My non-essential cover version

[ooga chaka

ooga ooga

ooga chaka

ooga ooga]

 

It occurs to me that I can never be accused of being cliché

[right? right?]

when I just copy others’ words and feelings directly, surely

one assumes a different motivation in my work, yeah yeah

yeah we’ve all felt happy, but I feel happy differently, albeit

ever so slightly, my cover versions are essential, they are

magical gibberish, if only so enchanting to their author

 

[ooga chaka

ooga ooga]

 

it’s like, yeah, sure somebody else already wrote this,

but don’t denigrate me for feeling their feelings with

the mute’s receptive eyes, it’s just like what a pair of

[eyes]

ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-I’m hooked on phonics and a fishing

line, oh come on, like you’re doing anything different

when you sing at like a few hundred dB as you tear ass

down the highway

 

[ooga chaka

ooga ooga]

 

the point has always been that I’m helpless, you know,

you’ve heard it, I really can’t stop this feeling, or that one,

or any of them, so you might as well sing along, you might

as well wait until I drop off everybody’s charts forever,

then go ahead and record your own version and feel

that rush, you’ll like it, and I won’t begrudge you your

success for even one second

 

[ooga chaka

ooga ooga

ooga chaka

ooga ooga]

ScientificMatch.com

Girl, you got a fine immune system,

I ain’t seen MHC’s like that on nobody

nohow not in these United States

of droopy antigens and people who want to

give out awards for basically nothing.

 

Your immune system is like “nuh-uh”

ain’t having none of that shit, working

is living, you bristle even at the term

“Helper T”, like what, these cells can’t do

it on their own, they ain’t need help,

they’re one big toxic brotherhood.

 

Girl, it’s just fuckin incredible, I got

your graft vs. host real bad, them are

some fine motherfuckin cells you got,

this is love, this is music, a cytokine

Quiet Storm on midnight city radio.

 

Girl, I wanna make babies with you

but I can’t, your cells wouldn’t have it,

they’d eat the little scamp alive before

he even had a chance, like they eat

everything, like they’re eating me right

now, replacing my marrow with aplomb,

laying down flags to claim all the territory

in my brittle bones for your mother country.

get sad, get good

I don’t want to bore you with my addiction

to the minor key that opens every door,

 

but the need peeks its head above water every

so often in you as well, I’d imagine,

 

we are dust dust dust and there’s nothing to return to

but experiments in anabolism and dry coughs,

 

such that sometimes the results-oriented center demands

a little blood and ceremony draped in feng shui ugly,

 

nothing plus nothing plus nothing adds to what, some kind

of sweetness that cuts the edges right off of midnight

 

until it is a sphere, and the human aestheticians go nuts for

roundness, I want to deliver some nightcrawlers pulled

 

out of the muck by their ribbed-for-nobody’s-pleasure heads,

make industry out of the inertia, I will cry and cry and use

 

this project as a sweet excuse, it’s nothing after all, something

in the air, some pungent smell from the cutting board.

Doodle

I have time for freehand explorations

into the cleft between visual semblance

and emotional close-enough reality,

the canyon filled with a roaring stream

of consciousness, I have no time not

to doodle, no time not to pluck pretty

little things out of the summer rain

highway haze and arrange them on

the kitchen table when I get home,

you ask how I have time and that

is my answer, I have time because

I once had my heart broken by

a polysyllable, I have time

because you do not.

Think first and ask questions later

I hate your art.

 

Your moribund, meiotic, preteen art.

 

Your jumping up and down, exuberant,

using words like “crushing” and (I imagine)

not at all feeling the dual meaning of puppy

love in a calloused fist art.

 

I hate your art.

 

Your can it really be sincere, teen beauty

pageant in a rented conference room above

the town sewage treatment center because

that’s what was available art.

 

Your you’re right I really am jealous art.

 

I hate your art.

 

Your plastic, non-chemical, inspiring art.

