on deck

the heavy bat first, this swing in the word to say near me but pushing through me. take the han, the word flood implies direction, gravity's wear. knowing the dams hold their breath above the border, put bets here before the pitch, pop-fly or walk or homer note the corners that punished ---your father evidently worth your mother once--- and the world owes us a caricature, take me into the sun. unconsciously, I will explain.

haiku

pumping    pumping    pumping

fingers     fingers

cervix

           neck

cervix

            thigh

pumping     pumping

wings    wings    wings

Projections of Projections of Her

By: Genevieve N. Williams

Unease bumps inside the body of a fly

that bumps against an unknown wall

in an unknown room. It’s Chinatown,

Chicago. I’ve locked myself in

the McDonald’s bathroom. A hand-dryer

hangs by two cords: home

and someplace else. A fight ends

as quickly as it began, and I open the door

to a calm that exists only after unspeakable things.

An artificial waterfall tilts to the left, and blue

nights rise from grease and gorgeous women.

I can’t say why, but I want to be the man

in the bottom of a dried-up well, who thinks

he can gain the answer to everything

if only the sun will burn perfect circles

onto his hands. Or maybe I just want

to lick the shadows from your walls,

your yellow-wallpapered walls,

your imaginary endings. Later,

I will throw them up into the toilet.

Who am I kidding? I will not take

on any more of your little deaths,

your half-cocked confessions. I will

not force the handgun from your hands

or lie by the couch to keep you

from ____________. An empty bottle

of McCormick’s sits in your freezer door,

and I have better things to do than imagine a you.

When I left, I realized you never knew me

from the projections of her. You never knew

that I never knew you, either – not really.

We were forever each other’s mothers –

or some bit of history that never existed. Who am I

to say you were wrong for calling me

a whore? I know an artist

who says words are meaningless,

that we assign them power when

they needn’t be anything but shapes on paper.

He’s a pseudo-intellectual hipster cop-out,

but that doesn’t matter. What matters is this:

A man stands on top of a rock, pregnant

with a lobster that is really his mother.

He rests his hand on his uterus,

closes his eyes to the wind.

I share a card table with a woman

whose ears are cow’s ears

and whose feet are pig’s feet.

We’re in the middle of a gravel road.

She smiles a knowing smile.

A foo dog charges through

my apartment door, morphs

into an aging monk, and slouches

against the kitchen counter.

He asks for a glass of water.

My father is there. In my waking

state, a black shadow swooshes

from the alcove of 20s Showgirl.

We have all seen it/him/her

and we’re not saying anything

to anybody else about it.

The rabbits are eating our peas.

Nothing will remain as it was before.

It’s possible to pass on traumas

to our children, DNA changed

forever by epigenetic expressions.

It’s also possible to pass on positive

shifts. I like to imagine myself

happy, though my parents

lived through unspeakable things.

I dream myself into wells of absurdity

and wallow in shallow waters.

A falcon tips into the gloved hand

of a little girl, and a fly dies

on my headboard. She has

the weightless body of a barn swallow.

but the meat is too aged

you open me up with tongue and knife
pulling out my dreambeats
my prime pieces
my life drumming doldroms

teasing me they say honey feels
sticky and tight but it won’t hurt

I taste like rain
and sugarcubes on your fingers
you say sugar feels
nous ne sommes pas un pour l'autre

you squeeze my flesh tight
flail around light me up melt me down

everyone takes their favorite part
a carcass in the wild loses its form
under a supermoon bones bleach
je ne sais pas qui je suis

aerth

I missed the super moon

I'm a dead overlord

Maybe

I'll watch you take

three sips of wine

on a loop

Biking home I smelled  lily of the valley                                           semen                                gasoline

