Poems: 2018
The Whisper That Sings from Every Bone
you are dying you are dying you are dying
get to it get to it
get to what?
IT
the gentle force and beauty and love and inspiration
inside of you
imploring you to let it out
through whatever fields it is
that ignite you
and arouse within you
the curiosity that pushes you off the deep end
into life
into yourself
your friends are dying
right now
life is entering them
but so is change
and one day
that change
will mean the cessation of their heartbeat
so love them!
love them love them love them
right now
your enemies are dying
dying dying dying
the ones you hate so dearly
so strongly and so fiercely
they are dying
and they too have pains
as do you as do you i as do we all
pains that challenge our life
(and also open us up to life if we let it)
remember this
remember that if they appear to be causing you pain
if they are doing you wrong
the prison and pain that impose upon you
is the same prison that they are trapped in too
they are dying
love them
love them love them
what?
but i hate them
i have all of these stones
these hot coals
these wads of shit
these toads with curses on their tongues
and centipedes too
centipedes that want to eat the assholes of my enemies
not in a “RAWR sexual ohmygod ohmygod i’m cumming i’m cumming way”
but in a “oh shit insects are tearing apart my bum bum and shitting is never gonna feel the same again”
kind of a way
all of these i have in my bag
i am waiting and wanting
to throw them
at all of the assholes
who spit on my heart
yes i know
i know it’s hard
i know your hatred may be justified
it has a cause
but
the weight of that bag of hate you hold for them
is equivalent to the amount of
love
and freedom
that you will find and feel
if you can love the ones you hate
we are dying we are dying we are dying
so let love in
as much as you can
as much as you feel ready for
and possibly maybe even a little more than that if you can
because what else is there
to live for?
let us imagine
right now in your seat in your skin in your mind and your heart
that Death assumes the form
of a skeletal companion with hair in unfamiliar places
who follows you always
tapping on your chest
tapping not to scare you
but to remind you
that you are dying you are dying you are dying
so live!
love!
love love love
Theo is a Dreamer
when i was smaller
the tall people told me
you can be
anything
you want to be
now
i too am tall
so tell me this
tall people
why the hell am i not the one
who has all of the holes
of all of the people
spraying all of the fluids
the cum rays
the milk clouds
the shit streams
the piss wands
all over my chest?
that is what
i wanted to be
instead i became
an astronaut a president a dancer a juggler a writer a firefighter a cobbler a baker
even the person who designs fashionable shoelaces for a niche-founded company based in someone’s basement in Finland
all of the things a flesh-one could be
except for the one thing
i wanted to be
what did i miss?
what did you miss?
you missed the fact that there is
something
inside of your foot
telling you to be
everything
except for the thing that you want to be
four thousand years ago
another man stepped
on the foot of your ancestor
nestling between their toes
a psychological parasite that led them to go
everywhere
except to the plane which was
meant for them
waiting for them
and your family and ancestors have been passing this footbound virus down through the tree
so gather the bodies
their flesh and their bones
their piles of organs stacked neatly within cases made of muscle
gather ye bodies!
and open your holes!
young Theo is waiting
waiting to swim
to swim in the wonder
of milk, waste, and cum
because dreams can come true
they must, will, and do
they come true for young Theo
and they will for you too
A Turd Falls (Magick)
there is a fantasy i have where i am just peeing
peeing peeing peeing
forever
a stream of infinity pee that goes up into outer space and taps a green lopsided-headed alien from the 1990s collective unconscious on the
shoulder
and says here you go honey
like older servers at small restaurants sometimes say to me when they put more brown stuff in my cup
and at the same time
while i’m pissing infinity into the void
i have to poop
really really really
have to
but i don’t
the turd pokes its head in and out and in and out
the good old
“In and Out”but less sexy
but(t) less sexy
or just as sexy?
or more sexy?
it’s up to you i don’t know we have to make these decisions for ourselves now
now that we are adults
reading and or writing poo-ems about pee pee and ca ca
caw caw (we might also be birds)
with the child we once were
and still are
inside of us
while all of this is going on i see
in this invisible non-space space that
feels like it’s in my head or comes from my head but isn’t even in the physical real
it’s overlapping it
like a projection from a world of unmanifest aether
anyways what was i saying?
oh yes
YES
in this head space non-space i see all of
the vilest
the most repulsive
the most shameful
the most embarrassing
the sweatiest
the most strench-ridden cum-begotten parts of my being
and in that moment
in this moment
they are
beautiful
the turd falls out
the infinity pee ends
coalescing into the graspable realm
of finite forms
it’s magick is what it is
the art and practice
of collapsing
the possible
into the actual
holy cow is not the mind a strange and wondrous place?