Specialize

We make the 0.8 cm wingnut

that goes at the obtuse angle

of the mechanical arm that sits

at the corner of the conveyer

belt (we do not make that) that

carries in 12 oz glass bottles at

a reliable 1.3 m/s to be filled by

the brass spigot of the mechanical

arm (we do not make that either)

with beer from the 1000 gallon

fermenter (we do not make that)

that goes into the esophagus of

a man (we do not make that) at

an average rate of 84 gallons/day

give or take and makes him mean

and sometimes he gives his high

school sweetheart who is also his

wife a pretty good wallop or two

/day and he used to give reasons

(we do not make those) but now he

doesn’t really bother because they

sounded psychotic anyway and so

that’s pretty much what we do, that

wingnut, and we’re proud of it, we

can get you a catalog if you want.

Inspirational Poster #109

Growing Up

 

Becoming an adult means answering the crucial question

“precisely what am I capable of?”, answering it not because

you have to, not because you were thrust into the potter’s

kiln, but because, finally, you want to, you are ready.

 

And brother, if the answer to the question is “really not all

that much”, well, maybe you should sell this poster and use

the proceeds to buy a less ambitious poster and probably

also something to take the edge off, you’re an adult, you’ll

find a buyer, keep your head up and all that good stuff.

Quoth the raver:

It could just be gas.

 

But also it could be a tumor.

 

But also it could be that I ate a needle in my Wendy’s hamburger that was put there on accident or on purpose hard to say.

 

But also it could be that last night when I got mad at my girlfriend she also got mad back too and that night was a stupid time to get mad because then we both had to go to sleep and then she waited until I was asleep and then she kept punching me over and over pretty hard but definitely not hard enough to wake me up.

 

But also it could be that some time in the last decade or so I was sitting on the toilet and a black widow spider had built a web across the seat they do that you know and then the black widow spider crawled up into my butthole and pretty much just lived there until present day making the best of things installing a La-Z-Boy and a flat screen TV in my rectum and then tonight when the Sabres lost the black widow spider bit down and probably now I’m bleeding internally.

 

But also it could be that God has been watching over me just like people say he’s wont to do and I don’t even take issue with his ability to watch everybody on Earth in tremendous detail because he’s God for God’s sake there are powers that go with the territory but it’s not like I like his ability to eavesdrop so impressively because he means he sees me do horrible things like eat all the Oreos this afternoon and scratch somebody’s SUV with my car door because I wasn’t paying attention and I’ve really just been a prick lately so God saw fit to punish me like he used to do in the Old Testament and now I have this really bad pain that could just be gas but it could also be a lot of other things.

 

It could be that.

iseenshit

you remember

 

you remember

 

you wanted to seeshit

 

now youseenshit

 

you ain’t regret it

 

you just tired

 

status don’t matter

 

not when you tired

 

you ain’t regret it

 

you’d do it again

 

but not right now

 

you seenshit

 

you should rest

 

yeah

 

that’d be nice

Remember this from your childhood–

–or was it only me a guy I knew?

 

—and they are laying down metal bars of pressured speech

in an intricate back of the school bus reticulum

 

—and they are certainly loud enough to seem like they are divvying

up their ideas for the community at large

 

—and he hears them and would like to join their conversation

on a topic he actually finds quite interesting, but to do so would admit

his flagrant eavesdrop

 

—and they even think he seems all right, they might even be willing to talk to him,

but it should be noted that he just sits there two rows in front of them and initiates

nothing

 

—and they think he must feel pretty damn good about himself, sitting there all smug

like he’s too good for them, like he doesn’t need anything from them to survive

 

—and he bears them no ill will, right now he doesn’t feel too good for much of anything

 

—and over the weeks of conversation en passant maybe there were opportunities

for him to raise his head

 

—and over the months of his skilled ears’ blind localization, maybe he does start to feel

like he doesn’t need them, what are they, too good to invite him into their 10^2 dB range

world

 

—and maybe he even starts thinking that they are a bunch of awful, vacuous motherfuckers,

indexing synonyms for “waste of space”

 

—and he might be right, but do you think that’s any real excuse

 

—and now they know for sure they don’t want to talk to him, they’d much prefer to drown him

in their bumblebee ocean

 

—and now everybody can see just fine what’s going on over here, and nobody bothers to call it

a tragedy

 

—and blame is such a compelling debate for he and they and us

 