I say things while biking

je ne sais pas

muguet de bois Semen

Gasoline

That is

My glass

Cunt heart

Dead zone

Are you bleeding or laughing

Janis

whispers way too quietly

People keep

Dying

cut here for 92

come and have a drink with me
sit down and talk a while
the dignity of this office must be preserved

time spent ousted
uncomfortable but calm
spinning rain
cycling around the park
like an old puerto rican man
on a fastback

drinking rumchata
eating fried meat
and drenched in a
glow not unlike vaseline

took a shower today
trimmed my beard
there wasn't weed in there this time
but not for lack of trying

halle berry
beyonce knowles

and the thunder rolls

still haven't figured out what cure song that is

it's 1991
i'm 1991
i'm listening to 1991
i'm fairly sure i became self aware in 1991

other things that happened:
broke an arm
developed an addiction to earl grey
hot,

i don't like honey in my tea though
and i don't like anything in my tea
or any sort of palette altering
bullshit, because it's hard enough as it is
to try and mask something so intrinsically
perfect or complex or entirely simple or
all together fucked up

i stand behind the notion that you rarely ever need more than four on any particular floor

but you need four
in 1991 we only needed four
now we only need four
i count in four HOWEVER i like to count by fives
or tens, my older brother sees sevens everywhere
glad i didn't get that gene
seven sucks

&honey &honey &honey &

who am i
when orange rocks
make orange sandmelt
(and i just thought creamsicle but meant)
into glass

the desert would piss milk
all over if only you could find
the urethra
but

wanderingsickness
i had a fondness for chasing if
when i tired i'd be a dove
i am tired
i am a manaching rock
chasing teeth immured in the wide
black skymouth
awake shedding a skin thick
layered honeycum

you read we can't die
from not pissing           when we die
we all piss
maybe just
little drops

house for flies

this was going on when they invented agriculture: sand dunes forming

in the back of the mouth of namibia

orange rocks make orange sand

a milky dream of carrot powder

that is money, 

i think

"& did you know," she went on "that the black mamba is called the black mamba 

not because of the color of its external scales (grey-white) but due

to the intense blackness of the inside of it's mouth?"

i, shirtless in the desert, kill a venomous snake to be closer to it

& to draw flies

in the millions 

they hover

close over a teacup so full of

diamond

that it breaks but keeps

its shape

here is a voice:

"slave-master:

starvation is not your worry

your breath is an ache from inside the rock's color

bathing me between parentheses 

in dark yellow urine"

apparently death 

in hotel toilet bowl

wrapped a snake

& come let's make

there's fire hot enough

to remove the evil haloes

that few a ships rode in on

They, bringing blackness

i assume the pose 

of the zoo-kept

& turn my maps

on the mouth of the continent

that looked over the gate

and clove to it

I’m not going to piss in anyone’s pocket, I won’t piss out this fire either

grown in furrows

patterns of blazing hills

our squint-eyes slice the sky

a seasonal dance

a Janus-glance

I’m not saying we’re prophets

but we hear the rhythms

and we’ll help you through the doorframe

not with kerosene and swaddling

nor torches and babies

we’re children of the fire, made of it

—who said that?

something in the underbrush:

     orphaned skunks in a hollow

     broken toys

     oscularies waiting

for aeration

something violent to mix them

with another, shall I pass through

or lie

in wait for my destroyer? what is

my substance? liquid or air?

errr  errring  every day

taking the dare, pissing

in the men’s urinal at church

looking for a rite that might

right you that might

upright you that mite:

you, me for example

under a golden sky

everybody kissed everybody’s hands

BLACK PISS TEETH

 

mutated my mind

as it shifted
i shit on the soft grey olive
came out my ruinous kisser
as a pit
smack surface
biting rock as a nip
tumbl down staircase too
these are nails singing
while the ‘nado sirens warn
wag a blasted brass finger
a foul a new death for us
wrapped by concrete
i am kissing you
new aerth to groww
development of my worpshiped
mind over currency
hunter god for feedss me
i am a scream
a man’s gotta eat
in the imagined sea of piss
until i am not piss
until it is only piss

i am hovering

metal and flying a winged

get high as the bottom
of the ocean
i am also in
a golden squid garden
piss on my parents watermelon
w/ my friends
all of them even the dead ones
the money we left in the dirt
the drunk and sober
drugs for my non thinker
and i in light of sweat
banked sunshine for my melting
laying in my own pool
for hours
as i fake a sleep
i am a body too

i wont suffer i can’t express
some fake fondness for violence
or the pain is this
the piss is
everything
when i build up as a passing storm
a random wind
will kill me
but i am damned by nothing
and nothing will save me

I'm changed in the way 

your brain set

Not the thinking part 

but the knowing part

that sadly set its face 

on the staircase 

And then die is right! 

