Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone
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For you, hopefully.
Effortless
Writing poetry is effortless,
heifer piss, lever kiss,
Trevor, Chris…
…whoops, got a little light-headed.
A Dog’s Poem
Roses are grey,
violets are a different shade of grey,
let’s go chase cars!
Kiss You
I want to kiss you all day.
I want to start at dawn.
I want our mouths to dry out by breakfast.
I want our jaws to start cramping by noon.
I want us to question our decision to kiss all day by hour five.
I want to have sex really quickly then seriously stop all this kissing bullshit because you need your personal space, apparently.
The Squares
The Squares lived happily, in their square houses, in their square yards, in their square town.
One day, a family of Circles moved in from the west.
“Get out of here, roundies!” shouted one of the Squares.
“Why?” asked one of the Circles.
“Because this is a metaphor for racism!”
Convenience
I would do anything for you, if convenient.
I would move a mountain for you if that mountain could be moved with a button or with a lever that wasn’t too cold to the touch.
I would give you the moon if I could.
You would love the moon. You would show it off to everyone and not give a fuck that you’ve now severely damaged our ecosystem by disrupting the tides.
Maybe a nice look in the mirror is in order, Missy.
Magic
Read this to yourself. Read it silently.
Don’t move your lips. Don’t make a sound.
Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything.
What a wonderfully weird thing, huh?
NOW MAKE THIS PART LOUD!
SCREAM IT IN YOUR MIND!
DROWN EVERYTHING OUT.
Now, hear a whisper. A tiny whisper.
Now, read this next line with your best crotchety-
old-man voice: “Hello there, sonny. Does your town have a post office?”
Awesome! Who was that? Whose voice was that?
It sure wasn’t yours!
How do you do that?
How?!
Must be magic.
Two Parties
It’s a week before the wedding
and the bride is with her friends
(grown women with bright plastic dick jewelry)
and the groom is with his friends
(“grown men” or “bright plastic dick jewelry”).
I Eat Words
I eat words! Delicious words!
I gobble the words that you make.
Words like rod taste like turds, but billow tastes like cake.
I stuff my face with afterwards
and wash it down with hush.
Dessert must wait till after words like hunch or flack or crush.
And my dessert won’t be dessert.
That word is tough to chew.
I’ll have a word that’s sweet and curt, like pony, nip, or blue.
On Poets and Farts
Why do poets always talk about the ocean’s waves, about their single file march to shore, and yet never talk about my grandmother’s farts, which arrive in time, one after the other, with equal regularity?
Are these poets too holy to comment on anything less than nature’s flashiest gestures?
Are we going to spend another millennia searching for meaning in sunsets and waterfalls?
Or will we finally turn our ear to Grammy’s rump and away from all that pretty stuff,
and hear that foul, muted trumpet sing, marking the end of an era?
Flowers
On the third of June, at a minute past two, where once was a person, a flower now grew.
Five daisies arranged on a large outdoor stage in front of a ten-acre pasture of sage.
In a changing room, a lily poses.
At the DMV, rows of roses.
The world was much crueler an hour ago.
I’m glad someone decided to give flowers a go.
Hell Waits
Hell waits in a doctor’s office,
tapping his shoe against a loose strip of carpet,
holding a magazine in front of his face,
trying to look professional,
whilst eyeing the children’s toys.
Alfred
You’re a bunny, Alfred.
Quit all this “elephant” bullshit.
Look at your little bunny ears.
Look at your adorable whiskers.
Do elephants have little bunny ears?
Do they have adorable whiskers?
No, they don’t.
You can’t just wake up one day and decide to be an elephant, Alfred.
The world doesn’t work like that.
There are rules, Alfred.
And you want to stomp all over them.
Get over yourself.
Sully
Sully suffers from a stutter, simple syllables will clutter,
stalling speeches up on beaches
like a sunken sailboat rudder.
Sully strains to say his phrases, sickened by the sounds he raises, strings of thoughts come out in knots, he solves his sentences like mazes.
At night, he writes his thoughts instead and sighs as they steadily rush from his head.
