I, Fitzmenippean

Prologue

I’ll tell you all about
The end of the world
About God and all about Peace
And one hundred other things
You’re not likely to ever see
Without a skewed sense of reality –
With squinted eyes
A head and neck
Become a full grown tree
Against a swirl of glow and orange sky
That’s distanced, fictitious, make-believe –
The cosmos bamboozles
So I bamboozle
And let the atmosphere crack open wide
For all to see
Let them feel the explosions
Underneath their feet
Breathe new life into your memory
I’ll humbug and blanket your universe
Totally
All-around
All-inclusive
Comprehensively

When it’s over I’ll slide across the great marble floor
On my knees, head cocked, mouth wide
Two fists clenched high above my head
Cackling, screaming, I told you so
I told you so
I told you so
For you’re in my neck of the woods, now
My sphere of twisted dimension and reality
Walk this ghetto but take careful care
For I’ll reanimate the dead
And form a close camaraderie
So they’ll aid in the clearing forests and forests
for the freshest, strongest lumber
To build the greatest rapport
Mankind has ever seen.




At my zoo there is a human exhibit
Between the Bat Cave
And the Big Cats’ Den
Where for a small price
Children can pet, even manhandle them
But please, do not feed the humans.
Sharing a common ancestor with the ape,
Humans are great herbivores
And must maintain a strict diet.
So please, do feed the humans,
It is a violation of park regulation.

When I finally achieve time travel,
Which I guesstimate will be within the year,
I am going to warp back to1300 AD
To meet with the leaders of the people living in
What we now call “the Americas”
To warn them of their untimely doom.
I’ll have brought plans and plans
For boats and guns
And point them in the direction of England.
They’ll band together and mass in numbers
Unimaginable
To sail and start colonizing the “NEW WORLD.”
Instead of slaughtering all of the Englishmen and women
And children,
Small portions of land will be allocated
For them to live their humble lives on,
Where drugs and gambling and alcoholism
Will run rampant,
Where preteens can buy two grams of crank
For five bucks.
I’ll be the king. Very tyrannical, probably.
Anarchy in the UK.
Cue manifest destiny,
And in no time at all,
Europe will be mine, but

Razor burn will still be a pain in the neck.

Until then, I’ll eat up
the savory flavor of slavery,
Which is a metaphor
for how our country has prospered
and was able to advance so so swiftly.
(Slaves were used in a variety of fields.)
Lets me rest lazily on my ass
Luxuriously –
Sumptuously –
O, the land of the free,
With blind faith in the vomit of a sick TV
Where truth is wholly objective,
Rooted in a community’s collective perspective
On what they think is wrong
And what they think is right –
A minister by day,
Date rapist by night.
Have a dose of comatose
And go on living your life.

“Smmmuuuuuuug,” squeals the butler,
combing his mustache in disgust.
I picture the pompous, priggish party
spontaneously combust.
“Jeevesy, baby, you’re on repeat,
so go refill the golden trough.”
Instead he mixes a batch of napalm
into a plastic squirt gun.

Ku Klux Krayon
Ku Klux Kandle
Ku Klux Kranberry
Tell me you know what I mean.

Corky is a doll I got for my third birthday
from my uncle Scott.
He is black and has an afro and
suspenders over a red and yellow
striped shirt.
There is a cassette deck in the small of his back,
and when you push play,
the tape goes and his mouth moves.
I used to make recordings to make him say stuff.
I found said recordings.
Fifteen minutes of
“Geeeeeeeeeeee Whiz!”
Over and
Over
and O’er.
Corky never dies,
but he can no longer talk.

Ya’ll don’t know what this cat is worth
I’m the cat who’ll save this earth, see,
I’ve got this philosophy on sleep.
I was living on curbs.
I was the dog with fantastic herbs.
Your house,
your family,
forget your job,
choose sleep.
Your women’s magazines,
your wants,
your needs,
choose sleep with an IV.
drink drinks,
green greens,
choose sleep.
I shut my eyes
and it feels so real.
I can look
I can taste
I can hear
I can feel
I can smell and
if I was in a coma,
you’d visit me.
This is me smiling
and living the life worth living.
“I wanna see movies of my dreams.”