Here, we're right here

in the pre-death like 

the minutes

in the blue chair

before you board the airplane

are only minutes in the one chair

before the minutes

in the plane chair or how

a screaming rabbit

snagged in the cat's teeth

is the massacre

of my imagined kindness or

how I have to piss and 

this ink is the ink

until I piss

There's that brass bird

I saw last in the place 

coated in cat piss

with the porch 

on which I set

my mother's plants 

to die and the neighbor 

let her tub run 

to cover the floor

My friend my friend 

would stop to drink

from the round cup

set carefully for him

me lying like I wasn't 

sitting waiting

and now I guess this 

is only in minutes

after that

and maybe the cat suffers 

for its nature but maybe I suffer 

for nothing my life my life

is a goddamned pom-pom

Maybe in the whole world

no one saved a seat

Death to Intelligence

"It is written forever that boys write poetry and Men Die girls sing the blues and Women Bleed" 
i mean this is a pretty dark one  are blues and poetry the same thing?  is dying and bleeding           ooolalalaoooolalala    i'm bleeding now- or i was yesterday  and i guess i'm dying too     a great horned owl arrived at my house in a blizzard and i thought it left us a baby maybe  but we didn't check we just sat in the dark and sang         "it's snow baby of mine"  and watched it turn its head around and around  atweetletweetatwiddle

maybe it means that the next generation makes art and when they lose it they suffer and die or do they suffer first   and then art     and then die

to tell you the truth, i'm in no mood for poetry  but i think i'm starting to get that quote there is a difference between living and feeling      or feeling and expressing      i was trying to explain an idea and i kept using the word "adult"      and it was and wasn't what i meant           i think i was trying to talk about people who have been changed by pain and who have come to some understanding through it     

i bet the birds are ok   i mean i live right there and they are always singing, which is as you say not just about "sex" and it's obviously not about "happiness" either but i guess it means they are "alive" and maybe not "afraid"   i bet those falcons eat lots of mice

some of you posted a study on facebook that found that people who had been found to be more intelligent than their peers in the study drink more beers    or whatever alcohol-they drink more of it      amanda said she had some thoughts    i have some thoughts too   "¡Muera la inteligencia!"

Get Low Get Low Get Low Get Low:

I mean this in a funny way too
Casual Sex is God Damned Futile




I used to like Eminem
I once drank a fifth of vodka in twenty minutes and drove
I needed drugs
I once met a parolee with six kids at 24 and one in the youth joint
She had a shrine to Eminem
It was over her bed and under her watch yourself fuck mirror
It was something we could bond over
The Eminem I mean
It was something you could assume a bond out of hand with everyone you met
I used to think shocking and funny were obviously the same thing
I used to be too cool for morals
Its hilarious to murder your wife over and over again
I had a one-night stand with a woman in a violent relationship
One-afternoon stand really
We fucked on his couch than we went to the park fed ducks and smoked weed
Everyone knew about it in the space of a day and night
I told no one. I admitted nothing
I avoided a fight with the boyfriend by drunk driving away from his questions

Once at the Alley I had a bloody mary in a mason jar for like six bucks
I'm shamed of that in a way I'm not shamed of other things
Once I had a bloody mary like half an hour after brushing my teeth
and everything faintly smelled and tasted like garlic salt for days
It was like I had just vomited an hour ago forever. 

I hate the alley but like the neighborhood
Every summer the drown of bougie cover bands at red nine
and the dance of fortysomething bud light meatheads
Behind that the near south with the smell of roses from old Klein's corners yes
Also the air of tree pollen that does not actually smell like semen
but in plain literal and biologic sense is semen
Sex is not the only reason that birds sing
any weather we find annoying tends to batter and drown the birds dead in scores
and then there's the mascot falcons we love top the Capitol
normally a big town with its trees would give the little birds cover from the prairie space
but naw
Fuck you robin
Fuck you mocking J
Fuck you woodcock
It's fucking shit to be a songbird
Billie Holiday sang the blues
And every lost artist and past generation suffered to death
doesn't really want a better future for their children
or an artless world of dry contentment
They want you to suffer too and they hate what your weak ass calls romance

It is written forever that boys write poetry
and Men Die
girls sing the blues
and Women Bleed
"¡Muera la inteligencia!"
 

