07-12-2016, 03:55 AM
If My Real Boyfriend Came Back There Would Be Trouble In A Heartbeat
Ronny got sick in the eyes of the public;
his public image was smeared from oblivion
to mild infamy in a mere week.
and—
as Ronny sat down on his death,
creatures from the very bottom of the bottom
elbowed room into his niece's living-room:
"That's Ronny," she said
when the shadow from a tree outside
cast a dim erection on the coversheets
of her new couch
where her ex-boyfriend nearly impregnated her so many, many years ago.
Welfare Program
Thrice have I been dipped in the tomb of Adonis,
held by athletes and masterminds of charity.
But for what have I lasted this past century
if a flaming crash can sap me of my promise?
Damned if I'm going to rent my end as a chalice
for fleeting liberal jokes of posterity,
masked but not tightly as lasting sincerity:
ignored like a feral boy set up in a palace,
instead, from a height, I piss on prosperity;
decline future rape as Erotic parody.
Although I don't want to be left alone out there,
where the demons are dry-runs and the monsters dull,
the tame trash treasury that metes out my dole
assures to patronize my Art another year.
Straight Prose
I live with my parents.
I can't get a girlfriend.
Almost everything in the world bores me.
I can hardly concentrate on anything.
Going to doctors and having to take
medication makes me feel pathetic.
The only things that make me feel good
are illegal or bad for my health.
Everything I love is so simple:
criticism and debunkment
is the easiest thing in the world
and fashionable,
even to be crazy is fashionable
as long as you aren't crazy about anything particular.
Whores are insulted by coupons;
libraries won't take rare, expensive
donations;
Napoleon or Jesus Christ brought
low by love is too passé
to take seriously:
Nobody great would be in love so much.
—I can't look up to anyone that
doesn't make me feel bad by example.
My wet dreams drown women I've never met
in an accidental gaze, and I'm guilty
for that.
I'm guilty above and beyond the sustaining greatness of my heart:
—The same old crimes are more exciting and less passé
than that.
All Souls' Day
The night shadows down around
the room,
various liquids, mixed sea salt nuts,
a volume of Robert Frost checked out
every winter in case it snows;
apples against dehydration or constipation,
with pencils in hand, it's like he
forgets he has an eraser,
goes on down
the spiral notepad,
trying, at least,
to speak to spirits Yeats never dreamed of:
And Rainer Maria Rilke and Gabriel Garcia Marquez
along with Federico Fellini and
Ingmar Bergman walk hand in hand
in a line across the countryside horizon,
each with his own words that no one can understand;
—Ronny opens up a religious pamphlet someone gave him weeks ago.
Super Extension
"This is not poetry this is Alka Seltzer Plus,"
and hands the poor child back
to his madre.
—"And they say women are more emotional,
more irrational;
it seems to me they'd be more intelligent
than men if they weren't so
emotional."
So against his better judgment,
Ronny, with a sigh like a German paragraph,
sent along some words to the smart stranger
he met today.
By two that next morning, frozen
to sleep in a nervous exhaustion,
the phone rang not once, and then no more,
and woke him up
long enough to feel ignored,
and regretful for what tomorrow brings.