Free Lance

I bought mushrooms from a man named Elaine.
They were oysters - now what the fuck do I do with those?
I only eat fungus if I'm sure it's going to send me on
an emotional rollercoaster, 4 to 8 hours long

I bought nutmeg from a guy named Meg.
I cooked it, made whatever you make with nutmeg.
Oatmeal? Cinnamon rolls?
I honestly have no idea.

I bought my car from this dude, Carla.
Where do I meet these androgynous fucks?
At a bar called The Vortex, great tater tots
but it's really dark inside.

I spent the summer on the Jersey Shore
Never again
got punched in the face
by a girl named Bo

My uncle's name is Celery
bet he got a lot of shit for that

I'm not high

We'll see how this goes.

Nice to be able to write recreationally

Finally examining my final exams

Double the papers, double the space

(I use parentheses too much) -

hyphens too, for that matter.

Punctuating at the right time

I am the punctilio of punctuality

(should there have been a comma there?)

Don't say there

Jesus, maybe I am high

this is turning out weird

Don't judge me

I have the right to a jury.

amegachurch

Suddenly America
isn't America
anymore. Suddenly
America is
what we
want it
to be:
a megachurch.

--Gabriel Horsen,
devout Mormon
(devoted douchebag)

Getting Weirder Every Year

I was waiting outside The Lemont waiting for Elaine to sell me some mushrooms, when a sparrow-like mother of (probably) 40 strode right up and occupied the phone booth right next to the place I was standing.

Looked at another way, I stood next to the telephone booth. I was thinking, "Man, I can't wait to get me some mushrooms from Elaine." Then this woman walked over. In any case, she began to talk.

"Yessir, getting weirder every year now. Last year it was all the crabs and moonshine parties out on the harbor with the porpoises and the drugs. I remember yesterday, just the day before this one, when we didn't let our little swimmers out into the moonshine until they got their paws wet for once! Know what I mean? ..."

It was probably the worst conversation I had ever heard. Later than day, I successfully robbed a bank and died from a cocaine overdose while celebrating afterward.

& Snow Globe: Paramour

the absurd wet calipers of the word
embryo
the spiders loom large
eggs of pillowy etchy gladstone mystery
a bag full of minnows
crabs & sparrows
Curel (implicated in Cruel & Unusual punishment
... ahem; )
blow globs backward
toward whom refrain
& snow globe:
Grover Cleveland.

Obvious Sun Tan / Obscure Pale / Sex Trees

stripped down past the bark,
our parents trees said to one another:

"do you want to have children with me?"

or maybe now they just think they did.
because us saplings are more likely to
leak sap like asking: here? now? us?

fine sculpted little sex addicts.
our true colors as green as
our dreams: sex? in your condo? apartment.
lip gloss. winter's orgasm.
Ashley's expression at sundown.
Heather's whipple bod.
Everything (sometimes) turns
like the autumn
(us inside out).

It's all to obvious to be interesting.

A conversation that will never happen

"Let's have children

with each other,"

I said. She was illuminated on literature.

"You didn't need the second stanza,"
she replied.

"It wasn't a stanza."

"This poem ain't a conversation?" (Her: coy smile)

(Him: touchdown smile) "Gimme some sugar mommy."

"Not tonight, darling." (A lie)

Next time (secret memo)

Dad city. Over here.
Less than five people
were involved. Pentagonal
cribs insured. Everybody
clearly insane, thanks! & a
mustard on your courtisan, like everybody's court,
everybody's coma, look like looking glass ass,
that's some good shit, tell Drake.

Green Dads

Green-blue flashes
from the deep
lechery of becoming up-
turned. An upward seahorse
immobile, because--let's face it--we
are all seahouses, our horses before us
villas stretching to the horizon
eyes wide / lashed / open

to the mantlepiece candelabra flash
expense traded to the flintdash
camera trained on me becoming me;
my life began before the internet
and it will end after it all
falls down / frame dope fish
open hope dish.

Promiscuous Hangers

on, such easy hangmen. A human is like a hen
trying to lay one true egg.

Posted like a blunt on the moon. What I do
well, it's pretty dangerous, think rare
Asiatic crustacean, pink shell poised & moist

for the kill. Secrets rest under heavy heads.
She's at the bar, call her Rosalita, the pink

lipstick's a dead giveaway. Peacock
is so in these days, so think that too, flash greenblue,
etc. Your life will end on camera.

