IN LA LA LAND

The wind has been transcribed into a Concerto by Mozart. The garbage man is referred to as Your Honor. His truck smells like toy marriages and families. Children follow it down the street, salivating to the sound of its bells, their fists flowering with legal tender they find on the lawns.

The mosquitoes stay on their own side of the street. Infections surrender peacefully to the medicines. Death is confined to the Alfred Hitchcock Show reruns. The last pedophilic thought in the world was just sold to a museum of unnatural history for a bundle.

When the janitors emerge from their places of employment, huge crowds of teenagers start screaming and trying to touch them, hoping that some of that toilet bowl aroma will rub off on them.

Everyone has their fuck-you fingers removed at a baptismal font during the first three months of life. This practice was begun during the pontificate of George Bush IV who is also much loved for restoring the ancient Platonic custom of crucifying poets.

The ants knock before entering the house. One look from the master and the mud relinquishes the boot.

Calendar girls are no longer needed; men are satisfied with herbal tea and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Buttered toast. The word sex has been eliminated from all application forms.

Oil is free and plentiful, homes are built in the middle of superhighways, and the air is squeaky clean.

Wombs are guaranteed to produce for at least 200 years. Skin color is not allowed. War is fun. Earthquakes and tsunamis are a blessing from the Almighty because they give us a chance to travel bearing gifts.

God is good. And so is the ATM.

THE CATERPILLAR POEM

THE CATERPILLAR POEM


I begin to see my life in terms of caterpillars.

For getting up in the morning, I deserve three caterpillars.

The bowel movement, or lack thereof, gets two caterpillars.

For starting another novel, the inner critic shoots me a finger, i.e. one lousy caterpillar.

For being faithful to my wife for three years: five caterpillars.

For sending poems to literary magazines: a dozen cocoons in the branches of a wild cherry tree.

For gazing at porn: an erection made out of 3,622 caterpillars.

For making it all the way to the end of this poem: the windows of my soul shall be covered by caterpillars.

For exchanging pleasantries with my neighbor, I award myself four baby caterpillars which I eat like potato chips before throwing up.

For the fucked-up song in my heart: three leeches disguised as caterpillars.

For all the useless stars in the virtually heavenless world: an asterisk.

For my contempt which art an appropriate blight on this universe of immature insects, there aren’t enough caterpillars in the world.

And for Ebony, my favorite whore, my entire collection of pennies.

THE NOBILITY OF MAN

daddy’s got eight legs
all different sizes
clinging to my bathroom wall

directly in front of me
as I pee
blowing so he’ll twitch

GUESS WORK

I looked up from cleaning
the Ladies room in a Hoboken Lerner shop
which experts say is a good sign

too busy making money
to support my children
to support my children

the comedienne spent an hour talking about pubic hair
there was an engine with a hacking cough
and the snoring of religion

maybe if I pull out of America
and re-enter from Mexico
I’ll finally have an orgasm

GARBAGE DAY

I often find fresh shit on my driveway
I look at it as new legislation
that I didn’t give my consent to

when the ink dries I take a shovel
and file it in the woods
without leaving a stain

AHA!

I didn’t know what I was doing
I didn’t like the little tire hiding behind a bush
so I lifted it and placed it up high around the branch of a tree
like a rock on the finger of a gorgeous blond

I didn’t feel like a minister or a genius
I just went on about my business
I sell sawdust for a living
Anyway

a friend said I don’t like it
the tire doesn’t go with the tree
and that’s when I realized
it was perfect

I CALL MY THOUGHTS "THE DOMINOS"

first of all Nero didn’t have no fucking fiddle

bird shit on my driveway –
white power

I have more pine cones
than anyone else in my village
and I produce the most gas

My fingers smell like a phone number

I’m taking as long as I can
to get to my death –
jogging, flossing, watching TV

I wish there were some other way
to do this 69

80 degrees and sunny
imagine how people are suffering
at the malls

it’s a given: the whore wants less than she is worth

my brain is a coiled-up poisonous snake
living off my flesh and
I love Jarlsberg cheese

Our public lands are not for sale!
so says the post card

before I may drool on myself
I have to card this girl

she’s pulling my leg
he’s jerking me around
they’re yanking my chain
guess what you can do with your bowl of cherries

life has no meaning -
not even this French toast
of cinnamon raison bread I made for you -
oh yeah sure that of course
but nothing else

I dreamt of Angelina Jolie last night
she was sitting on some mossed-up shingles
giving me the sign for a curve ball

I like living
a few ants always get in
my socks keep falling down
and I need servicing three X a year
but the calendars are great

as soon as I get up
my stomach starts right in:
jerk, it says, remember that woman
you saw coming out of the nursery yesterday,
you should have said what a beautiful ash you have!

she’s playing the harpsichord naked
it’s the only way I can stand it

rain makes the grass high
but it doesn’t work for me

George Crumb
this could be the start of something subatomic

with all the female chauvinist prigs around these days
it’s easy to become a sex offender

I’m on a voyage of self-deception
and my vehicle is the poem

I call my thoughts the dominos

MY OWN LITTLE SANDBOX

i can’t tell the sky apart from the ocean

anonymity is bliss

or perhaps twenty minutes of aerobics

how did that birch tree get there

I like the way she smells after exercising

imagine the word smeghlls

the cops are at the door

the rust is silence

and then a symphony of frogs

my sex life comes to me in the mail

soap opera clouds

wanna buy a leaf

songbirds guarding all the entrances

KLAVERSTYKKER

KLAVERSTYKKER


I am the kind of vegetation
that can water itself

if god exists
why does my ass always itch

I had my chance to pull her pants down
right there by the water cooler

your honors I swear
I am coming to the connection

insight emerging from the trite and the light
I deserve every splinter I get

Hello, Dali
my afterglow’s like a pile of wet rags

this is the stanza during which I get up
walk away from the poem and brush my teeth

I can put you under so
you won’t remember any of this tomorrow

simultaneity
two or more divinely inspired events

actus reus & mens rea
occurring at the same time

quantify pontificate
you’re delirious

golfball leaping like a gazelle across the highway
someone needs to be sedated

THE MOSS ON THE SHINGLES

I’m falling apart
and it’s nice I like it

the ordinary is too difficult
I’d rather play the lemon

the raccoon in the sky
hold onto your fat

shrill is such a beautiful word
naked/without its connotations

image results for Agnes Martin
bid on Agnes Martin now!

the #1 as opposed to the #1
a fair fight

dargnabulation
time is abstract

the plan is a coup d’etat
vs. confusion resulting in chaos

all suggestions will be used
after being melted down with the dimes

looks like I’ve finally clipped my commatoes
I should have written that last line in Spanish

in Educating Rita Frank asks her:
“have you come all this way for so very very little?”

when I took out my hankie
the squirrel thought it meant something

A THIRD OF JUNE

cloud to cloud?

was that thunder?

not unless you’re a Greek god?

clap?

the word leggy has an impact on my penis?

we are all androids?

many New Yorkers are sitting peacefully beside their kills?

like a housecat with its rubber mouse?

why wisdom teeth?

Pope Superego MMVI?

flash?

did I thunder again?

p-hew?