National Poetry Month Day 7 - One Ticket

A man approaches the ticket counter
At the Phoenix Art Museum
He believes to be screening
A popular Maya Deren film
The marquis behind the counter
Over the cashier's shoulder
Does not advertise this
The cashier looks amused
The man peers around them,
As though they were an obstacle
As though they are not a source
Of nearly boundless knowledge

Less than a minute ago
The man double-checked the event
On the museum's event calendar
In the shadow of a dyed glass phallus
Which shielded his device
From the sunlight

With all available certainty
He asked of the "Film screening"
Having forgotten
All identifying words
"There typically are not film screenings
At art museums
Try the AMC
On 3rd Ave and Taylor"
Meekly, he explained he saw
Online that they were screening
Experimental films on Sundays
Then he apologized
For not remembering
The name
Of today's feature
"Seems a bit odd, walking all this way
To watch a film you don't know the title of."
How did they know he walked?
"You're banded with sweat."
So he was
The denial persisted
He finally took out his phone
Showed the cashier the event
"I can't imagine why
Anyone
Would put themselves through this film"
They printed a ticket.
A friend of his said he should watch it
It seemed like the sort of thing
He'd be into
They withheld the ticket,
Severed from the roll,
And sang

"And if the difference between life and death
Is having feelings you can't express
That secrets are power
Is the only power you have

He seemed like the sort of thing I'd be into
And if I have those feelings enough
Will he happen again?

Meaning runs from your arms
like children
After dogs
Like dogs after moving cars

Meaning seemed like the sort of thing I'd be into
The draft from the shaft
Between knowing and meaning
Gives us the flu
Who dies
And who mourns?"

The man accepted the ticket
Followed a velvet rope
The ticket taker asked of his sticker
The sticker is also required, see
Denied
The man returns to the cashier
"I demand sticker"
A shortage of stickers is declared
"You must earn one to proceed
Through dissonance of deed
So wisely or not, choose your attack
For everything destroyed
Someday comes back"

And so he understood
Interviewing the bourgeoning line
Biting off the noses
Of anyone not waiting
For the screening of a popular Maya Deren film

Having passed with his sticker
The man settled in his seat
The film sputtered into vision
But the cashier's song
All the man can hear
The bloody pile of noses
All the man can see
He felt like propaganda
To tolerate himself
Left salty mouthed in secret
Halfway through the film

Eight months later
The man received a check
For $31
He wondered what he was into
What was on the marquis
At the Phoenix Art Museum

National Poetry Month Day 6 - Birds

No longer me to speak of
Now a cloud of swallows
None of them one of them
All of them me
Endless random calls
Feathers tickling breeze
Infinite bugs,
Berries and beaks
Unable to search
Unable to speak
Unlikely to perch
A mile a week
Perhaps less
I'm made of numbers
But can only guess

No longer me to speak of
This million birds in flight
Are the figures of my genes
Somehow more so than my life
Gathered thought falls
Too limited a means
Opinions offer no respite
And when time crawls
The grip of preference is tight
Choked into a lottery
Of birds that shriek and veer
Life scrawls and sprawls
But somehow I'm still here
Part of the formula is the bird that calls
"Somehow, I'll always be here"

National Poetry Month Day 5: Survey - Are You a Narcissist (In the Style of Charles Bukowski)?

You're sweating on highway 10
Someone honks their horn,
do you think they are honking at you?
A bold assumption, there are many people on the road
They like to imagine they're being honked at
You think you should be so special?

You're sweating on highway 10
Someone honks their horn,
Do you assume it is not you?
Like you're the chosen only one incapable of error?
Who would dare honk their horn at perfection?

Strung out in a motel near Sunset Blvd
A car alarm is going off
Are you immediately worried that it is your car?
Really?
Of all the cars on the street?

Poking your wrist in Echo Park
Even the sun dreams of being a star
When a car alarm starts going off,
do you automatically assume it is not yours?
Of course, because stars don't park their own cars
And you're such a fucking star

How many times per day do you look in the mirror?
How long did it take you to answer that?

Do you enjoy giving someone a good orgasm?
It's a good orgasm until someone needs to take credit for it
Then it becomes the chalky fuckpaste of a sweaty narcissistic hog
Such as you might be

When you read books, and you see parts of yourself in the protagonist
When you read books, and you see parts of yourself in any of the characters
You do realize the author wasn't writing the book about you, right?

Do you bore your friends with your problems?
Do you hide your problems from your friends,
Because you don't want to seem imperfect?

