Ecce homo! Post-Industrial Revolution human is failing!
Astronauts fall from the heavens and impale themselves on cocks!
All avant-garde hairstyles have been co-opted and codified!
History is written in sonata form and the sales receipt is now scripture!
Blessed are the Butter-Flavored Cheese-Fried Cheese-Filled Corn Snack!
Blessed are the Butter-Flavored Butter-Baked Cheese-Filled Corn Snack!
Blessed are the Corn-Fresh Corn-Flavored Cheese-Puffed Butter Ball!
Blessed are the Cheese-Flavored Pop-Fresh Corn-Fried Cheese Pop!
Ecce homo! Post-Industrial Revolution human is failing!
Dreaming bacteria in my intestines bubble up through my chakras!
And I can say “Kidnap me, I’m a rich American” in 8 languages!
We have stared long at the night sky and found the Universe to be telescope-shaped!
Lo! I walk around the house naked with morningwood
and observe the high water mark in the toilet bowl.
Hardon is oneword!
Yet, I can hear a chamber orchestra
locked inside a somewhere-abandoned subway car
playing Messiaen and looking bored.
Friday, January 2, 2009
“is the solipsist so lonely?”
the philosopher asks no one in particular
his voice unheard
outside his locked office door.
he is drowned out by the humming of
machines that make lunch boxes
machines that make harmonicas
machines that make parts for more machines.
the humming echoes through streets
resounding inside the empty movie theaters
& the empty concert halls
& the empty cathedrals
& the empty classrooms
& the empty skating rinks
& the empty discotheques
& the empty drive-throughs
& the empty apothecaries
& the empty art galleries
& the empty museums
& the empty gay bars
& the empty parking garages
& the empty chinese restaurants
& the empty stadiums
& the empty office buildings
& the empty prisons
& the empty barns
& the empty catacombs
& the empty capitols
& the empty housing projects
& the empty houses.
everyone is inside
the library of congress
lying in her or his own
private opium coma,
but they all dream the same dream.
they dream of the philosopher
squatting in his cave
squinting through his dirty window
wrinkling his vast forehead.
his voice unheard
outside his locked office door.
he is drowned out by the humming of
machines that make lunch boxes
machines that make harmonicas
machines that make parts for more machines.
the humming echoes through streets
resounding inside the empty movie theaters
& the empty concert halls
& the empty cathedrals
& the empty classrooms
& the empty skating rinks
& the empty discotheques
& the empty drive-throughs
& the empty apothecaries
& the empty art galleries
& the empty museums
& the empty gay bars
& the empty parking garages
& the empty chinese restaurants
& the empty stadiums
& the empty office buildings
& the empty prisons
& the empty barns
& the empty catacombs
& the empty capitols
& the empty housing projects
& the empty houses.
everyone is inside
the library of congress
lying in her or his own
private opium coma,
but they all dream the same dream.
they dream of the philosopher
squatting in his cave
squinting through his dirty window
wrinkling his vast forehead.
cutting cloud from sky
if i was born a bastard
son of bukowski
i would
write poems
in that criminal
american
diction
with vulgar pride.
but i was not
so i will
write poems
in my anemic lisp
with manic fatalism
and a custer moustache.
you see
my country hates poets
by principle
and my countrymen
would rather drink
hard liquor and coca cola
than read hegel or wittgenstein or kant
because hegel and wittgenstein and kant
are hard to understand
and even when understood
can’t make you a better kisser.
i am not bitter.
i wouldn’t have it any other way.
son of bukowski
i would
write poems
in that criminal
american
diction
with vulgar pride.
but i was not
so i will
write poems
in my anemic lisp
with manic fatalism
and a custer moustache.
you see
my country hates poets
by principle
and my countrymen
would rather drink
hard liquor and coca cola
than read hegel or wittgenstein or kant
because hegel and wittgenstein and kant
are hard to understand
and even when understood
can’t make you a better kisser.
i am not bitter.
i wouldn’t have it any other way.
the sober man often mistakes holding a woman’s hair while she vomits as romantic.
A.
how many gas station bathrooms along this country’s highway system have i not bought french ticklers or bubble-gum-flavored condoms in for want of 3 quarters and someone who wants me
how long must one stare at the alien surface of shaved genitals before the first kiss can no longer be remembered as a sticky piece of candy, picked off the floor and eaten when everyone had left the room
who isn’t affected
B.
we make love at arm’s length
in the direction of jerusalem
with our shoes on and alarms set.
a soul and a soul never quite touch;
they are the wrong sides of two magnets,
they are the hands of a clock.
this morning, i left the shower on.
the drain is clogged with hair and cum
and my bathtub runneth over,
flooding my house with more
things i can’t breathe.
how many gas station bathrooms along this country’s highway system have i not bought french ticklers or bubble-gum-flavored condoms in for want of 3 quarters and someone who wants me
how long must one stare at the alien surface of shaved genitals before the first kiss can no longer be remembered as a sticky piece of candy, picked off the floor and eaten when everyone had left the room
who isn’t affected
B.
we make love at arm’s length
in the direction of jerusalem
with our shoes on and alarms set.