—and it worries me to think too long, can we blame the media for this

A pop-up advertisement lectures you on etymology

The word is distraction, a very important word

to us pop-up advertisement windows, sort of like

a mot juste, justice, juste-ice, now there’s a flexible

ideal, but anyway, to get back to the self-serving

here, one surmises that such a very important word

is actually a pretty basic prefix-based gig, like a mix,

like dis-traction, dis_traction, not having traction,

slipping horribly into LSD rabbit holes, slipping, now

there’s a bon mot, boneyard bon mot, there’s a play

with some potential even if it’s ultimately a vacuous

little nothing in its current form, sorry about the whole

tangential thought process, thinks keep popping up

and one is helpless but to let one’s mouth just pop

right open, where was I, right, one surmises that one

is losing one’s footing, each cannonball from nowhere

taking out another brick, pretty soon a million blinding

outsides will ooze through every crack in concentration

and eat the brain alive, that’s what we here pop-up ads

were trying to say, that’s where the word comes from.

A note I found in the mailbox the other day

“The critical establishment would like you to know

that a great many of the entertainments you consider

valuable are in fact as repugnant as purulent leakage

from an infected belly button piercing, and about as

misguidedly transgressive, there is consensus on this,

you are decidedly outside of the consensus on this,

your quest across the blasted plains of direct-to-DVD

pumice in search of a holy pair of tits among the wreckage,

you King Pellinore of wasted hours that always always

always get away, you have so much under your belt

now, but what’s the point, you’re the only one who’s

ever seen it, your brain may buzz and wander inside

its walls constraint, but if you keep going on like this,

that’s all it’ll ever be, we at the critical establishment

would like to assure you of this, you will be intellectual

and alone, transmitting and transmitting and transmitting

and giving slippage a bad name, speaking Esperanto on

the moon, succumb, the best ones all succumb, and if you

don’t, if you dare to think such thoughts as you consider

independent, well, uniqueness is its own burden, who do

you plan to talk to, smartass, nobody, and well, what kind

of a life would that be, huh, can you answer us that, no really,

here’s a SASE, fucker.”

Advance Directive #34

Or, you could tie me up with some string,

not tie me up tie me up but there is a sort of

up-down, above-below dynamic to the whole

thing, I’ve got marionettes on the brain here,

like, the string would certainly have to be strong

enough to maintain the weight of my body, or like,

at least one limb’s worth per string, but if you went

with choice B there you’d have to have a, you know,

auxiliary string to make sure everything stayed more

or less balanced tied around my neck or something,

anyway, then you could make me dance around but

also control each limb individually, like sweep my

right arm forward and across in a sort of anachronistic

bow, the kids would fuckin’ love it and the symbolism

might be a little too on-the-nose for some of them, but

I think you’d really just have to try it to know for sure

how anybody would react, it’d be one hell of a unique

ceremony, that’s for sure, bet they’d remember me then…

That annoying gulf between wanting sincere feedback on my work but also not, you know, wanting my feelings hurt or whatever, so can you find a nice way to say it, but honestly, don’t make a big deal out of it or anything.

Amateurish.

amateurish

 

amateurish?

I am

a teur

…ish

a m a t e u r i s h

m a t e u r i s h

a t e u r i s h

t e u r i s h

e u r i s h

u r i s h

r i s h

i s h

s h

h

a

   m

        a

         t   e

         u   r

         i

    s

h

a-mature-ish

(n0t) (well thought out and well-adjusted) (sort of)

amateurish     shitty

amateurish!

 

I’m sorry I didn’t like it, it’s just uh well you know kind of a bit semi quasi pseudo uh hem haw um bien well just qua partially or almost like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

not good

Powerful Landlord in Chariot

I am the landlord, the lord of the land,

call me not lessor, I am greator, indeed,

you are lessor, lessee, you are but a messy

lessee and I am a lord, seignor de manor,

licensed victualler, not vindictive when

I threaten to evict you, messy lessee,

last but not least did you even read your

lease, narcissistic personality is no disorder

for a lord laying orders to the hoarders,

the messy lessees less than me be this ain’t

free, see, you’ll see no peace nor piece of

your security fees when you’re a messy

lessee with a landlord lord like me, full

of insecurities, lord of the land and you

will pay by coin or hand a tribute to this

great man, this landlord, this wild, sexual,

mighty, fantastic, wonderful lord of the land.

