King’s Ballad: Part 1, First Draft

The crown upon the king’s brow sat
Oh prideful the attire!
Hard gems ne’er seen a fierce combat,
His eyes yet burned with fire.

The king upon a god’s throne sat
To preside over all
With corners soft, too wide by half
So weighted ne’er to fall.

The throne upon a staircase rose
To steal its climber’s breath
Its carpets tread by foreign feet
That drag in civil death.

Today the stairs bear maidens white
Who seek a dowry fair,
They make a neatly dragging line
And shuffle under his glare.

“Young maidens white, I say to thee,”
A page reads for the king,
“You all should have my sound applause!”
The page accords this thing.

The king smooths down his handsome brow
And judges first the first,
“A trifle taught,” he thinks aloud.
“She suffers of a thirst,”

But this was by her father said,
When none speak but the king,
A father and a peasant less,
“Please listen to her sing.”

She starts in with a saddening tune,
Back home a lauded tale,
No kind ear finds it in this court,
Her song of lovers hale.

“This song of yours is fine,” he lies,
“I hold its merit dear,
But both of thee spoke out of turn,”
He gestures then and sneers.

Epic Interrupted: My Bitch of a Coma

Man, that was one bitch of a coma! Looks like some loser was littering my blog with girly poems about how hard it is to masturbate when you’re crying all the time. Think that’s hard? Try giving yourself a hand when you’re two weeks into a coma. I don’t know how he got my Epic password but I assume it involved his nerdenheimer skills and a lot of one handed typing.

Wherever you are kid, one more pussy-ass post like that and I’m going to go around kicking some nerd neck until I track you down, then I’ll kick yours extra hard with my surface-to-neck nerd kicking boots. They’re some kind of hide; I don’t even know what, probably bear. I got them on sale in the meat-packing distract. Whatever.

So I got this coma, couldn’t even believe it, hit me like a ton of poisoned axes, or like a rockslide, but the rocks were grenades. Now I know you hear about comas all the time, but this was really a bitch of one, like a double coma at least. It was a hard battle to win because my eyes were closed and I couldn’t see who to fight, but fight I did.

They say I struck three nurses and whacked off half a dozen times, at which point they didn’t think I was in a coma anymore. Turns out they were right. I don’t know if comas have necks, but if they do then I kicked my coma’s neck in.

How I did it: my Coma Request Form. If you haven’t filled one out you’d better do it soon, otherwise, if you hit a rough spot and go coma, they’ll just let you lie there. Me, I had them dress me up in my best pair of wind pants, my sickest Cougars hoodie (Go Cougars!), and, of course, my nerd kicking boots. The way I figure, a coma’s the worst kind of nerd, it sits around all day not fighting or doing chicks—probably thinking about video games—so I knew my boots would be a big help.

Also, I requested that they constantly play a copy of the motivational CD I made for myself. It was the sound of that voice, I think, that finally pulled me through.

My Second Shadow

My second shadow,
My imprinted piece of light,
Its softness makes no less the shadow.

The mingler, the extrovert,
No more than my shape,
Meets a real thing—

Rented, folded, shape-torn.

Passes on and returns in one mindless,
Painless motion.

An unevent.

Old second shadow,
You cannot help but belong.

Appraisal

Some science
Takes a pick of moments past,
Then posits
Who you hate, love, or neglect.

Keening Call

I knew that if I came again, it’d be
To hear black hymns of immortality.

The years I waited, steps away, I woke
On early mornings not to clanging bells,
But to their songs, their welcoming farewells.

Then some years past they lured me to their stone-
Blind door, and took me past their painted glass,
To find a pass and shuffle through, emotion-
Blind and shuffling through, I never think
That I can hide away and keep my grief.

Instead I do as they implore, I come
With nothing, leave with less, I only know
That they will call again, and I, the fool
Will not have learned to stuff my ears and wax
Them shut; I live too close, my life’s too small,
Their call too strong and I too proud. So bring
Me back for nothing more, I’ll shuffle through
Your stone-blind door; fists clenched, I shuffle through.