not to mention the world that carries
and is impregnated with
all of our projections
Lighthouse
follow follow follow
the lighthouse in the heart
but it isn't here
i cannot find it
and the fish at my feet
are eating my toes
soon i fear
they will hunger for more
like genitals
and other vital organs
that enable me to speak, sing, and sex
then imagine it
the lighthouse in the heart
imagine it
persistently and gently
and with all of the colors of roygbiv
imagine it
when you feel you can
and perhaps sometimes also when you feel you can't
(because you can)
imagine it here right now
its pulse and its glow
imagine it
and you will feel it grow
Finger Food Opera
it’s not a secret
but it’s left unspoken by many folks
it’s the kind of observation that would aggravate
Uncle Larry or Aunt Susan at the holiday dinner
what is this not-secret?
it is this:
under the skin
of all infants in dreams
is a vegetable
inside of the vegetable
is the meaning of life
but the meaning of life doesn’t reveal itself through words
it will show itself to you
as a color
a sound
a scent
a feeling
and sometimes you open the vegetable to find
that the meaning of life
contained within
has assumed the shape
of yet another vegetable
so bring out the oil!
the spices!
the pan!
cook up some dinner
throw the fork and knife and spoon out the window
this here is finger food
we are meant to get dirty
and lick every crumb
every stream
every bit from our hands
let out your burps
the opera of the world
Seven Candies
some people may try to tell you
just how to be the thing
the thing that you do feel inside
yourself and everything
they tell me it is wrong to be
the way that I am being
sometimes they do not tell me
but in my head
I hear their voice
it’s not really their voice
and it isn’t really mine
it lives inside my skull
some days it gives me anger
how generous!
how kind of it to be so giving
so much fury has it gifted me
so much exercise has it given
to my sphincter
that anal halo that clenches itself
when it imagines
that it is threatened
on other days
days that I am tempted to call
my better days
I say thank you to the anger
then let it take a nap
I give to that voice in my skull
seven candies
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet
each one wrapped in cloth
made from the lost whiskers
that the dandelions give to winds
where do you find such candies?
they are found inside my pillow
placed there by a dream
a dream that comes to visit me
every other monday morning around 3:30 a.m.
shortly after I have the dream
about the field of dogs
at the end of the world
where a voice is always singing
though its body isn’t there
New Boots
it will come
come in the night
when you think that you are looking
but you will be dreaming
dreaming about being
a bean in a ball
of eight thousand beans
in the hand of a girl
whose dress she so enjoys
as she’s running up the hill
and the breeze blows through the fabric
at the top of the hill
she faints
you wake up in your bed
sunday morning
you reach into
The Pit
of your arm
looking at the sweat
now found in your palm
you see the number seven
a pallid face
beyond bedroom window
whispers to you
“SUGAR”
you don’t know how
it is
that you can hear it
but you know that you must do
it
you know that today
will be the day
you finally allow your
self
to trade your loaf of bread
for the tall and yellow boots
Yes, Now
would you like more anger?
would you like to postpone inevitable change and
consequently
cause yourself much unnecessary pain?
then simply choose to resist
life
resist whatever is happening now
resist those who challenge your perspective and your patience
resist those who press your buttons
with uncanny precision
resist your fears
resist your memories
resist the echoes of the past that you imagine
will echo into the future
resist everything
that you think is happening
even if it is not
resist it
fight it
definitely
do not
observe
study
or listen
to it
why not?
because
if you observe that which you resist
if you listen to it
if you study it
if you get downright curious about it
then you might finally find
that your weight is leaving you
you might find that change can come
at any moment
even now?
yes
NOW
We are Her
I don’t have
any heart
any more
why? what happened?
someone took a dump
on it
(we say it that way
butt really
it would be more accurate to say
they placed their dump
on it
because they are not taking a dump
they are giving it)
on your heart?
yeah, their butthole expressed itself all over my achey breaky and I just thought
fucking EW
yeah, understandably
so what do you do? how are you still here?