Fishermen We Haven't Met Yet

I have a whale of a tale of you,
involving dinosaurs perhaps, let's just
say erotic luminescent underbelly fish,
electric nite-nodes flashing spastic
technology blasts in the ocean dark.
Grapefruit pink jellyfish play FIFA.

Salamander Leash

Orgasms in a stadium. Ogreisms diagnosis.
Let's air it out. If you could envision a war
over art. Everyone is native, so cheers

to our intertwined bloodlines, the crust
lines the pan like school girls line
the yard, browning. Yeah, brownies.

Mouth of the Bull

Arrives on the scene, nervous as a buffalo.
He sheds a wintry layer off his knotty strands
in the dank ass jungle of costa rica but not

really, it's in panama. Es la pata del diablo.
You can't kill a single living thing there.

Lonely little love dogs, bocas del toro. Archipelago
is pretty reckless of Ovechkin, at the same
time, I have a fireplace, I'm not afraid to use it, etc.

Yacht Rock

Come next Saturday to the Yacht Rock Party.
The strong lock, art motif. Your daddy did
dusty springfield under milk wood. Would

you rather? I'd gather rocks like an heiress,
a planet named Paris. I like my countries
neopolitan, I like turtle-green countrysides

in the fawn eyes of December. It was blue
lace on a black vase, I'm giving you winter,
mom. Next Saturday I'm going to Yacht Rock.

Stephen's Certain Speedboat

Nothing is brave. I'm so friggin' sick of all these goddam mutes
coming in here like it's a minotaur party. Hey! We aren't here!
More nuggets; more threads of flea bait. I simply do not want
to write about myself. Can you ask anything else? Why do I
like journalism? Tell us about yourself. Nothing sexual, or too
personal, or off-topic. Your favorite color probably doesn't matter.
Of course you have to play this game. Everybody does.
And everybody is full of it. Absolutely full of it. What can I tell you
in 750 goddam words that you couldn't make up?

"Born in Rotterdam, head full of drugs. Love cooking.
Never spent more than $3 on headache medicine.
Fell in love once--ended in murder. Decided on a
career in vaccine studies. Didn't get too far--disease
and mercury poisoining. Really tragic.

Anyway, I have three penises. Totally sexual deviant.
Likes: all kinds of chocolate, especially white.
Dislikes: counting things, and clocks.

First word: Trans-fat. I'm deeply concerned about my diet
and diabetics everywhere. If you have a heart,
free me from this prison, or I will firebomb
every Kinko's in America.

Please consider my application... I'll kiss your ass
all sort of ways if that's what it takes. But don't make
me write one more word of this shit. Please." 

Infomercial X

Eurasia
is where cats live.

Blastocythe
is not a word.

Combed-over
Were-the-hedge-rows
In-front-of-my-castle.

And there she goes.
A cat grooming is
a cat cleaned.

Lechery is spreading;
Catch the disease.

I am alliterate

I can't read or write
without poetic devices
luckily, limerick is a catch-all

A cow's currency
is cud. Chewy Chips Ahoy.
Get off of me, cow.

Hi, Ku, whats your last name?
And don't say Blaikhan.
Just tell the truth

Its easier to be modestly honest
than honestly modest. For instance,
"My wife is a model."

While true, it's not the whole story,
nor is it particularly modest.
Nor honest. She's actually a stripper.

But we can't all lead modest lives
with models for wives.
I strive for modesty.

I yearn for it - I would kill for it
I would do great and terrible things,
and only talk about the terrible ones.

Cold Ground

Cold ground.
Unmoving;
impossible.

Curving up into the
(but never quite reaching)
middle.

Squat asparagus sprout
of seed emerging;

the sun rides up the middle
like a little legged scorpion

everybody’s fingers a-waggling
saying “I’m not a teacher,
I’m a winner!”

schoolyard thirsts
portrayed by violent hand gestures
and boys running about rudely
through the bilge and gloom
that made up much of their daily lives.

Violets sprouting in every manner
of feeling; of tenderness;

frozen stream upends it all
coy camouflage of the bitter cold
heart (within you)

a stream of bumpers and chewed up papers looks like
Scattegories done at midnight by idiots or
rambling about ideas you wanted to remember
or the health care crisis or
the account billable digits…

no fear.
only internal
failure or a release valve
or something akin to a nightmare.

I like this place. the leaves smell
like pirates blessing their swords.

the knaves seem like
pointless people; they don’t
aim at anything but merely
points their guns.

here, there.
there, here.
& so on.

Psychic Cattle

Psychic hobknob or
weirdo crypt / door
cattle know the future
& tend to the poor.