Everyone Has Their Own Image of Losing Altitude

Drinking a screwdriver from a mason jar

headphones sounding the currency of

dissolve dislove disown diversions

this is the real money that buys

"I don't give a fuck who knows"

or what words might be too harsh

we are coming home from the mystery

Sarah first

Travis next

& all of us

I can't help

but to think

each of us sitting in a quiet burn

each of us writing a truth of sorts

I close my eyes & know

we are not playing dumb here

we are talking at it

a caravan of poet family

or what I want to say is

we have a huge amount

of currency between us

we are $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

if that symbol was what made us

feel things beneath our clothes.

herstrionics

i'm tired of playing dumb to your face,
but the alternative is too embarrassing. 
i have a small currency
of social cues at my disposal. my beast arms
give HUGS did you know, i try to show you when you look
like you might want to be shown.
these levers i pull pump my butt-zone to the beat.
i am gaining experience to
metastasize stronger charms.

the roses are on time this year in lincoln, nebraska.
sometimes one smells the right way to mouth on
and retreat
sputtering inedible petals.  
murmur, "depression feels like you're
secretly evil, and you MUST hide it
from everyone."

on-time too is the restless diversion,
a repeated crest that comes crashing
down in fluttering shoreline ripples,
a thrumming djembe cadence of
go go go go go go go

so don't dislove me.
grant maybe a philanthropy of inquisitive
fingers on my fissures.
i'm just a glass girl in mirror land.

and look i can say the F word all night.
so you're going to have to be fucking patient.

CUTLASS II 2K13

1.sarah JUN 9
2.trav JUN 11
3.josh JUN 13
4.lisa JUN 15
5.alisa JUN 17
6.jessica JUN 19
7.justin JUN 21
8.cassie JUN 23
9.teal JUN 25
10.joel JUN 27
11.kelsey JUN 29
12.tom JUly 1
13.sperry JULY 3
14.mike JULY 5
15.jerod JULY 7
16.amanda JULY 9
17.molly JULY 11
18.becky JULY 13
19.rach JULY 15
20.jenny JULY 17
21.genevieve JULY 19
22.jeff JULY 21
23.paul JULY 23
24.drew JULY 25
25.jason JULY 27

Twang

My warm insides are so much

busy moving material

from one physicality to the next

& hustling $ $ $

little bits of money

to put in the gas tank

to make more debts

to j kick ass

to black out in sport

to black out in poem

Nebraska Summer is almost here

it's been raining

the world is blue-green

the end of the game is over

we outlasted winter

now waiting for herds of bees

heyallofyou

thisisanewpoem

thisisaburningpoem

all these serene days

smacking me like waves

makes me horny for something

bare chests

bare intentions

sunglasses

we only have this once

we could be very gone

before next cutlass

tonight the greens & blues getting dark

writing sloppy lines

letting them end wherever

eagerly awaiting

I don't care

it doesn't matter what I say

what I am trying to say is

the nuance of every small fraction

was made a long time ago

but it's summer now

we are whirring in delight

supplicate

be   a bee   a bee   a bee
sallow air wisp foxhole infiltrates
sting me in my warren
my den, my warm prairie wind
rustle awake stalks
all that remains, foxed bone
buzzing drone
aimed earthward, shape making
yesteryears crops into fallow
gingerbread men
eagerly awaiting
whistle stop signal the ready aim
flames lick wounds clean
thistle cleanse, sweep milo mounds
batten down my whispered thunder roar    a bee   a bee
a bee

THE END OF THE GAME???????

bea sport
mail me my witchery
to switch up she/victory
i left it all on the respected surface
it was a battle in my blood
fucks me up myself wit my foxy fuck wit
shes a man i mean
i invented the wheel
a spinney vom for my exhaustion
i spoke through the endless round
round
round etc. i mean infinity
is watching a bouncing moon baby
squealing in the muted cheese
the future is a sea
is deep to pummel your difficult mind
mirror sun to look a shining
ass of a guess where my heart is headed
to a hard hating
to rumble in lovey collision
rubbing slimy boulders over my crushed jaw
she belts me
hello smile in my rotting
a rainbow gushes from a fracture
it is disgustingly sweet
of you
to care how tall i can never be
giant in the self destruction air
gallops down the wood
sloppy spin as the rock you live on
hides away sunshine
what the fuck
am i going to do without you???????
singing mother--
mother save your knees for nobody
this is not a road
to call your past a waste
but a vast open prairie refilled
to bursting of the american bison
for you to shoot
froma train
while i clap from over here
whistling something sad
that hasn't happened yet

Imaginary Histories

Fox has mirror over the bed

so when he fucks he sees down: 

himself fucking seeing up 

himself fucking

Basketball was invented when a man

prepared the conditions to have

that what he threw away 

returned to him unchanged

Stopping to consider is a double dribble.

