Tag: poetry (Page 1 of 9)

Whither come you from?
Answer me, damn you:
Whither?

You were wispy and sparse.
You were weedy and spare.
The top of my head had hair
And then didn’t
But now does again.
Never my face
Or legs
Or arms
Or chest.
Perhaps I have some Cherokee in me.
(I do not have any Cherokee in me.)

But now I am brambled.
My lip quivers under the novel weight.
What of my nasal integrity?
This may call for labial buttressing.
Good God, a pucker scaffold might just do!
The doctor did not mention this possibility.

I’m gonna get my wind back,
And I’m gonna pair it with my New Mustache,
And we’re gonna murder the Clanton Gang.
We’re gonna clean up this town.

Once, I had a monkey.
Or should I say
He once had me.

My monkey would play
Leap about, frolic, all that activity.
Ooh-ahh-ahh–ooh.
All fucking day, man.
That furry sumbitch would gambol.
Which is where he got his name.
Michael Gambol.

Never fucked me,
Tho he tried.
(I only count penetration as fucking, and he just rubbed athwart.)
Maybe I would’ve let him.
Maybe I should’ve let him.

I taught him to smoke, too,
But he couldn’t work the lighter
On his own.

Helluva monkey, MG.
You come across one like him?
Make that monkey yours.

The plague birds are not social distancing;
I don’t think they’ve listened to the CDC at all.
For fuck’s sake, they’re flocking together.
Someone call the authorities;
Someone levy fines.

People who know about birds call ’em ibises.
I don’t nothing about anything,
Especially birds:
Little loud ones;
Patriotic ones;
Colorful ones.
Some taste good fried.
Not a lot of meat on a plague bird.
Mostly beak.

I’ll make you a deal,
Plague bird:
Your wings for my brain.
I’ll fly over Target
And the orthodontist’s office;
The shuttered diner, too.
You sit here and think
About Medicare fraud
And the infield fly rule
And whether Toscanini was hung.
You find a better offer, you take it.

The Instagram Hotties are
Restless, and they need somewhere to go.

Tulum calls.
Bali.
Benedict Canyon.
The Maldives.
The fucking Maldives.
“Remembering last year! Back soon!”
They miss their hair team, too.

The Instagram Hotties have withdrawn
From us
To their parents’ ranch,
Or their suspiciously-large apartments.
All their homes are hike-adjacent.

Yoga on the living room floor;
Cardio on the patio;
Cook-a-longs in the kitchen;
Mascara tutorials in the bathroom;
Instagram Hotties use every part of the buffalo.

Fuck it, I’m going out on the balcony in my underwear.

The Instagram Hotties are
Restless, and they need somewhere to go.

Where the fuck is that lighter?
The white one.
The cheapie I found
On the ground
In the garage
In Miami
The night of Bobby’s show.

Groundscore.

I know where I had it:
There.
I was there and so was the lighter.
And then I came
Here.
Now everything is fucked.

It probably isn’t in the pocket of a jacket I haven’t worn since 2004.
Still…

No, not there.
Maybe I should break into my neighbor’s place and check there.

Where the FUCK is that lighter?

I know.
I’ll check the place that it should be
Again
That’ll work.

The cheapies have a cross-section like a Pez candy:
Bics are oblate.
All that the see-through jobbies are good for is
Hurling at the pavement,
Go ‘splode.

I liked this lighter.
Smooth action, man.
Consistent.

Where the fuck is that lighter?

This is the Dead, man
I’d know that sound anywhere
Cover didn’t lie

In Seventy-Six,
The Dead played in this fashion
On occasion, that

A frog’s lilypad
Couldn’t ever support Phil
Phil is far too large

Summer winds whistle
Hot and funky up in here
Garcia is ripe

Jesus Christ, stop writing haiku. You’re terrible at it.

I also don’t enjoy creating them. Everyone lost here.

That kinda week.

Yeah.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
But ‘fore I start to counting sheep,
I have, O Lord, just one request:
Please don’t send that fucker west.

North is fine, or whence it came,
I hear the Amazon needs rain.
A miracle would be so nice
Just turn the cyclone into mice.

C’mon, Lord, be a lifesaver;
It’s really not that big a favor.
My rabbi said nothing’s out of Your reach,
So be a sport and spare Boynton Beach.

Amen.

O Lord make me a Gentile
With hard-working hands
Skinny little legs
And a hard round belly
When you got a tool like mine,
You gotta build a shed over it.

Bud Lights in Sturgis
Daytona Beach
I wanna get thrown out of Dollywood, Lord

Bandanas
Oooh, lemme at them bandanas, but
Not like David Foster Wallace
The opposite of David Foster Wallace
And not a do-rag, neither
Obviously not a do-rag
You know: a bandana
Stars and bars’d be just peachy
Or Old Glory
Something patriotic, Lord.

I wanna call every man I meet Brother.

Molly Hatchet’s playing down the fairgrounds tonight
My cousin’s working security
We gonna have ourselves a time.