I’m not
you’re not?
nope
then where are you?
somewhere over there
over there?
you mean under the paw of the stray cat that hasn’t left their perch on the corner of the bottom stair of the public library? next to the napkin with green stains that hasn’t left the cement since December?
yes
there
strange
you look like you are here
not there
I know
[JUST THEN]
the narrator cut in to let ya’ll know that at that very moment
the cat passed
gas and passed
away
the cat died?
why?
because it tooted
it tooted
the terminal toot
the toot that was needed
to help their fur pass
into the next life
where they would live for nine decades
seven of which would be spent as a clown
that would give
an old woman
wearing too many shawls
the very first laugh of her long life
which would send her fragile heart
into cessation
allowing her to pass
into the next life
where she would live for 19 years of glory
being frequently petted
by fingers that loved her
and do you want to know a secret?
yes!
you are her
Our Purple Cake
a child born in a morgue
he told his classmates
"every day is our birthday"
every day
he ate a purple cake
on top of a hill
where one yellow bird
was always singing
but never seen
his mother and father
made his bed
from the emotions they found
in the shoes of their grandparents
Tooted Prayers
so many people
waiting for death
to take them to heaven
when it is already here
accessed through the power of
yoga toots
the unsung heroes
of the singing bottoms
of sweating limbs
”Namastooty”
from your booty
Hello, Mutants
from the moment you crawl
out of your mother
you are a mutant
possibly even before then
the past mutating into the future
through vehicles of flesh, heart, and mind
called people
and also through everything else of course
Hunh?
Life says,
“I’m gonna give you some death (change).”
Death (Change) says,
“I’m gonna give you life.”
A monkey with poo smeared across their forehead says,
“Hunh?”
IT (is a Book and Movie about a Scary Clown but it is Also Everything Else That is a Something)
if we pretend
that It is here
- whatever that It may be -
then it is here
such is the power
of the thing
which seems to be
partly in the mind
and partly the heart
the thing they call imagination
the thing that makes
It come to be
Doggy Paddles
there is so much
beauty and poetry and sugary songs
doggy-paddling through the waves of blood
in our hearts
waiting for us
to let them
outside
Made
fate is a thing made
by the mind and the world
usually when we're not
looking
Dance and Hear
when sadness comes a knockin'
make it dance
or
just listen to it if that seems to be what's needed
The Face Licker
human beings are lollipops
swirls of sweat, blood, emotion,
and thoughts about whether life is more about the donut or the hole
or something else entirely
and other structures of windy thinking
what will you say
when Time has finished
licking your face?
Goshdang I love Peanut Butter
the body is a bag
for the mind
for some feelings
sometimes also for peanut butter
for leafs
and for so many rivers
at least 72 rivers of blood
or what the heart likes to call
its voice
Cactus on a Diet
all of our faces
right now
are exploding
slowly, imperceptibly
over the course of eight decades
(or more or less depending on
when you die
or whether or not you get hit by a car
or eaten by cacti
or pushed out of time)
all of this fuss, fun, and questions
to let the sky in
93
born from a pocket of flesh
she let her feelings
move her body
after ninety-three years
she put it in a pocket of earth
and said hello to the pocket of space
that holds the world
You Tell ‘Em, Rover
there is a world
in which all that exists
are the teeth of dogs
who have yet to be born
who have eaten all moons, stars, and planets
yet who long for tongue, muscle, and cords of sound
to bark into space
to tell the Void
of the certainty of their existence
Soap
when Death comes
take its soap in your left palm
and feed it to the past
A Beautiful Painting
he kept his secrets in his belly
until one day
their fire erupted
on the bathroom wall
his innards painted
the one face of the many monkeys
mooning the moon
and smelling beauty in the soil beneath their tilted noses
Her Dress
she made her memories into a dress
she burned the dress
she squeezed the milk of oranges over the ashes
she told her secrets to the clouds
and then it rained
Moss
he gave his flesh to time
it gave to him a bow-tied box
of wrinkles
in which he put the petals of
the flowers that grew in the mossier corners of the mind
Egg
after it embroiders your muscles
with the faces of fertile smiling skulls
after it cracks open the egg beneath your bottom
after it shaves you naked on the soft, dirt floor
Love will tell you
"I love you"
and watch as you flutter so lightly toward the cloud above your chest
Nude and Shiny
tell me i am a beauty
tell me i am a gull
tell me i am the strings of the banana when peeled
whilst standing nude and shiny on a cliff at 2 a.m.
tell me my diaper is full
but please don't tell me
my belly is gone
His Bag
he was nude and underwear-ed
sitting on a cornered floor
eating biscuits from a bag
his final words were
"I am what I am and the rain is within me"
Some Days, We are All Bald and Hungry
- it's coming
- but what is it?
- we don't know. it's not here yet.
- when will it be here?
- when it's no longer over there
- but then what will be over there?
- possibly pea soup
- and dogs?
- yes, some bald hungry pup pups
Therapy
if you can't afford a therapist
try naked
interpretive dance
in your bedroom
wonders may be made accessible to you
Butterfly
if you feel lousy
take a walk to the top of a hill
cut off your arms and legs
maybe your nose, too
allow the logistics of this technique to reveal itself to you as you go
(improvise)
rest limblessly
then sew your limbs back onto your body
see if you don't feel differently
Cocoa
When you eat a chocolate Jesus
"The kingdom of heaven is within"
and also when you don't
and at all other times.
