Art Officially

In the December of my youth,

I fucked a giraffe

when my parents weren’t looking

(when were they ever?);

it tasted like chicken.

I once paid two dozen duckets

for a Stan Yerkes baseball card.

It was only worth one ducket, at most,

but I walked around like God Rockefella himself

for weeks after that.

Theresa has bulges you wouldn’t believe.

She’s got a fly’s life and only complains

when the cat food is stale.

I’d marry Theresa, but she reminds me of nuns.

And I, last time I checked, am

not Jesus, nor even Jesus-like.

I’ve got a belly full of shoes.

My paintings won’t sell anymore.

Inevitability is the only thing that haunts me.

That

and all the different kinds of knots.

Soroughly Thoused

I am where

my eye is not.

Welching faces, welping Macy’s—

I’m all full of lament.

Raising an Army of Sisyphi,

thin out their ranks a little with waffle ball bats.

Willing to feel pain,

but unwilling to accept it as a gift from anyone but me.

Never come between a man

and his stripper.

Nanny nanny boo-boo,

I can make dreams from the lint in my pocket.

20-year-old wisdom:

“The key to life is to never have a door.”

A hand in the stomach

married to a mouth in the heart.

I got a date!

I got a date!

w/ Cindi who is 28!

I feel so great!

I got a date!

Whoa—that’s something you’ll never see on a bathroom stall.

Yet.

My father used to talk about some place

called xanax xanadu; heard of it?

Prisoner #2+2=5, please report to

metaphorical river by the idyllic tide.

Let’s catch no birds with no stones

for a change.

Gertrudes of Devotion

Had Aristotle focused a little

more on Legos, or even Legolas,

Alexander wouldn’t have grown up to star

in Oliver Stone’s worst movie,

but it all depends on the definition

of isthmus, which is the name of

the icicle used in the perfect crime—

take notes, wait for winter, don’t get fat—

one neighbor smells like fart; the

other, basement.

A Livelong Day

You should not

be let allowed

inside my electrons.

I am trying not

to let you allow be

where you don’t belong be.

It’s a full time

kind of job

where geese fear to bread.

Father Knows, and in the Knowing

Father Scrimshaw’s matted hairdo was

parted by Henrietta, just Henrietta, and Henrietta the Sufferer

has heard only one compliment from Father Scrimshaw

in all the 23 years she has been bringing him his milk and opium milkshakes:

It was the day she wasn’t wearing any panties and she had brought

over two milkshakes, one for him (as was the case every Monday, Tuesday,

Thursday, and Saturday) and one for herself because perhaps he might like

to not dive alone for once, and halfway through their milkshakes and Small Wonder

reruns, Father Scrimshaw turned to Henrietta, just Henrietta, and said

“You smell like gasoline when you smile.”

She about died right there and right then.

Between her legs got really sweaty, though it was a stickiness nothing like sweat,

and she leaned over to Father Scrimshaw and said

“That’s what God used to say to me every morning up until the day I found my son hanging by his belt in the bathroom.”

“My dear Henrietta, just Henrietta,” Father Scrimshaw replied. “That wasn’t God. That was the voice of the bugs crawling all over your belly right now.”

God Is My Backseat Driver

I’m your knight in t-shirt armor,

the kind of guy who notices

the periods at the end of the titles on U.S. currency:

John Snow

Secretary of Treasury.

John Snow, Secretary (was) of Treasury—period?

What is a period doing there?

Is this some sort of metaphor

for our government—

misplaced or odd-placed periods?

Yes, this is what I do,

can you stand me now?

Is I all that you thought I was cracked up to be?

It’s how my head works.

I only grease the gears, I didn’t

invent the machine,

So I will not apologize. I won’t.

You don’t ever have to apologize either,

but you do have to tickle my balls

every now and again.

It’s the least, really, it is the least.