All of the sheep
seem to be mocking me
and I can’t count as high
as they keep coming.
My eyes like to deceive
I lie still,
humming three,
waiting for sleep.
If that felt anything like death,
death don’t bother me.

The wait is all but over –
I’ve given up all my tact –
Life is but a trophy –
But I will not be had.
Wide eyes choose the victor –
The courage’s all been slammed –
Six months rolling over –
But I will not be had.
The shields rise with vigor –
Subtle, sick demands –
Nothing, never, nowhere –
I will not be had.
Tainting all that’s holy –
The word, the son, the lamb –
Can’t be the one, the only –
I will not be had.

must belittle must belittle must belittle must beliette

a verbal molestation of your mind
GO

Thoughts, in Chapters

Chapter 1:
The heat beats me relentlessly. I sigh a hymn of defeat in a gravel street. No shade, no trees. I heed the advice of those who wrote before me.
I woke up in a pile of change today wondering where home was. I concluded home is a fleeting concept. It keeps moving through space with time.
Hello, wake up call. Hello, firm grasp of the temporary. A little late, I think. Therefore, I am metaphorically homeless. Baffles like time travel, rips like tornado, stings like soapy eyes.
O, the healing properties of game night, self medicating with Yahtzee parties. Woe, the dark, the absence of light. No more Scrabble, Uno, Mancala, or Sorry.
A man in full control is his own cough suppressant. A woman in full control used to be a man. We can argue about what that is or isn’t.

Chapter 2:
The world is an intriguing place
Where your status depends on your race,
Where any Joe
With light skin tone
Can get by with a smiling face.

Everyone’s a poet
Whether they know it, bestow it,
Or blow it right off.
Address it or suppress it,
Just don’t forget it.
Everyone’s a poet.


Chapter 3:
Whitman must not have had allergies.

Chapter 4:
You will not find me underneath the porchlight
Carefully hidden in the quiet part of midnight.
A brisk rush of wind blows the leaves into the air.
I sit, I listen, I stare.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for
I’ll know it when I see.
I met an eight-ball-of-an-oracle
High up in a tree.
She was shaken up and desperate,
Naked through and through.
I told her my life story,
For I thought that she was you.
She told me I was going to die like everybody else.
I told her I knew that, and she nudged me, and I fell.
I saw a white light and a staircase with a sign.
I grabbed myself a number and I began to climb.
I reached the peak in time and met a man holding a gun.
He said to go back down, that I was not His son.
I said, “I am too young to die,” and pocketed my pride.
I waited and waited but the man did not reply.
Whatever, I fell.
Wasn’t in heaven, wasn’t in hell.

Chapter 5:
OCDiction. Rhyme.
ADDoodle. Pills.

Chapter 6:
Here is a list of races that I hate:
Four-legged race
Potato sack race
Anything Nascar
The race against time

You and I are slaves to clocks. It’s always a race against time. What could be more unforgiving? A second chance? Not a chance. A clock’s got the only hands that aren’t handy.

Chapter 7:
A man in a restaurant looks down at his meal, and then around the restaurant. “There’s something fishy about this place,” he observes. It was a Long John Silvers.
A man visits a shooting range with his son. On the way out, the son says, “that was a blast.”

I write Alanis Morrisette one letter a week. Each letter contains, simply, the definition of “irony.” Nothing more. I sign a different name every time.

Poetry is what it is.

Chapter 8:
shed elitist
detective hiding again
spread conviction
exclusive control aids moving undertones
Another scum lurks beneath the image!
An expired detective, swamped and buried, lies murdered undiscovered.
A witch reacts, unsuccessfully.
Witchcraft is dead.
The detective is dead.
The robot has had its revenge.
and begins to breed
and learns to breathe.
Evolution.

