manunkind

i’ve never eaten shit
i’ve never been curb stomped
i’ve never had needles shoved under my fingernails
i’ve never been fucked in the ass with a knife

but someone has

i asked my grandfather’s grandfather why i was born
with the negative of a noseless man’s two nostrils
burnt into my retinas
and a ring of bite marks from a set of baby teeth
tattooed around my penis

he licked his lips and said:

humans have been humans for 200,000 years
and we get bored easily
our thumbs grew twisted
to better beat off and rip the wings from flies

there is no god organ in our reptile brains
there is no moral compass buried in our chests
just shrapnel from botched surgeries
there is no logic, only rhetoric
there is no science, only dogma

he put his hand on my thigh and told me:

in the future, they’ll attribute our cruelty
to chemical imbalances and bad parenting
and they’ll forgive us with brand new hearts
pumping blood full of nanorobots and arrogance
and they’ll laugh in steely voices
at our crude self-portraits
fading in the corners of rotting history books

Note:

You will never be
famous No one
will ever peep your
shit No groupie will
ever touch you

r penis Any fleeting moment
of brilliance/relevance you
experience will only haunt you All
recognition you receive will vanish
like old show flyers No

one will ever know
you No one will care
which way
you chose to waste your life

You will die crazy and defeated
like Van Gogh but your
art will always be worthless

the flagellant

fuck you, breeder
your palms are glass
rubbed smooth from
fingering your lifeline and
jerking off to lesbians

tying a tourniquet
around your testicles
and burying your fist in your rectum
can’t hide the mark of the beast

fuck you, paleface
you huddle in a suburban bunker
listening to white rappers
with your ears packed full
of cotton and beeswax

you mouth the n word silently
like it was the name of god
but no number of Kill Whitey!s
can lift your original sin

stare at your slavemade shoes
when you speedwalk past panhandlers
lie through your straight white teeth
that you can’t help them

write your free verse, false poet
on bleached paper with an astronaut pen
but pray to the ghost of teddy roosevelt
that your pith helmet is bulletproof

drop acid and go on a vision quest in europe
tattoo it’s a free country inside your upper lip
flex your skinny muscles, mouthbreather
but know this:

when your dick finally goes limp
and you suck a bullet out of the barrel
i will write misspelled cliches
and trace poorly drawn skulls
on the back of your obituary
in black magic marker
so the ink bleeds through
and erases your name

steal this poem

cross out my name
and write your own above it
make one up
if you don’t like the one
your parents made up

you can change the words
or replace them
with identical copies of themselves
they all mean the same thing

put on your new shoes
and walk to the open mic
don’t talk to anyone
just stare through the floor
at the center of the planet
and wait your turn

if you forget to read it out loud
it doesn’t matter
no one is listening

loveshy not gunshy

this autistic manchild
socalled because he has a shriveled dick
sandwiched between his pale flabby thighs
is a balding death metal musician

this mathematician
with a metronome for a heart
was cut from the stomach of adam
and locked in a soundproof room

if he can play
the harmonic minor scales
and the blast beats
until there is no blood left in his hands and feet

if he can gasp
the caveman grunts
and the eunuch shrieks
until his vocals chords snap

the heavens will open up above him
like king arthur pulling a sword from an anvil
in a disney cartoon

and he will sleep well
wrapped in tattered sheets
printed with trains and stopwatches
stained by piss and semen

and he will sleep well
with one skinny arm hooked
around the neck of a prosthetic doll
his cum trickling out of its pink rubber anus

and he will dream
of valkyries
with lips painted red
eyes bruised black
and pubic hair dyed blonde

and he will dream
of valhalla

deus ex machina

i wish my life
was a wes anderson movie

i wish my every defect
was an endearing character flaw
intended to make me seem human

i wish my every failure
could appear significant
if played in slow motion
and accompanied by an elliott smith song

i wish my desperation
was just a plot device
and i could have faith that
it will be resolved
by act five

telephone poem #1

hey
it's me
jonah
jonah
last week we
you
yeah that was me
how are you
good good
oh i'm fine
i was just wondering if
sure i can wait

hi
i was just wondering if maybe you
wanted to hangout or something
sometime
hangout
like see a movie or
uh huh
i see
your boyfriend
but what about last
oh okay
no no i understand
it's alright really
okay
well i guess i'll see you around then or
oh right
nevermind
okay well
bye

bye