a soul and a soul never quite touch;
they are the wrong sides of two magnets,
they are the hands of a clock.
this morning, i left the shower on.
the drain is clogged with hair and cum
and my bathtub runneth over,
flooding my house with more
things i can’t breathe.
an old poem for a new world
an old man
stands in his front lawn
beating an old dog
tied to a tree.
he beats the dog
with today’s newspaper
slowly and steadily
without anger or pleasure.
the dog lies quiet
in the dust.
it is dead
except for the rhythmic
wheeze
of its breath.
the old man
and the old dog
heave in unison
in time with the rise
and fall
of the newspaper.
both are sweating
and panting
under the same ancient sun.
stands in his front lawn
beating an old dog
tied to a tree.
he beats the dog
with today’s newspaper
slowly and steadily
without anger or pleasure.
the dog lies quiet
in the dust.
it is dead
except for the rhythmic
wheeze
of its breath.
the old man
and the old dog
heave in unison
in time with the rise
and fall
of the newspaper.
both are sweating
and panting
under the same ancient sun.
Pax Americana
We paid them with crumbled dollar bills and spent down pavements past marching bands and flags and storefronts and insects and riot cops and horse cops and firemen and policemen and gaymen and goat and sheep and cow and horse and horse cop and beggar and leper and addict and a fallen star, cooling in the car pool lane.
Intuiting the center of the Universe is close, we link arms and stomp and yell and demand grand masters hold blank canvasses to the sun and illuminate the heavenly bodies floating inside our eyes.
I offered a bee my hand to sting and it swells. I hold a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow, filling the Void with the sound of saxophone and tree branch and dead leaf and window and gas station and gas rag and milkshake and garden hose and burning house and cricket and brother and sister and whimsome nobody and my violent vicissitude. I break my cheekbones and hold a pistol to my chest and pretend to be a roman replica of a greek statue. I hold the mediterranean to its word.
We all hold out our palms for the bee to sting. We learn to play the typewriter in pastures and shoot toy cap guns at passing comets and hold mannequins for ransom and shock diabetic baboons to death. We scrape our teeth and wonder if it really is the year the history books say it is. We play russian roulette in my bedroom and hurt my baby seal and stare at pictures in the encyclopedia and look up all the words we don’t know.
As the ghost of Robert Johnson pours across the 35th parallel, our skulls bloom like tiny solariums and we begin to rethink the 2000s and the 1990s and the 1980s and the 1970s and the 1960s and the 1950s and the 1940s and the 1930s and the 1920s...
Etcetera, etcetera. Forever and Ever. Alleluia and Amen.
Intuiting the center of the Universe is close, we link arms and stomp and yell and demand grand masters hold blank canvasses to the sun and illuminate the heavenly bodies floating inside our eyes.
I offered a bee my hand to sting and it swells. I hold a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow, filling the Void with the sound of saxophone and tree branch and dead leaf and window and gas station and gas rag and milkshake and garden hose and burning house and cricket and brother and sister and whimsome nobody and my violent vicissitude. I break my cheekbones and hold a pistol to my chest and pretend to be a roman replica of a greek statue. I hold the mediterranean to its word.
We all hold out our palms for the bee to sting. We learn to play the typewriter in pastures and shoot toy cap guns at passing comets and hold mannequins for ransom and shock diabetic baboons to death. We scrape our teeth and wonder if it really is the year the history books say it is. We play russian roulette in my bedroom and hurt my baby seal and stare at pictures in the encyclopedia and look up all the words we don’t know.
As the ghost of Robert Johnson pours across the 35th parallel, our skulls bloom like tiny solariums and we begin to rethink the 2000s and the 1990s and the 1980s and the 1970s and the 1960s and the 1950s and the 1940s and the 1930s and the 1920s...
Etcetera, etcetera. Forever and Ever. Alleluia and Amen.
bob dylan, king of the jews
the state of the union is not given by a television president
it is written on the walls of bathroom stalls
it is whispered in steam rooms and confession booths
it screams naked from our public foreskin:
we want our kinky freedom
we want our black jackie onassis
we want our box and our drug and our big nothing
we want fluoride in our tap water
we want words that mean and breathe
we want a poetic death for history
we want a capital t truth that goes down easy
we want a thoroughly cleaned and ghettoized pop culture
we want our badges and diplomas
we want our sacred minority and nuclear arsenal
we want our heathens and hedons
we want our robber barons and rugged individualists
we want our self-hate prophet
we want our bean curd minstrel
we want our free speech cage
we want our good cop and bad cop and white cop and black cop
we want our sexual predator and his yellow star
we want our mark chapman
we want our catchers in the rye
we want an apologetics of capitalism
we want our flat tax and castes of sin
we want our karma and jurisprudence
we want our hypothetical christian
we want a homeric epic other than this horatio alger propaganda
but this is not
and we are not greek
if our generation has a bob dylan
he will be a plagarist or slandered as one
and we will make him wear his crown
and we will march him to golgotha
and we will lock him in a concrete mausoleum
engraved with his christian name.
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