Ribs under the rubble of an parkinglot oracle 

play atonal pebble-notes on the xylophone

of a Delphic motorcade rumbla rambla.

Hard 
            to handle on the jukebox 

 
  Hard loving the intractable

  continuum of balls

  Let’s put a lid on the bottom of the nets
                        a second concentric hoop

  its over

  when it’s in

  Let’s put an fermata on this motherfucker

  I can’t help it when I don’t want it to be over

Put another quarter in

drink another drink

tip back fast the rim

frame you in a glass

originstories

That Nebraska is the smell of coffee in the Great Hall,

a brunch underway beneath it in Fellowship Hall,

the smell of stale helium from a history of basketballs

on the dusty wood echoes in the old gymnasiums

in the way basement by bell choir

where I lifted several heavy bass notes.

I can't really remember the cold war though

or Nostradamous but I moved on from my

first crush in the 90s, got over it with David Duchovny's

monotone eyes and the male middle part of every

darkhaired boy. My 96-97 diary was a fat slice, widening

out from its binding with all the pasting in and his faces

taped everywhere. I think probably his personae was my first exposure to

conspiracy. I wanted to be an FBI agent already after Jodie Foster,

I think if for the stories. It's impossible to know

when I first saw Silence of the lambs but I remember

my Dad vividly telling me the entirety

of Se7en later on in the night in 95 when they'd seen it in theaters.

If you investigate the species

and the histories, the bees still figure

in to our legend significantly,

as a sign of the end times

even. I suppose some people deal with always dying by sublimating

their own mortality awareness. Mortality conciousness?

Their being mortality-conscious. Some people opt to sublimate that,

project the anxiety of it, the fears

elsewhere passionately—ends are terrifying.

In and of themselves. True.

And shit could certainly get like that out there.

I'm Actually Kind of Serious About Sleeping with The Missiles

I will not apologize for my origins.
I am not society's stereotype of a Scary Black Mountain Dew Goat
The best pizza joint North Platte ever had
was run out of business by a rumor that the owner was gay and bleeding AIDS on his pizza
During this same time the local news reported the mere presence of graffiti
as proof of a previously impossible gang presence in town with perfect creditude
Like Serious Doughboy Baker types had invaded the country outposts
and in the 90s they were already saying that Lexington was being swarmed with illegal immigrants
In those days you see the Cold War was still what people had been raised to become
You were a good person only inasmuch the bastards were out to get you

It was a big deal
the killer bees that mad scientists had let go from Brazil
so they could go be languid and bisexual
The bees too were swimming up from Mexico now
By Y2k they would control the Maine woods
In the meantime they would make a welting nightmare of the newly domesticated desert south
Attacking old women with good American names
while they cried in remembrance
Even on Nat Geo
or other such staid pro-nature shit

 That's how bees got to be central to the overriding alien apocalypse arc on "X-Files"
 Killer bees on apocalypse swarm was a real fucking thing
 that proper and serious people knew to be happening in front of our eyes.
 And however strong the consensus that X-Files was "Great" may be
 I like to believe that only I understand
 How fucking perfect it trapped the ghost of 94 in a bottle
 better than any show ever displayed its time before or since
 and how X Files has a perfect case for "GOAT" because of that.

I got my mom into the reruns for awhile
Until she cracked her fucking head and now she can't stand it again.
My family comes to me with the big ideas they have because Josh is smart
Sometimes Dad will rage about the black oil antidote that would have wiped Valdez prestine
only the tree-huggars kept it secret because they're out to destroy good businessmen
My sister reads what this guy said about what this guy said about the prophesies of Nostradamous
How it's all coming true now and we better look out for the world ending soon.
I sit her down and say 'Wendy
The world is going to end when you kill yourself like all of us have always known you would'.