Chapter 9:
The Earth is 6000 years old.
Carbon dating ain’t shit.
Evolution never happened.
Have an abortion,
Or be gay,
And get excommunicated, sucka!
Approach the alter with a blind eye,
Or approach and be a midget,
Death by stoning, sucka!
Sell your female slaves into slavery
And they shall not go free the way male slaves do.
Should you buy slaves,
They must be from nations around you.
Trim your beard or cut the hair on your temple,
Prepare for a hellish afterlife, sucka!
The crusades!
The children’s crusades!

Suddenly, science. Smart, self-aware sentients no longer sick with stupidity.

A woman finally released from a 30 year life in a basement sees the outside for the first time. She is horrified by everything that moves because of wind.

Chapter 10:
Women’s basketball: shirts versus skins

Chapter 11:
I release energy
in brute force of irony.
There's no structure to
my rhyme or reason.

Believe you me, when you sleep,
I’m up twisting in the sheets
trying to wrap my head around
time and being.

They said that the massacres were frightening,
that young people were dying,
that someone had to do something.

I arose with my noble sword a'shining.
I marched and began swinging.
I was a beacon of hope for a battered army.

I swear to god I met a saint
who had a way with words and a way with pain.

I found out the hard way.

She sang "I’ll lead you as far as I can."
She would’ve led farther if it weren’t for one man:
the king of the country, a tyrant of sin.
I promised myself that one day I’d be him
and I’d change this land for the better.

But I was locked up in the tower
like some prisoner princess.

It must’ve been fate.
I snatched the key to the gate.

Look what you’ve built
and what you’ve destroyed
by tearing down walls
and having armies deployed.
what was once grand
will fall again and again
and there's no one to blame but me.

DON’T PANIC

She knows I know her and she frankly doesn’t like it one bit.
I make my comments and say, “Take it,” and she bites her lip.
I mix the iced tea and beg her to take just one sip.
She knows I hate when she says no. Goddamn, I hate her lipstick.

Words, the pedals.
Words, the release.
A stem of process,
A stem of me.

At the roots,
unending sound,
Volume, unwavering,
no up, no down.
With focus comes rhythm
out of the empty.
With focus
the chaos assumes melody.

A patch of revolution,
Coming from heart.
Missing the mark with a thug.
A bat from the swamp,
A swing on a whim,
Gorey, volatile, barbarous.

I grind in the land of milk and honey
To master the art of dreaming while awake.
I get lost in commanding lyrical reverie
Where all reality warms the floor for the day

Hell, it’s cheaper than the trend.
They’ll do whatever you say.
As long as you’ve got money
You’ll be okay.

I derive
I drive
I melodize

I infinite

I water the soil
I spray from the mast
I stammer and fall
Through the looking-glass.

I plunge into AUGHT
I watch the race croak
I rhyme all the time
I pun while I joke

She knows I lie awake at night, humming and singing myself to sleep.
She listens in and I impress but, hey, that’s just me.
She’s always made up, her she self-loves so faithfully.
I saw her mirror. There were lip prints where her face would be.

Color it
Gloss it
Poetry’s blue
When you load it in Photoshop
And fuck with the hue.

The wind kind
of tickles my eyes
But I gas it up anyway
I’m doing time
South of the line
For how I once behaved.

Isthmus
Fjord
Estuary
Butte
Cove
Dune
Lagoon
Latitude
Plateau

Bought a pea coat and a scarf
A shower and a shave
Stomped around the campus
For the stereotype parade.




Cunnilinguistics

I’ve been torched to the core,
Peeled layer by layer,
Then roasted.
You’ve been shot.
See a doctor.

I am. Are you?
I am. Are you?
Am I? You are.

If the sun doesn’t rise
If your parents are siblings
If you sing flat as the earth
If you can’t speak your mind

And you don’t open your eyes
And you lie about your lover
And you’re destined to silently observe
And you’re twisted, unkind

You jerk awake, surprised
You lose spirit during summer
You’ve sewn your lips shut
You search and search and never find

That means YOU ARE.
YOU ARE and
Everything will be alright.

The sky opens and weeps
To soak dreams and car seats.
A flash, a flood,
The town is a sea.

