I come outside
at the wrong time.
My brother, shirtless,
bakes under the Mississippi
oven sun, tosses
a frog into the air
and watches
its eyes pop
as it nears the concrete,
grinning as it splatters
and looking at me
for further direction.
I nod and watch.
Inside I cool
and await the
coming guilt. I start
to feel my skin itch
and I scratch madly.
I transform into
a stick held in
the sweaty palms
of my brother. He
skins my bark with
a knife, rubs flint, sparks
me, burns me. I crackle
in the fire. In another life,
another world, I’m
fashioned into a spear
by tall Mississippi frogs who
like the way humans
sound when they fall.
I’m impaled on a stick
outside of the frog temple
and long frog tongues **** me.
I’m never offered
to the gods.
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 12:00 PM UTC
If lyric could **** I’d want every one
of my poems to be a Walther P38 w/
a silencer, the kind of gun protruding
from Bond’s pocket like
the metallic ******* p-shooter
he’ll stick into some Russian
beauty by the name of Svetlana
at the end of the movie. The poem
would be **** (right?) bc everyone
knows a big gun translates into a
bigger **** I’d whip it out when you
least expect it and blast a full
chamber of multi-syllabics into
your cranium. And the best part,
bc it’s so silent, you wouldn’t even
notice the eruption from the barrel.
Your last thought would be, “how beautiful.”
Then blackness.
Afterwards, I’d remove your brains from the piece,
and watch as the words trickle from your
wounds. I'd leave the poem at the ****** scene
and call it art. Surely then it would draw an audience.
Oct 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013 at 10:06 AM UTC
For Ricky*
Ricky Williams, Miami Running Back (2002-2003, 2005)
When the news broke and the camera pointed at a torn tent
on the outskirts of Miami where you sat knees-up-to-chest
professing enlightenment, the football world sacked itself
wondering how good your *** really was. Must have been
growing straight from Buddha’s back yard because to give
up 16 million like that, to go from bachelor pad demigod
to hippy hero of the pimply *** smokers, requires some
kind of unfathomable spirituality. I wonder if the Sadhu
could even find a desk big enough for your frame. All 230 pounds
lurching forward with brittle bones towards some kind
of endzone sanctity not represented by a smiling porpoise
but a transcendent 1st and ten where maybe you’d be happy.
After your final game I imagined you’d do what so many
washed up athletes do: find meaning in the parking lot
of a used car palace or open up a Dairy Queen, maybe
join your kids PTA and tell fourth graders stories that
you now half-believe. I didn’t think it be like this: you smoking
****** under a mauled tarpaulin, brushing fly’s away from
dingy dredlocks, running forward, exasperatedly free,
while a nation wonders why you’ve failed us.
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 10:03 AM UTC
Who knows if Werner Heisenberg
rammed his head into the wall
after discovering the uncertainty
of the electrons of his lover.
Imagine having a brain the
size of Utah and not knowing,
with certainty, where to find
her nucleus.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 11:20 AM UTC
And only when every prison
in the police state has
an art gallery
only when hip hop
sounds like a revolutionary
sermon
only when Congress disbands
itself for lack of moral conduct
only when condoms
are jammed tightly
into high school backpacks
only when free speech
isn’t subject to search
and seizure
only when housing projects
get gated fences
only when college
athletes use pi
to find the circumference
of a basketball in their spare time
only when food pantries
exist in old NRA hangouts
only when Monsanto scrubs clean
every black cloud
only when Noah comes back
and transports
two of everything to
a protest movement
only when a protest
movement morphs
into a diversity celebration
and only when the U.S. government
writes a 5,000,000 page
apology for every ****
****** and Bill O’Reilly
sentence uttered
will I even consider having
a picnic.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 11:21 AM UTC
And although
they’ve spent
nearly 25 years
cleaning the same
sex-less bed sheets
every two weeks
and have used
the same blue soap,
the same rusted spoons,
both believe
another’s body heat
may be more comforting.
To her the morning coffee
cools quicker
than it used to.
His conversation
reminds her
of unsalted grits.
She sees the lines
beneath his eyes and
wants to tug
at them like zippers.
She’s contemplated
****** even.
At night he touches
himself. He moves
blankets off and on,
side to side.
He awakes wet.
In the morning
he looks at her and
wonders why
she stabs at her eggs.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 10:08 AM UTC
The representative from Ohio
wipes his *** with Jose’s brown
palms after a bout of verbal defecation.
Luckily, Jose’s food truck houses
a small sink in the corner where
he can wash his hands in between
baskets of chorizo prepared
for rich politicians.
Sometimes Jose scrubs so hard dream flakes
rub off of his skin and he throws them
into the wastebasket to be picked
up by the sanitation workers who
eagerly jump like frogs in orange vests
into the waste of Americana. When
the Representative stops by for
a plate of carne asada, Jose’s
dream specks pepper the beef
and his salty sweat flavors
the inside of the burrito. He grills
the onions and green peppers with
a dash of minimum wage and
boils the rice in a mixture of blood
and pieces of his heritage.
He serves the meal in a white Styrofoam
tray and drizzles it with cheese flowing
from an open wound. The receipt is an unpaid
medical bill, the drink an icy reminder
of his future sipped through a straw.
The nightly news tells Jose
the Representative is bedridden
with a stomach infection. He
complains his insides feel like
a million ***** feet kicking the lining,
like unheard mouths with rows of
sharp teeth gnawing at the liver.
Jose to the tv: tonight we’re not starving.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 11:42 PM UTC
And when fate pitted the two colliding
gods in battle, the outcome
was what you'd expect:
both rising up from
the cracked asphalt, one light
the other dark, one evil the other
misplaced, the earth split apart
and the trees bowed their heads
in silence for the figure
laying on the ground with a glock 9
bullet in his temple and a smashed
candy bar in his palm.
How senseless
the war between ideas, between
wrong and inconclusive. That afternoon
morality
was a crow frying itself
on a power line.
Common decency and respect
were lost tourists who
couldn't speak the native tongue.
And now, in the wake of the colossal battle,
the entire country washes its
hands in blood and pauses to weep
for the martyrs
who continually rise and fall for
nothing.
Jul 13, 2013
Jul 13, 2013 at 4:46 PM UTC
There are many many people
who do not feel as if they have to
write poetry. They are not moved
by the smell of black coffee and
cigarettes in the afternoon sun. When I pass them
I can tell that 5 angry men with
machine guns do not have them
pressed up against a wall demanding
they dream. They do not feel the unrequited
desire to run their calloused hands
along city pavement and smear the
black smudge on the cups
and plates of their solitude.
But they are the lucky ones I suppose.
They may not be invited by the muses
to the party,
but they sure as hell
can never be kicked out of the bed
once its finally over
and the city has
buttoned up its jacket.
Jul 13, 2013
Jul 13, 2013 at 12:16 PM UTC
Some days I wish I could just
crack my head open with
a monkey-wrench and let the words
flow out of my split cranium
like alphabet soup. If I'm lucky
the letters will coalesce into
sentences and form something
someone will call genius.
People will look at my body
and call it poetry.
They will see the monkey-wrench all covered
in the soupy denouement.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 5:46 PM UTC