AH, WELL THEN, GO AHEAD, IF YOU MUST

Mostly I write lyrics these days, lyrics to songs that (mostly) will never be sung, and I'll be damned if I can remember half of them. Over a year ago my computer crashed like gravity on casual Friday, and I must have lost over a hundred songs. A few of them I found on the archives of blogs I visited, but the rest are like dead people at a city council meeting.

Anyway, for a time I will simply write poems, and with any luck, I will lose all of them before god gets all pissy on us.


PEZ POEM

if I looked upwards all day long
at work, at the store, walking to the store, walking back from the store
my neck would be like a pez dispenser stuck in the open position
and children would run after me
waiting for bricks of candy to tumble out of my neck
and land on the sidewalk
and mothers would slap their children's hands
and my neck candy would fall to the ground
a second time


SORRY MRS. CHANG, BUT ALONE YOU MUST STAY

Mrs. Chang looks out the window
at a dream she once had
but now the neighbor's are cooking it
Mrs. Chang cannot call them by name
and so sits quietly, trying to conjure that man
who used to walk in the alley
in the other days when she was alone

she wanted to ask him a question
or maybe just see what he was wearing
but it was often too dark
and he never lingered
so she felt like she was just missing him
by a few seconds, by a few heartbeats

finally, he stopped, just once
and kneeled down and pet her
she bit his hand



THE WAR SMELLS LIKE CAT URINE AND BLEACH

the cat pissed on my rope sandals
i tried to clean them with soap and bleach
but now they smell like cat urine mixed with bleach

this cat piss war will never end
and my sandals will never surrender



THEY DON'T LOVE GOD OR HIS FAVORITE SUIT

get this into your head:
when someone says they love god
what they mean is they love their version of god:
their version of the uncreated
which isn't really their version so much as it
was someone else’s version a long time ago

i can't pretend to know or love the older gods
but i can imagine a nice suit being taken up to heaven
and the believer left in a heap, naked in the street
the rapture be damned


+++