Plumbum

Ohhhhhhh baby, take a nip

off the top of this deep grey

syrup, pour some milk

in this bowl of paint flakes

so you can hear them snap

crackle and pop, I’m not

trying to be funny, I’m not

trying much of anything these

days, it’s only natural, this

is how the Romans did it, baby,

grape wine, cherry wine,

strawberry wine surprise,

I don’t give a fuck as long

as you spike it with that good

old defructum, I like my spirits

neurotoxic, I like my spirits

whispering in my ear and drawing

blue lines on my gums in crayon,

let’s have a party, let’s start a fire,

let’s build an addiction in a day.

Let’s Learn About! stages of development

0-3 months: can you really blame me?

 

3-12 months: hands like a scorpion

 

12 months-3 years: warm impermanence

 

3-6 years: tongue in cheek, finger in nose

 

6-23 years: well, better latent than never

 

23 years back down to 5 years: I am the world I am the children

 

10 years of stagnancy: I’ll look back and laugh

 

33 years-death: find me in the moon

 

death-an undisclosed number of years later: the pendulum swings back

Sex-o-vision 3000

girl lemme film it, come on girl, lemme film it,

i know you think it like all creepy and gross

and maybe just a little bemusing  but i wanna

film it, i don’t even know why i all like wanting to

film it, let me catch my breath, they say you take

a picture it lasts longer, nothing lasts forever but

pictures are close, i wanna take drugs, i wanna take

drugs with you and film it, let’s film it, lemme film it,

i wanna film it like eyes aren’t enough, i already heard

they symbols, my eyes are symbols but they just not

enough, creepy voyeur brain that points and possesses

but loses, creepy voyeur brain holds sand, wants to film

it, film the sand, creepy and gross and permanent, lemme

frame it on the wall, girl, i can’t explain it, maybe it’s evolution

it’s not evolution, this is all my fault, lemme film it, c’mon

Why he wrote it

or, another nobody punched in the gut by the works of Hubert Selby Jr.

 

I wish I did it for the same reason but I didn’t,

not to pluck out a song for the pain of the people

on whatever strings might rain from the Brooklyn

sky, not to rail against cold metal fascists, not

to tear fire from the sky or sewers, I did not write

it for that reason, I wish I had that reason, maybe

when I am a physician I can prolong somebody’s

life long enough for them to eat the brains of their

relatives in a sacred endocannibalistic rite, for them

to write it to the caged messiahs, to abuse the abusers,

that would be enough, those words would be reason

enough for me to believe in the process.

[]

i got letters on a typewriter got words

made out of letters got sentences made

out of words got ideas made out of sentences

got characters made out of ideas got tropes

made out of characters got symbols made

out of tropes got cleverness made out of

symbols got pomposity made out of cleverness

got punched in the face made out of pomposity

so i went back to the sentences made some

paragraphs made some pages made some poetry

made some mistakes made some judgments

got sneers made out of judgments and contortions

made out of sneers and its all made out of sentences

made out of words made out of characters made

out of sight got sight from the mind got a mind

made out of psychoses got psychoses made out

of cells got cells made out of nothing got nothing

out of something somehow and oh its happening again

got it out of nowhere and i just wish i got something to say

Armchair Anthropologist

It will be observed that these primitives

wore their ceremonial silken shirts and blouses

quite proudly over their contorted spines brought

to you by the letter “C”, one can only surmise

that ritual was an important part of their lives,

bringing meaning to the horrible monotony

that we are now most graciously free of.

 

These horrendous savages, let it be known and said,

spent a great deal of time establishing hierarchies

and comparing themselves to each other, even though

we can now clearly see that they were all beasts most

pitiful, defining a pecking order around the ownership

of humiliating little trinkets that did little more than

make noise and fit well in one’s palm, one assumes that

life was much simpler then, embarrassingly so, of course

we now know better, we are substantially more enlightened.

