering on the edges of my fingernails
where aren't you headed, anyway?

Walking and pondering along
questing to the hindering goal
march march for words
tell me a heart
tear out apart

get to the ice creed! This will be cruel
cautious yellow fondling off-white egg beater
he sneezed for me, please
thanks, I mean!

troubadours dance lightly in my mind
feet, feet, focus on their feet
that's a loudest saxophone. that' s a loudest horn
I'm
Scared
heavens no I don't smoke cigarettes!
We do this for a living.

State Fair, Kentucky 2013

by Yoko Molotov and David Willams


It’s time for the State Fair,
today is the last day of summer.

love all the animals. pet all the animals.
cook all the animals. eat all the animals.

inflatable prizes on a stick, slowly deflating,
it’s the childhood's defeat-
they are lying lifeless in the backseat.

guess your
birthday,
weight or age
within 3 days,
20lbs, or 3 years.
junk on tables for looks at-
key rings, magnets and stickers.
Formal complaints.

white people.
Starving ducklings leap and fall
while snotty babies squeal at them.
Obama, I'm a friend of Mitch.
donate 3$ to the GOP.
I fed an estranged Grandpa
roasted pecans.

country people. concrete floors.
legs. legs long and legs glossed.
Thousands of people and two thousands of crocs.
pillars of ivory, blue and dimpled.
sunburn, wife beaters, and university shirts.
(THAT'S IT, I'M TELLING MEMAW, your shirts are beautiful)
beautiful lips
and toothless maws.

half-hearted, half-heated corn dogs and overpriced
beers, I can never finish an ice cream so
I usually leave the cone lying to be
sat in.
Dead bugs in a box and bug puke in my mouth.
A salad made from blue ribbon tobacco and light bulb tomatoes.
everything smells like popcorn, **** and tradition.

Joseph's Dreamcoat worn in some nobody's county.
you're my favorite gingerbread girl.
lover's quarrels are illegal, thanks.
everyone has the right to be miserable, thanks.

bovine pet request,
dumb static and docile eyes, do they ever change?
does any of it really change?
at some point all the cows petted will be digested and shat out.

congested aisles, shoving and trampling,
the mobilized morbidly obese in carts
WWJD?
a fat stone in a brainless trout stream.
the failing pan salesman hawking his wares,
no one in attendance, wearing a headset (a real go-getter)
and holding his pan like a flag.

the really poor families come to the fair
because it's cheap entertainment,
and it's cheap tradition.
and these struggling families
trudge proudly in faded Kmart attire-
an exhibition the pretentious call
"people watching".

separating oneself from the herd of undesirables,
a pasty man
with his head awkwardly on a pillow,
trying to convince an apathetic and bloated crowd
the perfection of his product,
his head a bit like road ****.
he's selling but the
crowd walks on-on-on.


Was there more guano under the bridge or beyond the gates?

it's not really a shortcut to philosophy when writing
it in a shape of a poem, hardly a reason to trust
there's an orthodox choice of subjects -
unresolved problem, or even having to warrant
that horrid academic style of narration - and even if
not academic then simply in the vein of vanity: 'he's
wrong, he's wrong, oh he's definitely wrong...'
after all poetry can be philosophical,
after all heraclitus wrote sparingly and wore a cloak
of enigmas - as joseph and the multicoloured dreamcoat,
so too heraclitus and the multinigmatic (πολυνιγματικoς)
cloak; then there was parmenides of elea &
empedocles of arcagas who just wrote poetry,
albeit much less self-involving
as modernity would like to believe - and i guess
if qualified as didactic poetry, the instructions were certain
disguised as faults of their own understanding,
thus the instructions are of a higher calibre, in that
they are wrong and the reader must service their
wrongs... say... with something like galileo or newton,
because who the hell would like to constantly read
didactic poetry of specific instruction to be fulfilled
while the poet has to only write it in the comfy abode
of the page?

The rain came
It was expected
Which is a shame
The sun reflected
Out came the sun
with a smile on its face
the show had begun
an image impossible to erase.
Colours of the dreamcoat
shone like an upside down smile
it got my vote
by as much as a mile.
I thought of the *** of gold
and who could I give it to
The air went a tad cold
I realised I was wet through
The rainbow seemed to know
of my thoughts and dreams
I thanked it for the show
and the colourful beams.

Peace for now
calm and still...
Thoughtless in thoughtfulness
I am the rising heart song
The rumble of happiness beats in time to my heart.
I must live in my magic
Conjuring and weaving my life's fabic like a seamstress.
Hold steady...
The turbulent uncertaity of life takes a mechanical hand but lead with your heart.
Behold her
The shape
The bold lines
The fierce brave colours.

(This poem can be sung to the melody of "Go Go Go, Joseph" from JOSEPH AND HIS AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tze325xsYd4

(Narrator)
Nancy P. was looking to
Investigate what happened here
Back on a fateful winter day--
On January 6 this year.

(The People)
Hey, Nancy, you're doing what you must.
We want a probe that is robust.

Good going, Nancy, do not shy away.
Get to the cause of what happened that day.
Please don't stop, Nancy. You should find out
What the insurgence was really about.

(Narrator)
A group that was bipartisan
Was Nancy's goal--was Nancy's plan.
But she found resistance from
Kevin M.--the hatchet man.

(The People)
Hey, Nancy, he wants to derail
Everything, for he wants you to fail.

So she received from McCarthy some names.
He was intent on still playing his games.
One was Jim Jordan, the worst of the lot;
Another Jim Banks, to spoil the ***.

(Nancy P.)
Sorry, guys, but you have proved
That you're not worthy of this task.
I want people willing to
Be serious. That's all I ask.

(Narrator)
First, Jim Jordan hoped that he could prove
That Nancy here had made an unfair move.

(Jim Jordan)
Investigations like this are a sham.
If you don't want me, I don't give a ****.
If you ask me, I have known all along
That having this probe is both outrageous and wrong.

(Nancy P.)
Sorry that you feel that way,
So go back to what you were doing.
But studying attacks on our
Democracy is worth pursuing.

(Narrator)
Then Jim Banks stood up to speak his mind.
He and Jordan had been closely aligned.

(Jim Banks)
You have made this a partisan mess.
You're doing nothing but causing distress.
Forget all the riots; why can't we move on?
For me it is all just one giant yawn.

(Nancy P.)
How bizarre that you both live
In alternate realities.
Too bad that the two of you
Can't see the forest for the trees.

You are dangerous; it's clear to see.
I think that most people would agree.

(The People)
Don't worry, Nancy, you've done what is right.
Stick to your guns and don't give up the fight.
What those two men have done is quite clear:
Each one of them has his head up his rear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nancy, you've done what is right.
Stick to your guns and don't give up the fight.
What those two men have done is quite clear:
Each one of them has his head up his rear.
His head up his rear…
His head up his rear…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

-by Bob B (7-25-21)

Joseph swopped his dreamcoat
for a trip downriver on a
Mississippi steamboat
and it was all in
technicolour.

There is no bible big enough
to hold all the stuff
that faith is made from,

my mom told me that
( actually it was mam but that didn't rhyme )


But it's all boo to a goose
with its neck in a noose
I prefer Turkey
or
sometimes Kabul.

Here at the altar
a prayer
a Colt a
bang.

I hang with the goose.