Why do you let things bother you, anyway
There are bigger problems in the world
People are dying hungry and riddled with bullets
While world leaders shit cum out their mouths
And we live in a pile of their personal debris

Do you talk about problems in the world?
Why?
Nobody wants you to bring them down with your vain attempt to feel connected to the human condition

Here's what you do:
Find the least attractive person in the room.
Try harder, use that American imagination
Now think about why they're not attractive to you
Probably because of all the shallow magazines you read
They feed your narcissistic sense of superiority
Now, back to this ugly person: Would you have sex with them?
Why not?
Do you think you're better than they are?
We are all equal, after all.
Sex is the only joy in this world
It should be shared with everyone.
Why are you withholding joy from the world?
Why are you withholding joy from this person?
Go have sex with them!
Right now!
Hurry!
If you don't have sex with them, then you are a narcissist.
If they are not interested, show them this quiz.

National Poetry Month Day 4: Necrotic Icon

Who is he?

Mustachioed

Broad faced and fond of baseball

Asks every question

Big smoke, front teeth

Your car upon carved blocks and memory loss

Ropey pantsuits on the shaved chocolate floor boss

I see you're concerned now:

If there aren't vicars

There can be vicar's daughters how?

But he's not me

I am the cinnamon cartoon wolf of nasal cave fame

Razor claws raised, always just out of frame

My nose fights for roses who fight for the sun

My face fights to feel like it's the only one

My nose bulbous and guido, red frying fat

A lower case r as a bridge between that

Which is possible and Xanax and animals

Islands, channels, crackling insides

What did I do?

I stayed home and thought of tides

National Poetry Month Day 3 - If Emily Dickinson Was in the Beach Boys

So I was going to do "Emily Dickinson's Twitter", but it failed the google test spectacularly (there are probably over a dozen active Emily Dickinson twitter accounts).  Instead, let's ponder what it might have been like if Emily Dickinson was a contributing songwriter* for the Beach Boys:

*Lyrics only. If she wrote the music, every song would sound like the Gilligan's Island theme**.

**Yes, you can read every Emily Dickinson poem like the theme to Gilligan's Island. I give you permission. Sometimes, that's all you need.

"Surfin' Safari"

Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learning how
Death doesn't stop for me
(Death doesn't stop)

Early in the morning we'll be startin' out

Some honeys will be comin' along
Success is counted sweetest

By those who don't succeed

So if you're coming get ready to go

Come on baby wait and see

(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Dare you see a soul at the white heat
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Come along girl wait and see
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
We're gonna die before our virginity

You can go surfin' now
Think I'll just sit this one out
Gonna hang out in my room
(Gonna hang out in my)

Huntington and Malibu

Our death is near
On our headstones the moss will grow
We're goin' on safari to the islands this year
We'll safari 'till we cease to know

"Fun Fun Fun"

Well she got her daddy's car
She passed a docile row of birds on a stand now
Seems she forgot all about mortality
Like she told her old man now
Full of a liquor never brewed
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

And she'll have fun, fun, fun
When her soul leaves like a bird from a cage
(Fun, fun, fun when her soul leaves like a bird from a cage)



"Little Deuce Coupe"

Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?
Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?

Well I'm not bragging babe, but the sun touched the day
My quiv'ring flames conditions, a hot ore did sate
So lest your village boast a blacksmith, don't even try
Cause between the two of you, I'd rather listen to the fly
She's my little deuce Coupe
Is there such a thing as day?
(My little deuce Coupe)
(Is there such a thing as day?)

"California Girls"

Well the east coast girls are hip
Like pigmy seraphs gone astray
And the southern girls, with the way they talk
Reminds me that we all decay
The mid-west farmer's daughters tell the truth, but on a slant
And the northern girls, with the way they kiss
The night is wide, and furnished scant

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

Alright, that's enough.

National Poetry Month, Day 2 - The Audience Plant

Walking the shoe-lace pattern of social evolution
Step on another tongue on the ground
Is it still mine?
Close my eyes
Plug my ears
Globe of hair
Living the ciliated social life
A panopticon of greedy, snarling faces
Like small minds contemplating wealth
The self-sorting parochial
Social justice karaoke hall
Clasping factory-made photo opportunities
Driving a fact that still drills your nose
With stinging chalky revelation
Take self-righteousness to go
The hottest club drug going
Is to never be caught not knowing
What I myself learned five minutes ago

National Poetry Month Day 1 - Morning Dew, Morning Dew

We woke up racist in a room of naked Shawns
Declaring Chaucer on a thousand vacant lawns
We make our fortune on the porch where madness dawns
Bite bite each other contrite
God scattered fossils from a box of unknown height
Breakfast of Champions for the vigilant uptight
We figure out their useful life by sight
Starlight is new blue light vibrations tender
Desire, crouching, makes the moon a public defender
We grew agnostic when succumbing to the flirts
Jesus is overweight and out of medium shirts
We hurt inside, we have a mind of severed squirts
Puddles forming bubbles
Bubbles racing language
Certain our meaning will leave us dead or stranded
We pump our own clouds, then all emerge empty handed