Finish Me

For reasons that may or may not become clear all the participants in this poem have been named Bill. This, like all things, both clarifies and conceals. After wasting enough time on language one begins to grow hungry, as if giving birth to a train on an unhappy occasion. First get yourself some fireworks and a bonfire-- something approaching a calamity, but without all the trappings of emotion-- and make sure it is big enough to reach all the places you have concealed...

The Saint

(This was forwarded to me, writer unknown)






President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the
Episcopal Church outside Washington as part of his
campaign to restore his pathetic poll standings.
His image handler made a visit to the Bishop and said, 'We've been getting a lot of bad publicity
because of the president's position on stem cell
research, the Iraq war, hurricane Katrina, and the
Veterans Administration. We'll make a $100,000
contribution to your church if during your sermon
you will say that the President is a saint.'


The Bishop thought it over for a few moments and
finally said, 'The Church is desperate for funding -
I'll do it.'


Bush showed up for the sermon, and the Bishop
began: 'I'd like to speak to you all this morning about
our President who is a liar, a cheat, and a
low-intelligence numb -nuts who can't put a compound
sentence together. He bugged out of combat service during the Vietnam
war and went AWOL to avoid a drug test, then had all
reports on the sordid event destroyed. He is the spawn of a Nazi loving great grandfather
who smuggled anti-Americans into this country on
his shipping line. He took the tragedy of September 11 and used it to
frighten and manipulate the American people.
He lied about weapons of mass destruction and
invaded Iraq for oil and money,causing the deaths of
tens of thousands and making the United States the
most hated country on earth. It is a three-trillion
dollar folly. He appointed fund-raiser cronies to positions of
power and influence, leading to widespread death
and destruction due to government paralysis after
Hurricane Katrina. He awarded no-bid cost-plus contracts and tax cuts
to his rich friends so that we now have more
poverty in this country and a greater gap between rich
and poor than we've had since the Depression.
He has headed the most corrupt, bribe-inducing
political party since Teapot Dome. The national surplus has turned into a staggering
national debt of 7.6 trillion Dollars.
Oil rose from $18 to over a hundred per barrel,
leading to transportation costs which the people
of America cannot afford, with low minimum wages,
part time jobs, no health insurance, and outsourcing.
Vital research into global warming and stem cells
is stifled because he's afraid to lose votes from
religious kooks. He is the worst example of a true Christian I've
ever known, but compared to Dick Cheney...
George W. Bush is a saint.

How to Write a Novel

Hide the title. Give them a reason
To find it.

2 Haikus

English Major Haiku
Albetross fell from
the sky In mariner’s poem
Bad shit happened

Reality Haiku
Albetross flies into
wifi tower In starbucks
You tube happens.

Evolution

Great parody of life, I am here to honor you
throw me a bone you fool,
don’t insult the baboon by calling me one:
he climbs magnificent trees.
I watch CNN.

Saturn Returns

Saturn returns with some rings to hand out
this color that color
the blood will wash out: ignore all screams
and wails.
It’s just a song someone chose for a ring tone.

Burning

She returned from Burning Man with news:
“on the first day the dust overwhelms you. On the second day you become one with the dust. On the third day you are the dust. On the fourth day you look for people to cover.”
She went on like this, including: “I lost my fear like I lost my virginity. It will never come back.”
I said: “Get thee to a nunnery.”
She said, “Yeah, whatever…you look kind of whacked, or are you just stoned?”
I was chopping an onion and was at that point where the spirit of the onion was driving a wet cloud of needles into my eyes. But I didn’t care, I loved it, I loved the needles.
“Clean my eyes with pain!” I screamed, and this got her attention, and she looked over and saw what I was doing.
“Oh. It’s the onion.” Then, “you know if you only breath through your nose and don’t open your mouth while you’re cutting it, you’ll be okay.” She got really close to me, latching her eyes to mine, then winked. “That’s the lesson of the onion.”

Promotion

Promotion


1.

Later that night he licks the sarcasm from the rim of the toilet. He brushes his teeth with gasoline. He lights his breath on fire, burning down the house, where his wife and children sleep. Throwing a blanket over his shoulders like a cape, he dives through the window.


2.

Because he followed the directions by the letter, he is more than disappointed that he didn’t fly. His cell phone, he left inside the burning house; he cannot call the company to issue his complaint. His wife is trapped and screaming, so she can’t help, and anyway she never believed in his dreams. His kids are burnt to crisps by now, and he is ambling around the side lawn, his lips burned form his mouth, shards of glass stuck into his shoulders and neck, earthbound and naked, the towel around his ankles collecting blood.


3.

For killing his family and destroying all his possessions, he gets a raise, the boss honors him with a speech to the company about faith and sacrifice. “I’m sorry the flying thing didn’t work out,” the boss says to him later over by the water cooler, which is empty of water but filled with spider webs and the wrapped up bodies of moths. He doesn’t respond, just looks up, licks his teeth where his upper lip used to be and sighs. His boss unzips his pants and inserts his erect penis in the water cooler spout. The boss wraps his arms around the water cooler and mutters the latin alphabet as he thrusts in and out of the spout at an ever increasing rate. When he comes, sunflower seeds shoot from the head of his penis in slow motion and as they shoot up the seeds metamorphose into the nine planets of our solar system.


4.

The planets are immediately caught in the spider webs and the boss turns to our hero and says, nearly out of breath, “Okay, now, it’s up to you to deliver the sun. Don’t let me down. Without a sun we don’t have an orbit, without an orbit, those fucking spiders will suck everything dry.” The boss, exits the spout, zips up his slacks, puts a meaty paw on our heroes shoulder, bringing him nose to nose with the breath of coffee and time steaming like a volcanic fissure from every pore. “Tell me Johnson, do you have the balls to make a sun?”