A Velvet Mafia Reader #2

the airplane

i board
one foot at a time
Watch your step!
says the male stewardess
(what do you call those?)

i walk down the aisle
past a man with a shaved head
wearing that new digital camouflage
probably in order to fight that new digital war

i find 34C and sit down
the girl next to me
is too young to be flying alone
but too old for her anyone to stop her
she’s listening to the new noise
on her headphones

i’m issued my adult beverage and pillow
i give them both to the girl
she gulps the drink down while pinching her nose
and goes to sleep

i look at my in-flight magazine
Congratulations!
it says
You’ve chosen the safest seat in the plane!
but i’m sure they all say that

i look out the window
down at the patchwork quilt of land
none of the pieces seem to fit together
then i try to read
the reader’s digest version of leviathan
for a while

i walk to the bathroom
but Someone is in there
so i wait in my seat for Someone to finish
i stare at the door
not wanting to miss the clean look of relief
on Someone’s face
but the man with the shaved head comes out
and his face is blank

i sit in the cramped bathroom
my knees pressed against the small door
i don’t have to go
i just wanted to sit in the humming belly of the airplane
and pretend i was back in my mother’s womb
from what i can remember
it was nothing like this

[small margin poems]

small margin poems
are just like stri
ng: they are never
so short as to ren
der them incomplet

empty house

on nights
when no one is home
i beat off to muscular old men
fucking girls their daughters' age
who mimic the positions they learned
from watching porn on their big brother’s computer

when i cum
my mind goes blank
like a book thrown into the fire
the clarity is the same
as the first few minutes
after you wake up in the morning

in this reverie
i browse through abandoned websites
with my boxers around my ankles
and the sock still hanging from my penis

the internet is littered
with the sloppy personal pages
of grinning 20somethings
ages frozen on the terminal
like it was a tombstone

some must have moved on
to nice jobs and nice families
others must have died
from car accidents or suicide
from bad drugs or good drugs

they are so beautiful
in these pictures
with their perfect hair and perfect teeth
they pose like fashion models
their outfits hug their tight bodies

i was that age once
but i was never beautiful
my youth came and left
like a delivery man
at the door of an empty house

i and i

where were you last night?

i went to a party.

was it fun?

bob marley’s son was there.

which one?

what?

which one of his sons was there?

oh. i don't know. he had dreads.

was it damian?

which one is damian?

he's the one that raps.

no. his name was JAH or something.

what was he like?

i fucked him.

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