I saw a woman sweating blood and sweat.
She wore a veil and gym shoes.
It was cat-and-dogging rain.
I was eleven, minding my business,
Thinking thoughts,
Feeling feelings.
She approached.
Tapped.
She pleaded for mercy.
I wondered where her clothes were
And took another swig.
“Get on the bus.”
She did. Bussed away.
My bloody hands ditched her dress.
I ran home, umbrella’d.

Write what you don’t know.
Fuggit.
Write fiction.
Walk backwards.
Shoot squirrels.
Evade cops.
Fuggit.
Drink stuff.
Smoke stuff.
Throw shit at stuff.
Pay.
Exercise.
Theorize.
Play.
Or don’t.
Fuggit.
It’s your life.
Go to church.
Kill people.
Waste away idly.
Whatever.
Fuggit.

Jump.
Object.
Crumble.
Smear.
Swerve.
Stupefy.
Desensitize.
Cripple.
Disable.
Disqualify.
Maim.
Hush.
Squash.
Bruise.
Belittle.
Bebig.
Bewhateverthehellyouwant.

Wake up with black eyes.
Smile at the mirror.
Erase memory.
Prepare for the day.

Sleep with an open eye.
Scowl at the mattress.
Recall memory.
Prepare for the night.

I sat in the patch of grass
Between the shore and the trees,
Skipping stones, feeling wind, listening to loons.
The sun was setting something beautiful,
Coloring the heavens.
I thought about Darwin
And I thought about God
And I thought about the universe
And the stars I’ll never see.
Why are they there?
Why are we here?
My head exploded.
Darwin and God arm wrestle.

Chicken? or the egg?
The egg, I think.
The glass is half-full if it was filled to that point.
The glass is half-empty if it was emptied to that point.
If no one’s around, a tree falls just as loudly.
I can’t prove that, but it just does.

Bank hours are strange.

I want to star in a Broadway musical.
I want to front a metal band.
I want to compose Disney music.
I want to produce for Eminem.
I want to make music forever and ever.

Machiavellian is a word.

Imagine your last paper cut.
Imagine that every time you’ve gotten a paper cut, nothing happened.
No cut, no pain, no blood.
Imagine that every paper cut you would’ve gotten cut you at the same time when you’re fifty years old.
Would you bleed to death?
It would sure hurt.
Every paper cut is a metaphor for lies.
Stop lying.

You’ve spun a web of lies.
The web is called Life.
Have regard.

Once I woke up, and written on my left hand was, “You don’t like this. STOP.”
Written on my right hand was, “On the other hand…”

When I was young, I wanted to grow up to be a doctor,
But the kind of doctor that healed for free.
I didn’t understand why that wasn’t possible,
But it’s the thought that counts.
I also wanted to be a priest.
Such a selfless little boy.
I had religion to thank.
I was spoon-fed for
Twelve years.
Oh God.

There was a bully who stole my bike.
I confronted him and said,
“My dad could beat up your dad.”
He was an orphan, and he started to cry.

Existence: From Kickoff to Finale or The Cavalry of Woe
an Emily Dickinson Cento

Act I - Birth:
(103) I have a King, who does not speak –
(119) Reverently, to the Hungry
(1522) Of Industry and Morals
(285) Because I see – New Englandly –
(756) Why Floods be served to Us – in Bowls –
(45) Within this inner room!

Act II - Growth:
(1760) The opening of a Door –
(461) Midnight – Good Night! I hear them call
(957) Identity to question
(369) As if for lull of sport –
(463) I stand alive – Today –
(1262) That I be adequately dressed,
(1562) As gallantly as if the East
(662) And God
(457) Hum[med] by – in Muffled Coaches –
(708) Until He [was] past the Pain –
(940) In which We first experienced Light
(938) Only to aggravate the Dark
(1067) And later hang –

Act III - Routine Being:
(1570) Forever honored be the Tree
(1062) Groped up, to see if God was there -
(1574) As Jesus says of Him,
(449) “And I – for Truth – Themselves are One –
(476) Itself be given You” –
(568) And Truth – so manifold!
(567) He gave away his Life –
(712) Or rather – He passed Us –
(855) With Silence as Company
(714) While Nature
(441) With tender Majesty
(708) Consoles a Woe so monstrous
(1144) That doubts as fervently as is believes.