Written by a gay entomologist

Girls at the bar tonight
each one like a little woman
mmm, a little hummin
sick lil bod there, [digits please
command sent tiger where did
everybody go? slow sense of not
imbibing listen to the sound of
grow up or somebody'll kill ya probly
the gangsta tech talk and all that
stuff.]

Each a-hummin'
like oooh that's right Hymenoptera
skin-wing family of the ants
and bees & wasps

I'm so into
ento-
mology.

Little Johnny

Join my cause
said the Panda
locked in a trumpet box
little Johnny stole from
the pet store.

Later the vanilla
spilled all over the car. It was
hard to clean. Momma had a fit.

Goddam nilla
gettin all over da place
she said, sweating like a
Lycra-covered tiger
in an oven
pulled over coals
on a firey rickshaw.

Oh yeah, Firey Rickshaw,
said the man,
That's my name,
and I'll have a Budweiser.

The Mercer Kingpin

Dave “Mercy” Elliot: A real kingpin in the healthcare game, hailing from Mercer, Ind. ("God's home").

Fittingly Dave had no mercy for anybody except himself and knew next to nothing about health care. However since he was “next to” nothing, and not occupying the same space as nothing, he determined (“somewhat logically”) that he didn’t know “nothing,” and therefore might as well know everything.

“Way I look at it is, hell, John,” he said, gesticulating toward the congressmen, “I been around, seen a lot of people in this here country, and I know a thing or two about brass tax. (Roars of laughter from the Brass Conglomerate crowd)

"Point is, we need everybody on the same page, everybody to pull together. Let's fuck up this bill! Down with universal health care!"

All the scarecrows cheered and Republican whip John D. Sternum stood and clapped and even cried a single tear.

The Fish We Never Met

The point is boogaloo
the electric night fish
donning his nightvision googles
(sponsored by NyQuil)
sees the robots in the forest
approaching, thus evading
contact.

Assured, it's Incorporeal

I ate a turnip in Europe
and I turned up in Asia
your Asia is my Europe
Eurasia is both.

Words, playing
with cord, or quarters
lonely corridors, books
bound by Borders

Hoarders, collectors,
swords of spectres,
bored inspectors
reading dirty looks

In a library I sip coffee
its against the rules.
When did it become noble
to drink in barns?

When did I become hopeful
I could spin yarns?
I'm not weathered, or grisled.
I can't knit or sew

So what's the point?

Alpha Kats

That evening we were a wolfpack,
unmistakably. There was a time when ladies went
gaga in the rubbed-his-shaft-at-the-bar-over his-levi's
way, that tickle-me-elmo perpetuity.

We had made a color spectrum (whatever was left
of 'em) or had spectrovision; let's just say the light
sprinkled our faces like cloud glaze, in a wow way,
yes we were irrigated like hydroponics. Crankshaft...

Hookd on kronic werks fer me. So we're in this scene
together: the bar and just hours to go. Someone beautiful
is calling baby. Impossible germany, eventually geometry
is a turnip call to the still bulbs, turn up, turn up, you're up.

Orange you glad I didn't say Boogaloo?

Its a nightmare don't fight it
MLK had a dream, so can you
mind your wandering through
the house, there's stairs.

Falling like Phoenix
dreaming is believing
seeing is relieving
it means you aren't blind

But does not preclude you
from still being asleep.
God, what a nightmare.
Could this get any worse?

Hint: never ask that.
"At least I'm not naked in class-
Oh wait, yes I am. Fuck"
Brain: this is not believable enough

Switch to a daily social interaction
much like the one you had today
with the nice girl you knew in high school,
though you haven't seen her since.

So how's she doing? Well, but not as well
as the guy standing next to her
He's wearing a cape.
You start to get scared.

Time To Show Up

We're going down in her grandma's black
cadillac, everytime we become branches.
We are becoming dangerous already

like a rhino, not easily offended.
We were the lost crayfish, the fruit
of dark magic earth in our gills.

The youth on drugs. Deeper and deeper
partners, it smells like opportunity, in the pelican,
pale stork of the moment. Our only major fail

that trip was when we went to the pharmacy.
She answered someone's personal ad with gepetto's
oath: wood is bondz. Tasty smoketreats, delicious anniversaries.