Old Sea Captain
Ye Old Sea Captain.
You know, briny breath, one squinting eye,
chewing a waterlogged pipe, squatting on a dock post.
A bearded cauldron blabbering bullshit, crashing through anecdotes like a radio dial through waves of white noise.
Living legend, he is.
A great American archetype.
So grab your digital cameras you yuppie fucks.
You
How, may I ask, did you get so you,
you beautiful true-to-you doer?
I’ve met many today but can honestly say
that I’ve never met anyone you-er.
The Flirt
I could make an easy joke to get you laughing.
Something about a cat and then
the word pussy being used ambiguously.
I could tell a sad story to get you crying.
Like how I had a single mother
who started selling handmade yo-yos
to support her only child.
I could tell you an interesting fact to get you nodding, Like how carpets were first made in the hopes that all of the world’s grass would one day be replaced by carpets, or, as they called them, “comfy grass.”
I could tell you a scary story to get your teeth chattering, Something about a really old man, sitting in a squeaky rocking chair, pointing at you.
What are you in the mood for?
My Rabbit’s Foot
I’ve got a rabbit’s foot and I feel lucky that I have it,
but I still know that it must’ve come from one unlucky rabbit.
Onion
You had many la
yers like an onion.
Wait, no, like an artichoke—with your layers arranged like snake scales, not stacked like coats of paint.
Be sure to call in a year or so and tell me whether I was lifting heavy stones off your bunker door or
plucking petals off your face.
I Fuck Sluts
Sluts! Sluts! I fuck sluts!
Sluts get fucked when I fuck sluts!
No ifs, ands, and/or buts!
I fuck sluts! I fuck sluts!
Nice girls are nice, but no good for nut-sucking.
They’ll need a serene night to green-light a butt-fucking, but that’ll be easy with sleazy ol’ slut-fucking!
Boo to the nice girls! Praise be to slut-fucking!
I have a list. A list? Yes, a list of all the sluts I’ve missed.
I’ve never fucked or sucked these sluts and thus my nuts are fucking pissed.
So when I fuck the lucky slut, my nut removes her from the list— another dumb cumbucket struck from my nut-sucking, “suck it, slut!” slut-fucking bucket list.
Sluts can be white, black, brown, pink, or almond.
They can be skinny with big tits or be skinny with small ones.
Sluts can be perky, preppy, or posh,
with their brains and their clothes all shrunk from the wash.
But other sluts are pretty and funny and smart.
They can lift all your thoughts from your dick to your heart.
They can talk about science, music, or art.
They can put you together or pull you apart.
But don’t trust these sluts! Don’t! Don’t you dare!
They’ll force you to trust them and love them and care.
And then they’ll be gone and then you’ll be aware of that hole in your heart that that dumb slut left there.
Incomparable
You’re incomparable like a…
Shit.
Like a…
Gangly
I’m a gangly kid,
one of those drunk marionettes,
one of those baby giraffes with inner ear syndrome.
A flailing stork in high winds. A stilted freak.
I am an easel—not symbolically—structurally.
I attempt to dance and become a tornado of elbow.
Advice
If the poem you’re writing is silly and dumb,
make sure that it rhymes at the end. Bum.
Can I Have a Word?
Can I have a word, please?
It can be any word.
Just give me a word.
We can share all the rest.
Just let me have one.
It can be anything.
I’d take canteen or avid.
I’d even settle for timely.
But you can’t use my word, whatever it is,
without asking.
Because it’s my word.
And I’ll almost always let you use it when you ask.
Unless, for example, my word is wonderful and you want to use it to describe a movie I haven’t seen yet or a movie I saw already and didn’t care for.
I really want everything.
That’s my first choice.
Flabbergasted is a close second.
Fear
The first was acro-claustro-homo-arachnophobic,
terrified of being trapped in a very small,
very high-up place with a bunch of gay spiders.
The second was avio-coulro-glosso-metrophobic,
terrified of being forced to read poetry
to the clown public on an airplane.
The third was octo-oneirogmo-kathiso-lutraphobic,
terrified of having eight consecutive wet dreams
whilst sitting on a pile of otters.