 

It is also noticed that these dim-witted brutes were adorably

unaware of their own inferiority, cataloging strange 140 letter

inscriptions in now-fossilized data-storage systems that appear

quaint at best, carbon dating reveals that they would do this

multiple times an hour, an idea tidily corroborated by the time-

stamping of each thoughtless nothing, one could theorize that

each of these was a rough-draft gravestone inscription, a forever

penultimate death cry from a narcissistic people highly insecure

over the tragic impermanence of their own feeble existences.

 

This may be conjecture.

Regardless, there is a great deal to be learned from these intriguing fools for superior people such as us, you know.

Somebody call the blue fairy…

When I was still a wooden puppet,

my heart was just a splinter cell

of that most American right to

dream of nicer things. I yearned

to be a real boy, but I never knew

what sorts of awful glowing red

coal thoughts would be expected

of me. Real boys like me can’t stop

thinking about Raggedy Ann’s soft,

plush ass, her stringy lips. I’m telling

you, I was a feminist back before

I learned about magic. Now I’m just

confused. Now I am a real boy. These

misfit toys have got it pretty good,

even though they don’t know it.

I remember being nothing, living

that old wooden puppet life, bearing

the player’s thoughts on my grainy

face. I am responsible. I am a real boy.

I wish someone could change me back,

back to a simpler time when I could bear

the weight of all these fleshy thoughts…

Duck! and Cover!

When I saw the flash, I was just a hatchling tortoise,

unaware of the growing up it sang out from an epicenter

a few hundred meters away. A lot of people die each

day, you know. But not me. I ducked and covered when

I saw the flash, took shelter from the thermal impulse

behind a believing spirit and a veneer of woven cloth.

They say I just got lucky, that there are fangs on both

sides from which no simple two part maneuver could

truly have delivered me. I will never know. But they

weren’t in the burning streets. They never saw the flash.

Greenboy

Greenboy sez you don’t got to listen to your folks no more

on account of he is from the future and also from outer space

and so he knows these things. Greenboy sez you only afraid

of leaving behind your family cause you ain’t seen a better

one yet. Greenboy sez they got better ones in space and so

if you walk through that door there where you pretty sure

your closet usedta be and now it looks all Christmas lights,

you can go to space and won’t never be scared again. Greenboy

sez you can be green too and you pretty much believe cause

you never seen somebody so green and he probably knows

better than anybody else about green. Greenboy sez your dog

can come but your big brother best stay. Greenboy sez you’ll

only cry for a little while, but Greenboy ain’t got a heart, he

showed you already, so you ain’t too sure he knows all about

that part. Greenboy sez it’s time to go and he got long fingers

and they sez the same thing with curving towards that closet

door. Greenboy sez he’s gonna be gone in the morning either

way, and you all had this conversation before over and over,

and don’t you ever wonder if you don’t be making the wrong

choice, staying under the covers that turn useless and all see

thru with the glow. Greenboy sez he’s going now, but he’ll see

you soon, maybe tomorrow night if he ain’t too busy and all.

Question

you ever have to do something so awful

that it repeats on you every night when

you lie down like gastric reflux all hot

and acidic and eventually it scars your

mind down so you can’t sleep at all cause

the pathways are all sealed up and diverted

into one common corner fresh with ghosts

borne on waves of smell and creatures

of the night flashback and you may look

grown up on the outside but you are just

a kid so how could anybody even think

to make you do that awful thing like it was

nothing it was something the catatonic

heart sees all through the dream cataracts

of glazed over eyes sees that awful thing

you ever have something like that happen

and just have to go on keep on living i bet

you did do you understand would you

tell me if you did?

I’m a little test monkey

Baby, I brought you home with me tonight because I want you to meet my mother,

somebody built her out of straw and a rusted out old stop sign, wrapped the whole

thing in chicken wire and plaid coveralls, and when I pull her left arm just right, candy

bars pop out through the gaps in the buttons in her shirt, and I love her more than you

will ever know or understand. I learned from a young age that she would always be there

for me, not least because of her lack of motility, and then when her scaffolds poked through

the softness and hurt me, well, she didn’t mean it, she really couldn’t help it. I’m excited

to imagine that one day you two might be great friends, that you might even call her “mom”,

opening your heart to her capacity for affectionate doting, she wants grandkids, you know,

little ones that we can balance precariously on her immobile L-beams, always extended.