Act IV – Routine Being and a Glimpse:
(1145) No moment will there be
(1202) A Symptom of alarm
(1307) That not a Beggar would accept
(1147) After a hundred years.
(468) There yet remains a Love –
(479) A vulgar grimace in the Flesh –
(505) Enamored – impotent – content –
(561) A sort they call “Despair” –
(637) Wide – Like the Sunrise –
(712) Feels shorter than the day
(798) Of Envy, or of Men –
(318) A Ribbon at a time –
(317) Patient – upon the steps – until then –
(153) Death, the only One –
(92) Mortal, my friend must be,
(59) [and] Found he had worsted God.

(759) But Death was Coy of Him –
(913) Stepped with so gay a Foot,
(857) [a] Prize –
(858) To Him, it would be Death.
(914) And I cannot be proud.
(1154) Each bright Mortality,
(1313) While faithful and afar,
(1311) Is freely mine
(1358) To breathe – corrode the rapture.

Act Va - Realization:
(1467) Though Generations pass away,
(1664) [and] the Sun goes crooked –
(1666) I see thee clearer for the Grave.
(1712) To look would be to drop –
(1715) I shall not look again.
(536) The privilege to die –
(1763) It has a sting
(937) Like Balls – upon a floor.

Act Vb - Practice:
(1539) Now I lay thee down to Sleep –
(1376) Dreams are the subtle Dower –
(1290) I wish I had not broken it.
(942) I admonish thee –
(530) You cannot put a Fire out –
(1104) With Hat in Hand, polite and new –
(618) It begs you to give it work –
(616) It spurn the Grave –
(715) When We stop to Die –
(801) As We – Who never Can –
(882) A Shade upon the mind passes
(1107) Between his Holiday.

Intermission:
(550) Or is this Death’s Experiment
(1890) Into the Beautiful?
(1645) His advocate – his Edifice?
(432) Is it like a Planet?
(882) The Loved?
(893) Or some Elf’s Catacomb?
(1085) Is She so much to blame?
(908) Alas – and art though sleeping yet?
(1094) Would you – instead of me?
(1341) Oh, Subsidy of Balm!

Act VI – The Race:
(784) I rose – it followed me –
(519) It multiplied indifference –
(478) I had no time to Hate –
(479) She dealt her pretty words like Blades –

Act VII - Providence:
(279) Goodbye to the Life I used to live –
(352) Perhaps I asked too large –
(408) The Grave is strict –
(434) However, dear,
(465) I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
(545) The Value of its Ten –
(513) Some rumor of Delirium.
(515) The long restricted Grave
(468) With Babble of the styles –
(945) The Funeral of God.

Epilogue:
(944) How ignorant I had been
(1295) On Doom’s consummated Chart.
(1370) This nature – how undone!
(619) Glee – The great storm is over!

Water
A Lorine Niedecker cento

(117) O let me rise to the door-knob
(217) This morning
(132) This is my mother’s birthday.
(79) As a young woman
(170) the little white slave-girl
(257) dived to concrete
(278) by a two-month migraine
(273) and I was born –
(220) A student
(166) and then her life was sand

(117) O rock my baby on the tree tops
(206) Grasses’ dry membranous
(286) The soil is poor
(217) from sun burning
(133) what do you know
(125) Reason explodes. Atomic split
(279) or not at all

(256) Great God –
(257) It rained
(239) A man
(221) so good as human
(207) Some float off on chocolate bars
(171) where my mother was
(170) birds and frogs
(184) will return

(158) Sorrow moves in wide waves,
(174) after storm shall we speak of love?

(171) I am lame and dizzy but eat
(154) mincemeat with meat,
(257) Pigeons
(134) birds flying through leaves
(125) movement, rest, repeat
(112) to Shakespeare who never ceased.