The fourth was afraid of snakes.
What a pussy!
Flower Sex
Flower sex! Flower sex!
Flex those sexy flower pecs.
Good old April shower sex
that lasts for half an hour sex.
Yeah! Flower power her!
Devour her! Don’t cower, sir!
Put the petal to the medal
and powerfully deflower her!
Angel
The snow lay gently upon the ground.
The poo lay gently upon the snow.
The boy lay gently upon the poo.
And the boy made a snow angel.
An angel
with a white body made from heaven’s ashes
and a brown heart made from a dog’s gastrointestinal tract.
Your Mom
If I had a million dollars, I would pay your mother to have sex with me.
Afterward, I would probably invest the remaining nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety dollars.
Burrrrrrn.
Toast
I’d like to propose a toast:
sourdough pumpkin bread.
Thoughts?
The Letter
I wrote you a letter, and then another letter, and another, and another, until I wrote you a word.
So I wrote you a word, and then another word, and another, and another, until I wrote you a sentence.
So I wrote you a sentence, and then another sentence, and another, and another, until I wrote you a letter.
I hope it finds you as I found you.
Yours truly,
Yours, truly.
Us
I’ll love you until I’m dead on the outside.
I’ll give you every one of my mortal seconds.
I’ll never leave your side.
I’ll die holding your hand.
But after that, I want some “me time.”
Searching
I’m not looking in every nook and cranny for it.
I’ll do the nooks.
No way I left my keys in some fucking cranny.
Baby Turtles
Eight baby turtles scurry to shore.
Wait, seven—now six—now five—now four!
Two more gone, two left in the race,
both of them sprinting and hoping to place.
The first gets second, the second gets third,
and first place goes to the now well-fed bird.
Cup of Joe
There’s nothing like a cup of joe, when the morning’s grey and grim and slow, when the streets collide with the world outside, when litter lies where lilies grow.
Just drink that smoking cup of black and feel your feelings surging back.
Plus, spill a drop and a coffee shop will sprout up from a sidewalk crack!
Sandy Claws
Aw, it’s plump, old dandy Sandy Claws.
It’s fuckin’ Daddy Christmas.
How’s it hanging, Sandy Claws?
I’m sure Miss Kringle missed us.
I love you, you big dumb sack of shit.
Come over whenever, I got the fireplace lit.
I’m fuckin’ with you!
Nine to Five
Grooming my cuticles
in an un-roomy cubicle.
The phone rings, duty calls.
Better sell those pharmaceuticals.
Boooop
I will have sex with you if you ask politely.
Or ask.
Or if you politely consent to it.
Or consent to it.
I would like to have sex with you.
Call me back.
Pumpkin
Someone carved a face in that pumpkin, and now it’s perched on a stoop, grinning with the same sinister grin the carver must have had when he carved it.
And everything I recognize as expressive (the triangular eyes, that big toothy smile) is marked by a lack of pumpkin.
A red face of dead space.
And now I’m seeing just the opposite.
I see two spots where the eyes should be, an open wound where the mouth once sat, and a fire within, baking the insides.
Disembodied Heads
Severed heads get all the attention
.
“Poor ol’ disembodied heads,”
cry the townspeople.
But what about the severed bodies?
What about that poor ol’ disembodied head’s poor ol’ disemheaded body?
The heads roll around moping all day.
The bodies work in the mines.
Without a union!
It’s a no-brainer for the no brainers.
Give ’em some respect.
They harvest our coal, for Christ’s sake!
Benches
Old men love to sit on benches. They do! All day.
If you see an empty bench, look around.
I guarantee that you will not see any old men.
Old men always sit on benches.
And they always have.
Back in the day,
baby old men,
with their baby walking sticks
and baby dentures,
would sit on tiny baby benches.
And as they grew,
from baby old men
puttering around dragging baby oxygen tanks
into grown-up old men puttering around dragging oxygen tanks,
the benches grew too.
Sometimes,
two old men will sit on a bench together.
And that’s fine.
Because it’s not a throne.