Band Names Part 37

Black Flak and the Nightmare Fighters
The Yeah Rights
Orange Boogaloo
Electric Liquorfish
Falconboy Ponderous
Ships Made For Sails
Born to Hike
The Oh Yeah Tights
Daddy Shortcakes
Los Monos
The Great Threats
The Baskets
The Stormy Knights

Vessel

I let the cord out on my boat too far.
Dragonflies were live; this was once a planet
in the making. We grew up really fucking

fast. Pretty girls look back, wear their hand
on their head, this is now. Distance is always
something you can see. I wish this was graphite.

Bad Ciphers

I wore chocolate slippers to the dinner party. Everyone kept trying to eat my clothes!

Choco-dipper
calico cats = girls
boys r supah
Erasmus

Paying For Attention (Pt 1)

That amphetamine scourge
of my first job – Adderall
(spelled “A-D-D – Er, All…”)
returned last week
in the form of five
20-milligram pills, and only one-half
tablet is left;

I took the rest.
& I may now finish the task.

Well, what do you have to say for yourself?
Nothing.

That empty, astonished, brilliant
comb of the old years – instant brain prep;
irradiant mental focus – has been exposed
for what it was: a distraction

robbing the mind of some fuel
to go on.

(Isn’t it a joy,
a tilting, lilting, scarified horror
to know that I don’t need this stuff?
Yes.)

Brain pumped in so many directions
by innumerable medicines
of infant craze.

(And my father's animus says:
Study the books you care to. Study the people
you barely know & surely grow
into what you’ve become
never knowing
you got there on your own. You made this bed
and the other things just got in the way. You
consulted the mess instead of the messiness;
consulted the cabinet instead of the shoe closet
wherein you’ll find some soles to strap on
to be out & about, where you belong.)

Toffee vs. Taffy

strippers can be rappers
snickers candy wrappers
yeah it happens, who are you
anyway, Captain Caramel?

Charmed, I'm sure.
Are you? Cause you don't seem sure.
You're sure you're charmed?
Yes, I'm sure.

Then, Esquire, we are ready to do battle.

Capt. Caramel:
I don't need rap and I don't need you
I hate third grade and I hate all of you
my rhymes are fantastic too
as is my motherfucking flow dawg
my flow dawg

I am so hot,
I'm like the planet Sun
Barely break a sweat
before I bust another one

Esquire (interjects, microphone in hand):
Well I loved third grade and I love all of you
I loved it so much I took it times two
eating on tables, multiplication on the side
catch my drift bitch this is how I ride

1 times 1 times 1 is 1 boo
bitch fuck the sun - too hot
to plan it, I'm orbiting the Earth
with a bitch named Janet

Capt. Caramel:
Yo, yo yo yo
She drops it like it's hotter
than a polaroid picture
hotter than a bagel, cousin
straight out the toaster oven

I seriously struggle sometimes
in front of crowds
the audience is loud.
and I lose my flow, dawg
my fucking flow dawg.

Esquire:
That shit was wack
everybody knows it
Call me devil's advocate
cause I oppose it

I'm the judge, you're the jury
the Shake and the Mcflurry
everybody hurry - I bring them to the yard
and then I drink your milkshake
I drink it up

I think this up
I flow like a fountain
like an avalanche,
my mountain is steep
I stopped countin sheep
when I was five - now I just sleep

At This Hour

The last hornet nest on the moon
was very quiet, all considered. Usually
the hive was a-bustle at this hour. 

Etymology: Air Guitar

Here's your etymology lesson for the day: air guitar.

(A Verb)

1. intr. To mime the action of playing a guitar, esp. to a recording or performance of rock music.

This now epic verb was first coined in the now infamous 1983 tome "Complete Air Guitar Handbook," by the trusty J. MCKENNA & M. MOFFITT. You might be surprised to learn that Neil Young, of all people, is the first human being to have been recorded air-riffing (at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary).

2. trans. To mime the action of playing (music) on a guitar.

The OED actually cites an episode of Sopranos: 1999 J. CAHILL Guy walks into Psychiatrist's Office in Sopranos (television shooting script). "He drums the wheel, air-guitars the heavy riffs"

DERIVATIVES
As McKenna and Moffit wrote in 1983, "We feel the only pants to wear for heavy-duty air guitaring are jeans." No doubt. 

AQUA-CAT

Call it "Aqua-Cat"; you -- meaning, I -- hope it will make 'em laugh.
"Aqua-Cat and the trash bandits erect revolutionary 'green' recycling center,"
will say the fake headlines. The New Pornographers,
zheez-new-conformistssss, Batdorft would hiss,
all this new fiction appearing like a stark
usher appearing and saying
"I am Doug Main's favorite
death metaphor," the stark usher, a park plusher
than your quarters, containing row after row of
well? --pointless wordplay, (not you, Tal, an impersonal
fiction) for these men and their new cigarettes.