Your Hair in Heaven
the rapture is coming soon
probably tomorrow
except it will only take our hair
leaving us all bald and wandering and wondering,
“what is our hair doing up there in heaven?”
the sky will respond,
“know this!
your hair is dancing”
Pop
if you listen to enough jazz
your stomach will become a balloon
or you realize that it was always a balloon
and so are your memories
and if you look at them in the right way
they will pop
bye bye bye bye bye bye
bye
Get Lost, It’s Coming
A person: Am I losing my mind?
Another person: Yes, but a new one is coming.
Quack, Quack
if you look at it
really, really closely
so closely that the atoms of your nose begin to merge
with the atoms of the object of your gaze
you will see
that it actually contains the contents of your childhood
and then you can say
OOOHHHHH
that's why I dream of ducks
Skinny Dippers Are We
Is there anything left to worry about after your body is cut off?
Atheists say, "No, you're dead!"
Creationists say, "No, you're in heaven!" Or, "Yes, you're in hell!"
Reincarnationists say, "Karma!"
A headless body in a pond says, "Unghh."
Imagine
maybe the world would be a better place
if the angry people with too much power
were given hourly hugs
and daily enemas
learning learning learning
to accept all the stuff
I hate
including my hatred
and at the same time
hope hope hope
and
love love love
and
play
Up
I know that we died last night
together on the dock of a purple pond
but so what?
let's go to the kitchen anyway
boil a pot of black tea and ginger
pour it in a bronzen bowl
dig our faces into it and
lick lick lick
like the wonder dogs we are
wonder dogs alive in death
in a death that is a wave
a wave of change that is always picking us
up
Goodbye, My Arm
she took a red river
out of my arm
placed it in nine small tubes and said
“Thank you.”
I walked home and my arm
fell off along the way]
it climbed up to a treetop
waved goodbye
then flew into the blue
before the clouds ate my arm
it pooped back down to earth
a swift, white jet
of shit
it landed in my eye
that is when I remembered
I’d been here before
I’d dreamt that this would happen
when I was seven
and my naked body
sprawled and slept and sweat
into the dirt
I remembered that I’d forgotten
that I’d always known
that my arm would one day fly to sky
and poo into my eye
A Good and Prosperous Day
today at work
a zit on my forehead burst open
the pus that landed on the paper in front of me spelt out the words
“go fuck yourself”
I sprinkled some sugar on it
and licked it all up
three hours later
my piss came out
green and radiant
the echoes of the flushing bowl
informed me that today would be
a good and prosperous day
An Explosion of Innards
you
are
ALIVE
not only are you alive—
on a planet whose conditions
are arranged
just so perfectly so
that you can exist here
without suffocating
or having your belly twisted into a highly discomforting explosion of guts and
pooey slime and cum and innards
because of gravity’s funky swing set moods
(all of that
does NOT
happen often in our galaxy)—
not only are you alive here
but you are also alive on a planet
that has tweaked itself
specifically so that it may give
birth
to
bananas
oranges
baby animals that are objectively cute
and more people
some of whom you will connect with
emotionally
physically
and otherwise
and some of whom
you will even make
LOVE
to
I must remind myself
not to forget
Hello?
when you die
which you will
possibly one minute from right now
possibly in the middle of an orgasm
if you are making love
while these words are entering your mind
and if the sex is so good that your body
being limited by its physicality
cannot contain the bliss
so you just explode the heck outta there
screaming HOLY MOLY
as we all do in good sex
any
ways
when you die
the future will come to you
and tell you
it was never really there at all
the past will show you
that it has been a pillowy, friendly rodent
clothed in memory
and only occasionally
possessing a body
if
in the moment of your death
you attempt to hold on
to the body
it’s not wrong or bad or a sin
but you will find that you cannot
and when the holographically projected hand of your mind
reaches out to grasp the corpse you once called yours
you will instead find a banana in your palm
this banana
which does not exist
but which is here nonetheless
will look up and you and say
something in a language
that nobody knows
not even the banana itself?
no! not even the banana knows
and yet
these words will be the answer
to that question that you’ve carried
in your heart,
the hungry thirsty organ soul
it won’t be an answer
you’ll ever understand
but it will be the right one
because it will fall
into the belly
of the question
of your heart
which will then poop it out
as a ball of golden popcorn
which you can give to your parents
and your child
as you all watch the end go by
bye
bye
hello?