 

WHEN THE WORLD ENDS

DAVE MATTHEWS FAMOUSLY SAID THAT
“WHEN THE WORLDS END
WE’LL ALL BE DANCING.”

I DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO TAKE SUCH A STATEMENT
AS THE WORLD AFFIRMING THERE END
OR THE END BEING A DIRECT RESULT OF THE WORLD’S DANCING.

HISTORIANS DISAGREE ON THE CORRECT INTERPRETATION
BUT ALL ARE ALL WILLING TO ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY OF A
‘DOUBLING MEANING’

I DON’T KNOW HOW THE WORLD WILL END.
I DON’T EVEN THINK DAVE MATTHEWS KNOWS
HOW THE WORLD WILL END.


I’M BEING STUPID TO HIDE THE EDIT.
MY THOUGHTS
NOT YET MY THOUGHTS.
EVERY EDIT IS A LIE
THEY SAY.
BUT WHAT EDIT IS MORE A LINE?

A MAYAN STOMACH ON A BONEFIRE
A COFFEE’S FUTILE ATTEMPT TO SAVE THE WORLD
A GOD’S PUPILS BURSTING WITH SNOW?
I DON’T KNOW IF I READ THAT QUESTION RIGHT.

VOICE DRAWN INTO THE WASTE’S MIRAGE
DON’T THINK OF IT AS LUCK
THINK OF IT

AS HARBORING THE MIRROR’
STRETCH ACROSS
THE EASTERN PLAINS OF NEBRASKA
ONE NIGHT WHEN YOU WERE TOO
HIGH TO PULL YOUR FEVERISH HANDS
BACK FROM THE BEE STINGER.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED WITH THAT?
WHAT EVER HAPPENED WITH COUNTLESS THINGS
ON EARTH
THAT ARE DEAD?
TIME WAS, WE MURDER BECAUSE
THE ACT FELT COMFORTABLE.

NOW
THOSE IN POWER WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE
THE DEATH OF ALL BEES WOULD SIGNIFY
THE CONQUERING OF THE FINAL OBSTACLE
BETWEEN THE  ASSURED CONTINUANCE OF MANKIND
AND AN UNAVOIDABLE CAREENING INTO OBLIVION.

THEY WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE
THE IDEA OF RUINING A MOTHER FUCKER
JUST BECAUSE HE OR SHE DIDN’T T HAVE
THE GUMPTION TO RUN AWAY
FEELS MILDLY OUT OF VOGUE.

THERE IS PLAN.
IT IS A SECRET PLAN
TO CORNER THE MARKET
OF BEES .
THEN LIMIT THE SUPPLY
OF BEES.
THUS CREATING AN ILLOGICAL DEMAND
FOR BEES.

THE GOAL BEING
OF COURSE
TO MAKE EVERYONE CARE ABOUT BEES.

YOU WILL BUY ONE FOR A $1000
YOU WILL KEEP IT IN A CAGE
AND WHEN IT DIES
A SMALL PART OF YOU
WILL DIE ALSO.
AND YOU WILL BUY ANOTHER BEE
FOR $1000.
AND A BEE’S COST VALUE
WILL BE SOMETHING LIKE
A SEED BAG OF PERENNIALS.
AND IT’S SALE PRICE WILL BE
$1000.
THIS IS HOW THE BEE EXCHANGE
WILL WORK IN THE FUTURE.

AT PRESENT
THE BEE MARKET IS STILL
 A BUYERS MARKET.
EVEN THE “KILLER BEE’S”
 WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY EVER DO?

THEY WORSHIPED A MAN
SO UNCOMFORTED BY INFLUENCE
HE CALLED HIMSELF AN ‘OLD DIRTY BASTARD’
AND SMOKED CRACK TO DEATH.
WHAT A FUCKING FATIGUING THOUGHT.

SO WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT BEES?
WHO GIVES A FUCK
ABOUT A KILO OF BEES?

WELL MY SISTER FOR ONE.
BUT NOT IN ANY SORT OF
FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE WAY.

SHE ONLY KNOWS THAT THERE ARE BEES
AND THEY COULD MURDER HER
IF SHE FANCIED A JAUNT INTO NATURE
WITHOUT HER EPIPEN.