(261) My mother and I
(283) rode the sea
(227) wave ride.
(289) My mother
(133) who couldn’t bake
(121) we’ve got too much, just keep out the weeds
(103) miracles of profit
(138) as my mother,
(261) who bore the weights of lake water
(166) She’ll sue for divorce


(226) the soul: in the blood Retired
(218) Truth
(167) Throw it over –
(165) for our work, lay down at night without hay
(116) Look, the woods, the sky, our home.

(170) I rose from marsh mud
(105) Frosts, fires, land speculation, comet.
(251) the better to eat you
(265) for a wing-bone
(287) worth sticking to
(98) and painted in red, a bluebottle gentian

(119) Sleep and it won’t matter.
(355) I’ll go ahead on the horse. You can follow me in the wagon.
(201) I’ve been free



“i have the dog”

words on trial
in front of the council
struck down and deemed dangerous
seen worthless and vile

but honesty handles the greatest of problems
handy in barrels and bushels and bottles
perturbs the psyche, sees overseas brothels
twists dog from man, a man from child

i'd act it didactically

There are piles of paper bound by binders
Piling on the floor
Abe's been having a field day
Mewing at the door

You autonomous liberal
You Big Other
You Freudian father
You Nickelodeonic nostalgia
You supplement
You barrier
You feudal lord
You fiscal responsibility
You performative utterance
You middleman
You light I never knowed
You head-cocking zealot
You accidental occident
You furry blade

There are heaps of paper related components
Accumulating on the floor
Abe has a field day
Mewing at the door

Adventure
Don’t you know it’s dangerous to
anything-else while you drive?
Adventure
Finally, a setting in which words kill.
Adventure
The Phone
The Notebook
The Newspaper
Adventure
“What part of dead don’t you understand? – Go away.”
To deal with a conundrum – be careful.
As the kitten chases a red dot,
You will hunt down a solution.
An unattainable answer.
And, in doing so, you,
Yourself,
Will have become a
Conundrum.

Perplexing, brittle treason furnishes the imperfect human.
The minutest malady can agonize the deities.
The remedy? Ample clemency.

Exhaustion from inspiration
Alive without sensation
Occupy time through my mind’s Eye
Hand is forced into implication
Stand up. Get your eyes off of the ground.
Man up.
It’s a mystery.
A couple hundred bucks and
a dozen free drinks.
I was awake. She, a puzzle.
We were hours away from getting a lay.
The only solution to break out of the bubble –
Put a needle to her skin, her ratings double.
I don’t mean to see only esteem.
Tus ojos son periscopios.
Mis manos son atados.
Miro en las mentas de rubios.
No quiero encontrar tus mamas y papas.
It’s a mystery.
You’ve been fatuously taciturn.
It’s ineluctable.
Luckily, I’m a stoic. Solace.
A dilatory mimic.
Check out the verbiage, it’s a conundrum.
You lose.

Everything that you see
Is always just so green.
Now every where you turn your head,
Imagine all the green is red.

You know God smokes a pack a day,
He says, “I know everything, I know I’ll be okay.”

this fhoto is beautiful. i have the dog

The avenue purrs while I rest, permeating walls, windows.
Astonishing.
No, it was Abe.
Remember Africat, Enginecat, Disordercat.
Abe’s much better off.

Brotherly harmonies
Worked well.
I abandoned.
Holy fuck.
What happened?
Chats with strangers
And praise.
The great old days.
Now, a project
New, a studio
The BAC
Backseat
A drink
Flying pennies
Just soaring
Absolutely soaring
Someone’s hit
Surely

Every good haiku
Must always end the same way.
Boy becomes a man.

There’s some graffiti
On the house across the street
In my neighborhood

Graffiti is art
But this guy had no talent
Don’t need to see that

I bet you’re counting
The syllables on your hand
That’s how I do it

Refrigerator
Irresponsibility
Monosyllabic

Sophisticated
Pseudointellectual
Congratulations


I raindanced and the clouds went away.
I wrote a song for Abe. :rock:
Where’s that damn microphone?