That's right! I contain multitudes, would say Norman
Mailer, that Brooklyn-Jew-Harvard-Army kid who
not enough people read, what a piece of work, just like
me? right, just like me, just like you.

Which comes to the harder part -- the brick-laying,
the deeper art, the Aqua-Cat we can't get rid of.

The whole Point here being that I saw a promising
young co-ed, whose sweatshirt said something like
"Aqua-Cat," but it wasn't quite that -- it even more
obscure, but not as absurd -- the absurd being the
bend in the rake that makes it useful for something.
Not Nihilism or waste: The appreciation, the appreciation
of shoals and heart and dynamite and the written word
and everything that involves herbal medicine and spacecraft.

Absurd: absurdist. Learn to live with it
or die without
loving
it.

Stanzas are
for a reason.

So am I: Soma, body, blind luncheons.
Is the food better? I don't know. Ask the
sightless. I'd be interested. Probably the taste would
(lacking sight -- that 20th century sense)
prove more intense. Like sex w/ studded or ultra-sweet
condoms designed for all sorts of enhanced
pleasure. You know this new technology, right?
I can't keep my eyes off it.

How bout some Splenda?

Batdorf asked. It was his chance to confuse lil Ginny.
"No thanks, dove," she answered, and promptly
punched him in the stomach, and batted the gun out
of his hand. It landed in a (heretofore unknown)

cat's milk bowl. "Ahhhhhhh...." Said Batdorf.
He crumpled to the floor and reached for the gun.
But Ginny was too fast. She stepped on his canard-
like hand, a real gander of a fishy, mallard thing,
his hand being like a goose's neck and twice as
strong.

"Gotcha," said Ginny. "No use crying over spilt milk."

Would you like some milk?

"No thanks, sugar. I don't drink milk
in my tea, I'm not a child."
"Take it easy" replied Kroger, "or I'll
beat the shit out of you like the last time."

Batdorf had had enough.
"That was the last time, Kroger"
He pulled out his pistol, brandishing it
unnecessarily, somewhat carelessly.

"Please, don't shoot! I love him!"
cried whatever-her-name-is.
"Yeah right," replied Batdorf.
He coolly shot Kroger between the eyes
once, then again.

Batdorf: "I'll take the teapot, You grab the milk."
"One step ahead of you," she replied, reaching
into the fridge. "That was a short party.
Shall we take it back to my place?"

Batdorf saw through this ruse. She
clearly wanted the tea for herself, probably
the milk too, no matter what she said.
"I'd better kill her while I have the chance."

Would the tea even be hot by the time
they got to her place? He doubted it.
That meant that she planned to kill him right there,
right now. Somebody had to make the first move.
Pot, meet kettle. He swung for the fences.

It's a Luncheon, Part 3

It's a three-part tea party
thrice the crumpets, thrice the fun
An isolated case of closure
the crime was already solved

With intensive care to his
badly injured left knee,
Batdorf made his way through
the alley, to the tea party

Drunk on a whim
from some gin,
Ginny stopped, puked,
then walked upstairs

Apartment 11.
She knocked.
Batdorf limped up the stairs.
Kroger answered the door

To be continued...

Band Names pt Three(ve)

Ira's Luncheon
Snow & Glass
The Wine Boy's Malaise
Bald Osprey (actually that's just a bird species)
The Night of the Frail Hero
The Big Pun
The Big Purse From Daddyo's
Natalie's Celestial Crown
Troy's Decadence
Nobody Owns Us
Frigid Hogs Skate Upon The Tiny Ice Pond
HOWARD
Drake's Ledger
The Eager Egrets (another type of bird)
PANDA
Nobody Came
The Nobodys (actually a decent name)
The Broadsleeve Crooks
Club Bakesale
Iron Pony Brigade
Mike's AV Hoes
Horace and the Thirsty Wenches
Trebled Bass
Troubled Basset Hounds
The GLARE District
37 Nugs
Tha Glo-Boyz
The Longball Gentlemen (actually a perfect name for an IM softball team)

Band Names pt II

Quasi-Killers
Triplefuck
The Comatose Whores
Your dad is a munson
The Chocolate
Duncan 127
The Balding Wizards
Mike's band
Ponies in the Sky
The Broadleaf Convention
Minivan Morrison
Boners, Hugs and Harmony
Two Sweaty Joggers
Travon and the Bigdick Five
Gray Carpet