Video Nasty

Look into this heaving chest,

this coffin full of awful, X-rated

Video Nasty disinterred from

a quiet crypt where nobody

knew to look, they don’t have

money in these seedy corners

of Eastern Europe’s fictional

evil twin, just buckets of blood

poured over meters of magnetic

tape, gaping eye sockets trained

on cannibal torture, hooked,

chewed up by the Video Nasty

machine and re-expressed in

spiral, all the no budget breasts

and creatures ask is look, this

ain’t your MTV, this is Video

Nasty, look because your sight

was stolen, look because that

hunger grows each colorless

day, look because you want it,

you need it, you love it, Video Nasty.

The vampire’s apologist

No, no, no, I get it is all I’m saying,

I just don’t think he’s such a bad guy,

right, because I don’t really think it’s

about the violence for him, or the sex,

the biting all up and down pretty young

necks taut and quivering like bowstrings,

I mean, that sounds good and all, but

really don’t you think it’s just about

life in the end, and come on, like you’re

planning on dying, like you wouldn’t do

whatever it took to prolong your life,

grow up, enlighten yourself or you’ll just

be partying down in neon corners with

Count Dracula and his cadre of blood-

loving necrophiliacs, you’ll just keep

on seeing what life you can glean from

your victims of natural selection that

you lovingly arrange on a series of hooks

beside your fireplace, that’s you, don’t

get down on the count, that’s you too,

the vampire, just sucking and sucking and sucking…

The Pizza Effect!

Oh my God, I remember Marcel,

back in the high school French

exchange student program, boy,

I sure did act like an asshole then,

oh my God, he must construe such

assholery as a part of American

culture and not just me being an

asshole, a-and he actually sort of

liked me, he must have gone back

to France and acted like an asshole

and when they asked him why he

was asking like an asshole he must

have said it was all the rage in America,

oh my God, and now he acts like an

asshole to other Americans and they

just think the French are all assholes,

oh Marcel, oh my God, and now when

he comes back to visit this week and

acts like an asshole to honor my own

assholery, well, what am I to do but

act like an asshole myself, who even

invented this awful hermeneutical feedback

loop, what an asshole, I bet he was French.

Hookman takes your questions

Yes: I do stalk young lovers to their promontories of choice.

I follow the scent of Axe body spray through the forest.

 

No: I am not evil.

Misunderstood maybe, but in fairness, the hook is scary.

 

Yes: I have a large, sharp hook as my prosthesis.

We’re talking probably a good 12 inch diameter if it were a closed loop.

 

No: I do not eviscerate people with it.

I find such barbarism unbecoming.

 

Yes: Freud was right, the hook is a phallic symbol.

Maybe I only follow them because I want to get in on the action.

 

No: I would not call myself “handi-capable”.

The double meanings are too intense.

 

Yes: I do think the vampire is my symbolic trope.

Like any good one, I’m just in it for the nocturnal thrills.

 

No: I couldn’t say why the hook needs to be so sharp.

It is inconvenient for handshakes and scratching my ass.

 

Yes: I like it here, in this dark, psychic in-between.

It gets lonely, but I’ll see you in your dreams, or the next time you go parking.

Tears for a quantum oscillator

How could they, how could they,

how could they just go on living

without me, I’m sure that I’m more

important than that, I myself could

never live without me, and yet here

they go just rolling through life as

a photographer or an architect or

basically any number of things

people really only ever aspire to be,

nobody actually gets to do that for

a living, don’t be naive, and tjey don’t

even notice my perpenidcular motion

through this timeline even one little

bit and that is just unacceptable, here

I am all kinetic energy and embarrassing

attention grabbing stunts and waves and

nothing, and the velocity is too much

for a sad little human like me, I’m gone

now before anybody realized I was there,

off on another trip to the point of maximal

amplitude and minimal usefulness, all

insane, maddening potential energy

boiling in my guts, waiting to be converted

into one more try, it’s a cycle, buddy, you

get to try it again, go for it, dive on down

into this world of friends and acquaintances

and loves, one day soon they will notice,

if nothing else, the beautiful mathematics

of the path, it surely won’t be any real love

or respect, but it will feel good, it’ll be something.