“I do all the drinking,
Let the liquor do the thinking
And the driving.
…
You are the race that I hate
You are that taste
You fellate
I dive”

We do things because they’re there for us to do
We say things because they’re there for us to say
If you’re not following my logic, maybe you’re the crazy one
If you’re with me kindly color me insane
Do what we expect you to do
Sing how we expect you to sing
If at any time you step out of line
You’ll be socially exiled certainly.
Don’t define the music.
Let the music define you.

Every Day I Flip Silver

Finally, time to ease the mind
Time to release the weird from the bright
An outlet that stints the scratches and cries
That no longer writhes for a turn to drive

“That’s so base.”

So tell me a bit about yourself that
I can’t read in the news.
I’ll take it, twist, queerify it,
And regurgitate it back at you.

It’ll be like school.
Praisable playgiarism
Puntificate
Puntius Pilate

“I want to punch his face right in the face.”

I spied a ‘Time Machine’
From Wal-Mart
For half a hundred dollars.
100% money back guarantee.
So I bought it with the plan
To high-five historical icons
And write a best-seller called
499 Famous People I’ve High Fived and You Haven’t.
I would raise the roof with Jesus and Shakespeare,
Shoot hoops with Hitler and Freud,
Do LSD with G. Washington, James Dean, and Franz Kafka,
Jump rope with that actress who played Annie,
Give Kirk Cameron’s parents a couple of Trojans,
And see how many 1995 dollars I can use in 1994.
I’d give Anne Frank a Gameboy to pass the time,
Maybe a fake mustache and some thick black glasses,
Too and I’d definitely ride a fucking dinosaur or
Two
And then publish the book and go on
Oprah with all the pictures I took.
I placed the machine on the table
And gave it a once-over.
“Place fruit here,”
Read an obnoxiously yellow label
On a small door
On the top
Of the machine.
I fruited her up, but to no avail.
No time travel.
Just fruit in a time machine.
Guaranteed? What?
So I marched my ass back to the Wal
And BITCHED.
Ended up smashing it in the parking lot
Fruit and all.
My mother called a few weeks later,
Talking about her brand spankin’ new Time Machine
And praising its wonders.
It really works quite well,
She claimed.
Curious,
I gave her a visit.
It was Time Magazine’s juicemaker,
And hot damn did it make some
Delicious, delicious juice.
I mixed a kiwi with an orange and a pear
And a pear with a banana and a tomato
And a tomato with broccoli and a red bell paper.
I wrote
499 Juice Combinations
And went on Emeril.

“No offense, but I really just want to sit on my couch.”

As settings change, a fist
Undergoes functional transition.
A pillow by day,
A mallet by night.
Eve ended up with two black eyes
And a broken wrist
Because God was pissed
So Adam was pissed as well.

You skinny bird!
Condescend!
You fiery eyes!
You twisted beak!
Medusa!
Hello?!

The Literal Mermaid emigrates
To Verity Lake, the Ash Tree.
Watch him crawl, painstakingly
Maneuvering through stinging
Nettle, collecting jewel week
For its blood, that soothing nectar.
Had he not, just yesterday,
Enjoyed that hilarious march of
That wobbling walker
From a window in an
Underwater fortress?
Yet, here he crawls on
Arms red,
Squinting tearfully.

“A chair is kind of autistic.”

Fade in from black.
A woman stands, straight-back
With slightly squinted eyes from
A mildly violent sandstorm,
Hair dancing with the wind,
Hand shading
Eyes from the oranges and yellows
Of a setting sunstar,
Leg perched on the belly of the
Bear that had craved her.
The camera pans, right from left.
Slow motion.

I’ll explore your head
When it caves in
And snap photos and document
And excavate, etc.
Quality adoption
To better my whatevers
And whoevers,
All the things the cameras
Don’t oversee
Will go right into the pockets
Of my dungarees.
What’s yours is mine
What’s mine is mine
When I get that head to cave in.
Synergetic.
I am me and I am you.

“Willard Scott is likely a vampire.”

MIKE MEMMESHEIMER
WORD COUNT: WAY TOO MANY
ACTUALLY 5,054