Grandma Rainbow
Grandma Rainbow pets your head tonight
her seven-colored children
babies of your past
crawling 'round your belly
over the mountaintop
of your heavy shoulder
don't you know your secret self?
she's tickling your left leg now
sending streams of motion
where just a moment ago
there was stone, stuck and daunting
the stone that kept you planted in
the fears and doubts you loved so much
but hated when they told you how
how to be inside the trap
your parents gave to you to be
a thing that is not what you are
don't you know your secret self?
open the nose and have a sniff
Poem into the Sun
she shed all her tears
into a styrofoam cup
sipped it all up
peed it all out
at 4 in the morn
then she planted her hair in the hills
and ran freely and baldly into the setting sun
not metaphorically
she really did run
into the sun
With Feather, Cum, and Yellow
when you are gone
I masturbate so that I may have
the cum in which to dip a crow’s feather
so that I can write these poems to you
on my yellow walls of home
I am almost certain that you exist
but we haven’t met yet
at least not in this current current of life
but sometimes I get the feeling
—I don’t know who gives it to me—
that we have met before
in a previous life
the one where you were a squirrel
and I was a duck
sometimes on fire
(why are so many things
in my subconscious on fire?)
now
just now
in the moment my fingers write these words
with feather, seed, and Yellow
I am realizing why I have such
a fondness of squirrels
as much as I love squirrels
I hope
for the sake of both of our hearts and pleasure
that you are spending this lifetime
in a human form
because one human can
connect and melt and merge
—and make love, too, of course—
with another human
in ways that are not
seemingly
possible
with a squirrel
My Brand New Flesh Bag and I
this morning I woke up dead
my body had become a house
with too many people inside of it
I watched them with the eyes I no longer had
they made dinners
they peed in the toilet and on the walls and carpet
"you adorable miracles" I called them
they laughed at words and sounds I didn't know
and they cried
when the children exploded
"you funny bubbles of skin and thought" I called them
"Why are you here?" they asked me
my body with no lips
it said
"I'm not"
and then two people
rubbing their skin upon the other
in a fit of procreative friction tickles
"oh baby oh baby oh yes yes please"
joined their cum
and made a body
to house my Me-ness
and a babe was I again
a brand new momma
a brand new poppa
a brand new flesh bag
for my old and ageless mind
a brand new rib chair
for my bleeding, laughing heart
The Sky is a Lover
you were some young pony
what mama found in sky
he was some fun young drum
the fingers on his scalp
scrapin’ down to blood
if there’s a tear inside your brow
she’ll bring it out she will
she’ll grab the milk
straight outta that teat
that sweetly dear tear
you’ve kept for all these years
buried under arms
under arms and and under sweat
every
body
knows
it’s in the pits of arms
that the most psychedelic sex doth rocketh
rocking like a dying babe
a swingin’ in your chair
the wicker underneath her hair
whispering
“Death
is one dear friend of ours
she’ll help you see the lights
change the frights
and touch the frogs that have been screaming your name since your seventh birthday
but which you only just heard yesterday”
why did it take us so
looooooooooooooooooo
n
G
?
it’s okay it’s alright
these frogs are patient kindly saintly
they may have preferred your sooner arrival
but today will do just fine
cuz even if
IT
happens
it’ll be alright in the end
or you’ll die
and you will eventually anyways
die
and that’s alright too
there is
after All
a noticeable chance
that you or I may
be
reincarnated as pickles
tanning on the sidewalk
during this year’s
most beautiful rainfall
even if we don’t know it
the sky is a lover
even if we forget it
the soil is a cuddler
What is Popping?
many people want to know the future butt
what they don't know is
that the future is actually
in(side) of facts
a story
told by a person that lives and breathes and eats chips and jerks off and sings and sometimes weeps
inside your ass
so just open your bum
stick your softest finger in
rub that storyteller's wrinkled brow
and say "hey friend what is popping?"
Learning How to Flirt
it is an idea you get
a conceptual object passed through brains
when your bottom kisses the bench
with your pants between them
and the girl next to you has stars and felines
sprawled along her legs
with her hands and words and fire
she offers you a kiss of cake
a smooch of sugar that grew in the dirt and grew up as a
rose
not in actuality
but in spirit
in essence
the cake she gave you
was a rose from a ground
the same ground
that will one day welcome your body
as a thing that is
now
buried
the same ground that will then feed
the foods and the animals
that will feed the mother
who will feed the child
the child in the darkness her belly
—so fucking warm is that shadowy eggy womb—
and that child will be the You
the next vessel you briefly possess
and pass through
after the ghost that you are
(we are)now
leaves the last body
dead and shifting
and passes into the next
screaming and shitting
and very soon thereafter
smiling.