So many souls in vibrant youth are lost
In discordant melody. If it is mine
They’re after next, they’ll have to wait, I’ll not
Come yet. I hum their tunes now, in my sleep,
But I’ll give none my soul to keep. It’s been
Some years since my return. We all still sing,
We all still yearn. But as I live I’ll watch
Them pass, for souls are but a bitter nosh,
And sirens taste not else but loss. At last
I’ll hear the choir wane, their voices thin,
Their breaths come short; I’ll watch their tresses gray.
The youth they took is lost on them, I’ll come
Again in comfort as their singing fades.

 

12/03

Mnemonic Device

Unhappy walkers tracking along,
Hearts buzz, minds hum—all a drone.
Divisive device of onus—when undone:

Danger certainly, insanity readily,
Vanity—incredibly.
The tracks are individually invisible,

Worrying away associatively
At the middles of places.
Raise a monument, a monolith, a mausoleum

Amidst the tracks—how fast they will retrace,
With barely a heart-buzz—
A hum quickly quieting to the decibel’s drone.

Unhappy walkers tracking anew,
A new buzz, like before’s—only thicker,
Onus’ device owned around—undoing due.

Beetletopia

Come to Beetletopia

Where industrious worker beetles have made a home
out of Mecha-Godzilla’s scrapped-ass,
studying his secret Mecha-technologies.

Where iron filings are spread in heart shapes
and Astronauts play catch with Poets.

Where the clean ocean lies next to the rusting city
and tall forests sprout from your imagination.

Where there are always plenty of good hiding spots
and every door leads outside.

Where hungry beetles eat their babies
but that’s about as bad as things get.

Where you can fall asleep anywhere
and wake up with a blanket over you.

Where art is on the walls and in the sky.

Where everyone knows the Beetles rule,
but all you have to do is shift your antennae
to hear the songs of revolution.

The Plunger

Someone threw a plunger at me—
Laughed and called it toilet humor.
Grabbing it I asked if he would
Like to see some jail-rape humor.

The Epic Begins: Mecha Chumpzilla

There are no weight classes in the Toughest Living Creature Competition. That’s Mecha Godzilla’s first problem. His second problem, the main one really, is that on March 30, 1984, 8 lbs. 7 oz. of fury came into this world, bawling for oily robot-monster blood. Sure, I never got that big, but every inch of me was designed to kick that fire-breathing kaiju’s metal throat in.

You see, ever since Mecha took the TLCC, people in my circle have debated whether or not he’s considered “living,” and if he should really keep the title. Unfortunately, the organization’s first tenant, “Winners are always right,” as well as their second tenant, “If there are two winners, both of them are right, but the tougher one is more right,” have allowed Mecha to maintain his dominance over the league for decades.

Until today… I fought him, just now, at midnight, and I have just enough time, vital fluid, and unbroken fingers left to finish this blog before my next battle: with this bitch of a coma I feel coming on.

If you didn’t hear us fighting I’m surprised. Your delicate psyches probably just told you it was traffic or something because you couldn’t conceive of how epic our battle was. The dude smacked me with the Statue of Liberty, which would have been fine, except I wasn’t looking. After that I pretty much let him have it.

Let’s just say that that Tin Man will need more than an oil can to get him started again. Nor will he have an easy time finding his heart, because I tore it out, made it into a car, drove it home, and then stuck it in a big blue bag by the curb…

Tomorrow’s recycling.

So in a month or so, when you’re having your can of Coca-Cola or PBR, give it a tilt in remembrance of Mecha: you might just be sipping out of his heart.

Cow-Incidence

A low-cunning cow-herder slips in his pen,
Cow karmic awareness asserts itself then:
Black hoof finds pink oval and reddens it red,
Gets harder on cow-herders to get ahead.