I IMAGINE FOR EXAMPLE
SHE WOULD FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE
DRINKING A GLASS OF WINE
ON A PICNIC DATE
WITH THAT GUY SHE REALLY LIKES
IF THERE WERE KILLER BEES AROUND.

I IMAGINE
 TO PUT HER ‘HONEY ‘AT EASE
SHE WOULD SAY “NO GREG,
THIS FACE OF CONSUMING REGRET
IS NOT BECAUSE I WENT ON THIS PICNIC
DATE WITH YOU. IT IS BECAUSE I FORGOT
 MY EPIPEN.
AND WITHOUT MY EPIPEN
I COULD STEP ON A DEAD BEE
OR BE ASSAULTED BY A LIVING BEE
AND THEN I WOULD MOST LIKELY DIE
HAVING NEVER FULFILLED MY GREATEST DESIRE
TO HAVE TWO POLITE CHILDREN WITH YOU.

I ALSO THINK
I JUST DRANK A BEE
THAT CRAWLED INTO MY WINEGLASS

BUT NEVER MIND.
WHAT KIND OF GEMSTONES
WILL YOU ENCRUST INTO THE SIDES
OF THE TABLE
YOU BUILD FOR YOUR MOTHER
FOR MOTHER’S DAY?”


I BELIEVE THE DEPLOYMENT
OF POETRY—
I CALL IT “THE BREATH OF THE WORLD”—
—OTHERS CALL IT “GATHERED LIGHT”—
—LIKE THAT MAKES ANY SENSE—
WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE INDEFINITELY
UNTIL OUR ATOMS ARE PROCESSED 
INTO A FOSSIL JUICE
USED TO LUBRICATE THE GEARS
OF THE BIOMECHANICAL  TRAVBOOK 2K10
ON ITS CAMPAIGN TO
SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROY
EVERY CONSTANT
LEFT IN THE WORLD.

IT’S NOT THAT EVERYTHING
SHUFFLED INTO THIS PHANTASMAL
WOUND ON PURPOSE.
MORE –LIKE ME—EVERYTHING
MISTOOK GOD’S LAST ATTEMPT
TO PRESERVE MANKIND
AS A HARMLESS INCIDENT
THAT COST ME $1200.

IN THE FUTURE:
THE RESISTANCE OF MANKIND
WILL UNITE AS A VOICE
STRIPPED DOWN TO RADIO WAVES
THAT LIMP ACROSS THE RAGGED SKY
PRAYING TO GRAVITY:

BRINGS DOWN A CHUNK OF DEAD PLANET.
BRING DOWN A CHUNK OF DEAD PLANET
LARGE ENOUGH TO RETURN US TO THE SUN.

(BY MIKE KNOTT)

VICTORY FOR BEES

* for all the embedded links, click to open and return to reading 

(click)

no more alchohol

says the bee mom

no more buzzing and 

poisoning and 

we have only one life

only one only 

one annoying body prop

but it doesn't have to be

i am stung

with a tiny globe of bone

vibrating my insides

straight from mars

shitting my altruism 

listening to alien cow music

with emo men, damn

we are all stoners

i am still waiting for you

to talk to me about 

your personal take on

ecology and capitalism

and the plight of bees

we are all drawing this map

with pollution bells ringing

weeee-oooooowwwwwwww

and the car alarm bird shining

and at least neonicatinoid 

pesticide use banning is happening

in europe

for two years

at least 

(put that on the map)

(put it in poured concrete

in the shape of a turtle

like turtle earth, like that)

(ok)

i can't howl because i am smoking

i can't moon with my sisters

because i am creating a facsimile

of my face out of internet, not

a beehive made of skin

i am letting the rum soak my table

drawing goofy breasts on a cactus

with my homies 

we are from earth

i asked google

what's the earth's area code?

883 google said

and what is the population of humans?

it fluctuates, says google

it fluctuates

but it is around seven billion

one hundred and eighteen million

four hundred and fifteen thousand

three hundred and thirty

(now) i am a planet

hurrying along in the interstellar

atmosphere and i try to comprehend

a hawk? or a mouth? i remember

the moon from the universe

or, i remember everything that is 

contained within me

the way that you remember

your village

in nebraska

with a population of one

              you

when people send you letters...

what am i saying

no-one sends you letters

they send them to me,

and i read them to you,

and here's one now