"dogfights" poems
Volatile Voltaire
once said something I believed,
but I've forgotten what it used to be.
Some candide (candied?) little thing,
sweet and soft spoken, recited it to me
like a national anthem without the music
I wasn't up to facing, anyways.
An influx of responses filled the dashboard
of my fighter phone as I wove among
dogfights, catfights over who's in the right
and who he was in that first that night.
He just stands like a complacent general
off to one side, directing troops of decision.
He didn't want a D-Day.
There's so much more to life than
brass ranking you earn by not taking a brass bullet.
Let your best friend do that.
He had no aspirations.
(Cleopatra had aspirations.)
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 9:30 AM UTC
Painted in tempera on illustration board
Don't know things by heart
They will only break you
Use your mind instead
How as a teen I wanted to die
But could not remember why
And the junkieing of america
Crack baby penquins walking on thin ice
A child being beaten on a bus
The driver runs then, drives away, does nothing
How do you spell deedy
Painted in brown acrylic
over pencil on wood paneling
She's the queen of visa
Knows all the tricks with cards
She said " I like to swim in the rain"
Alligators laughing, like on that Sendak drawing
"Yea" I say "I like the art in" and it was still hot
Dogfights for doughnuts just to shake a stick
The most out of place person I ever met
Was that surfer dude in Michegan
And when I stopped the chair cough
Then maybe I did do the world a favor
And the judge said "Can you prove that
this woman ***** you when you were
a two year old?" And that is when
The tears began to fall down every cheek
of the jury.
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 11:16 AM UTC
You're one to believe in god,
so tell me Grandfather;
You believe everything has a meaning
and war can be righteous
and war can be hell.
What does the rain mean?
It's not a metaphor for pushing life
into the festering corpse of a beat horse
in the late fall, early winter, is it?
Is it a drowning of that mistake?
A bed to sink your imperfections into?
What is this grey sky speaking to?
Was it WW2's tail gunners dead in the back
and pilots swarming like flies in vicious harmony?
bloodthirsty dogfights, and the folk guitarists
standing in awe,
jaws unhinged,
mouths open,
wondering,
"What the everloving **** just happened?"
You believe in God, so tell me;
They stuck your body in the dirt
over 2, or maybe it was 3 years ago.
You never told me anything about this.
You never told me anything
but empty threats.
God is a mass hysteria;
a mental disability,
a harmful fantasy.
But what does the rain mean?
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
Lizbeth dreams
of Benny
having him
in her bed
just for kicks
her parents
down the stairs
in the lounge
unaware
she's upstairs
with Benny
having ***
in her bed
the first time
at long last
so she dreams
inside her
13 year
old young head
Benny dreams
of Spitfires
in dogfights
or finding
in hedgerows
a blackbird's
nest and eggs
all untouched
or holding
in his palms
a Peacock
butterfly
wings unspoilt
settled there
he dreams not
of Lizbeth
or of ***
anywhere
not in church
or her bed
and knows not
what's inside
his 13
year old head.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 1:56 PM UTC
When you have sat so long with a dinner knife and fork poised around your neck, how can you not expect to be eaten?
If your stomach growls and you are told all your life to remain silent, how do you know when to start speaking for yourself?
When your ribs practically carve themselves, pushing into the soft canvas of your skin, screaming to get out, and you have been told you do not deserve to eat - how do you know when you should?
How did you ever know you had the option to begin with?
And when you figure it out, how can they not expect anything less than anger? How can they not expect fear, distrust?
They can't seem to decide what you are.
You've been treated as a kenneled hound dog all your life, been told that baring your teeth was wrong, been told that you bark too loudly, sit too widely.
You've been treated as a show dog, led around on the arm of someone, never to look, never to breathe, never to think. To start dogfights. They laugh in their booths with money raised in clenched fists - it's entertainment and their bet is on whoever's teeth is the sharpest but both of you have had your teeth filed down for generations. Still, you fight, because it is all you've known.
You've been trained to not even be perceived as human, to not even perceive yourself as human, had orders barked at you your whole life but when you try to protest, you're told that you are arrogant and selfish.
Even then, some of them will continue the slow march of bringing the silverware ever closer, metal scraping against the table because they see the fight as a challenge. They like to play with their food, it's tag and you're it. You can pretend all you want that you're the main course, the whole meal, but that doesn't change that you will still, in the end, get ripped apart. Ripped to shreds, to pieces, violated even further when you thought it could never happen. That it could never get worse.
People tell you that they are just as much victims. They need the money from betting to survive, even if it's from betting on losing dogs with dull teeth and dull eyes. They tell you that you need to love them more and they will be kinder. That they will stop treating you the way they have. That they will stop being entitled.
But all you've ever done is loved, loved with your entire being, and nothing has ever changed.
Apr 13, 2023
Apr 13, 2023 at 6:56 PM UTC
we will have to attend
one of the weaker
dogfights
with
this baby, we will
have to slick
the baby
back
with blood, then maybe
it will slip
into the hidden
state
of those
surviving
on the recognition
you deserve
as a father
a swimmer
wants
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 4:08 PM UTC