sermon

all hail! the dinosaur god
of all christian nations
who drinks the corn syrup blood
of aborted crack babies

who preaches:
“it’s okay to call
indians indians
because they’re all dead
or they never existed”

all hail! the dinosaur god
of every 3rd world cargo cult
who is never photographed
without a breast milk moustache

who preaches:
“if horses had gods
they would look like horses
but they don’t
because they don’t have souls”

all hail! the dinosaur god
of amputees and burn victims
whose mechanical phallus
always points magnetic north

let us drink
His pesticide piss
let us eat
His asbestos shit
let us breathe
His carbon monoxide breath

let us obey
and plant our own children
in the killing fields
if they would lie fallow

the ghost of bukowski

I.

the ghost of bukowski
visited me in a dream
he was drunk
he’s always drunk
he told me to stop
wasting words

he said i was
deluding their power
he said i was
exasperating the word inflation
and making it harder
for real writers

he said that it takes
over ten thousand words
to say ‘futility’
but it used to only take
one

i just punctured
my eardrums with my pen
and kept drawing strings of letters

eventually
he stopped moaning
and rattling his chains
laid on the floor
and passed out

when he did
i got down on my knees
pulled up his shirt
and carved into his skin:

even “if [i] have to sit for hours
staring at [my] computer screen
or hunched over [my]
typewriter
searching for words”
i won’t stop

even “if [i] have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again”
i won’t stop

even “if it drive[s] [me] to madness or
suicide or murder”
i won’t stop

even if it never gets any easier

(especially if it never gets any easier)

II.

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
intelligible

at least i might learn
how to spell

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
that hasn’t been written before

at least it might seem
like i’m not alone

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
that could be called beautiful

at least i might know
what ugliness looks like

if i write for the rest of my life
and i never write anything
true

at least i will have these pages
to burn

and keep me warm

my days are 24 hours long

everyone else’s days are only
23 hours and 56 minutes long but

my days are 24 hours long

i spend my 4 extra minutes each day
practicing my small talk in the mirror:

hello
hello
how are you?
good, how are you?
good
that’s good
how is your twin brother?
good, how is your twin brother?
good
that’s good
did you hear?
no, what?
my twin brother is having a baby in march
congratulations!
he’s scared
he shouldn’t be!
oh?
my twin brother had a baby in march
did it hurt?
he didn’t feel a thing!
that’s funny
why?
i had a tumor removed in march
did it hurt?
i didn’t feel a thing!
that’s funny
why?
i’m having a tumor removed in march
are you scared?
no

mirage

(i was daydreaming about a far away
blurry oasis
in the middle of a desert of salt
so i didn’t hear her say)

“to love and be loved”

what?

“that’s the secret to happiness”

what is
'to love and be delirious'
the secret to?

“what?”

what if
no one will love you?

“someone will love you”

who?

“someone out there”

someone out in the parking lot?

“no, someone out in the world”

the parking lot is part of the world
so this someone
might be in the parking lot
right?

“yes, i suppose so”

(i shaded my eyes and squinted
but i couldn’t see much
in the glare of steel and glass)

give me one reason

not to cut off my finger
in this bathroom

i have the knife
it’s for cutting chicken bones
i’m sure it will go right through me
i have the rags
to stop the bleeding
i have the hydrogen peroxide
to stop the infection

give me one reason

not to cut off my finger
and flush it down the toilet

i have the knife
and the rags
and the disinfectant
i locked the door
no one is awake

no one would hear me
even if i screamed
and even if i screamed
no one would come running
and even if someone came running
they wouldn’t be able to open the door
and even if they could open the door
they wouldn’t be able to stop me in time
and even if they could stop me in time

and they asked me
what are you doing
and i told them
i’m going to cut off my finger
and they asked me
why
and i told them
give me one reason not to

they would have nothing to say

this country doesn’t support the arts

the police men
didn’t like my
performance art

i was wearing a costume and makeup
in order to look the part
of a homeless person
and i did my best
passed out drunk
impression
on the park bench

(i had taken an acting class
the previous summer)

i did my best but

the police men
didn’t like my
performance art

instead of putting change
in my plastic cup
they dragged me into an alley
held me against the dumpster
and took turns
giving it to me

and then they cut to commercial

i saw you
on TV
you were on the news
psych
you were in the static
psych
you were on the news

and you were talking
to some guy
with a banana for a penis
psych
he had a penis for a penis

(though since he was little
he had always thought
his penis looked a little
like a banana)

and you told him to
fuck off
and he didn’t
know what to say
psych
he did
he told you that
you have some nerve