“O How Enlightened Are My Bodily Functions”

People think they are so smart when they say _____ has replaced belief in God. What if belief in God is a noun, and _____ is the act of believing in God? And what if that is the only reason _____ can prevail in society?
(Vogue fill-ins for _____ include Art, Poetry, Music, Science, [...]

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Rainstick Haiku

Open a rainstick.
Pour cement over the rice.
Now it’s a rainstuck.

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My bedroom is not poetic

My bedroom is not poetic.
No sun rippling through the window like a third curtain…
No curtain at all…
Only the beating of a radio tower through the blinds like a sterile heart.
No childhood to excavate…
Only the accumulation of three blustery years’ clutter,
And a wooden box
Containing, among other nothings,
A letter
Telling how beautiful I am.

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Disclaimer for blasphemy against the devil

Perhaps I should prepare to be cut down
For my blasphemous words.
But I never said that I condoned these thoughts;
I merely thought them.

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Snakes in the Piano

Some coral snakes once found their way
under a piano lid;
Up the scale and down the scale
their scaly bodies slid.
From the open strings they bowed
a rancid melody.
I cannot say what key it was,
except the devil’s key.
Their minor seconds, clusters, tritones
made their own skins crawl.
But worst of all, they played some crap
from “High School Musical”.

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The Thrower

I kicked the wheel.
I kicked again,
and then the world
began to spin.
It spun like hell.
My raw hand bent
to force your firm form
to your center.
As i pressed,
the tough clay rose
and water splattered
on my clothes.
When your grooves scraped
and burned my grip,
I wrung gray water
on your lip.
When I was wet,
when I was sore,
when I was bleeding,
I worked more.
Today, they [...]

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Dine: Pinocchio

This idea of a talking stick becoming a boy, it’s like a metaphor for art, and it’s the ultimate alchemical transformation.
-Jim Dine
Source: The Pinocchio Museum

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A Wild Reel

You are best described by loud, jangling notes over restless percussion. You are full of ambition, more than your place in society or even your abilities can contain. You don’t think anyone understands you; people and their rules want to trip the keen-edged rhythm you exude that most of them envy. But [...]

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Ode to Longhand

This is the beauty of diary-keeping:
I can look at my own handwriting,
fresh from the pencil or years later,
and read the strokes themselves –
this is what I was thinking
when I crossed that “t,”
and, look at this mess!
my hand must have shaken
when I wrote these lines.
Errant pencil strokes are part of what gets lost
in militant ranks of [...]

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The Clown Game (Modern Poem Parody)

it can’t have
yet
if it were past
they would
and would have long since
waiting
-E. E. E. E. E. E. Whytes

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