Watchers, or THE ORGY POEM

I'm going to be honest. I generally just post things on this blog that I don't think are publishable elsewhere. I'm sitting on some good poetry right now and if none of them get accepted for publication, I'll put them here. That's not to say what I post here is awful, it's just not the best. Either that or it's personal stuff. Or neurotic shit. Oh, what the hell, here's a recent one I like. If it gets accepted anywhere I'll just have to delete it.

Watchers

Smoking on the porch outside the secret orgy,
we're aware of our loser status, so we revel in it,
puffing on Bronsons because what else is there to do
when back inside a world of awkward touching awaits us.

We keep looking at each other, hoping one of us
will say what comes next, or that it's time to go inside
and take off all our clothes, if not our armor. And then a deer
walks down the street, tapping hooves on the asphalt so

quietly, like impatient nails against a table. "Is it time yet,"
we both wonder aloud and we giggle, a little, before it turns
into a raucous laughter they can't hear from inside
because the music and the moaning is just too loud.

But our roaring startles the deer and it runs, yet somehow
it isn't touching the ground and when it hits the intersection
it hits a car too, full of orgygoers just back from
a beer run and some of them are already naked because

they can't wait to taste a stranger, but the only thing
they taste now is blood and glass and the shame that
comes from being naked during a travesty. Still,
the sounds of fucking and sucking from inside

cover the noise of breaking bodies and twitching muscles;
the deer is dying but it keeps on kicking someone in the face
through the window and we keep on smoking. I pull out my
phone slowly, like maybe someone else will make the call first,

but I realize, between puffs, we're losers for a reason
and there's no one else around that isn't slowly dying.

Explanation

My absence here is due to the writing of a book and the crocheting of a new show, TBA. However, I thought I'd post this poem I wrote about the time French-Canadian werewolves knocked on the door of my dreaming. I think it's funny.

Perspective

I answer my door
to find
a crew of European werewolves,
loup-garou,
lounging on my porch,
confused by a crescent moon
and
reciting some French poetry
to varying degrees
of accuracy.

In the yard,
their transport,
a massive canoe,
is moored to a tree like
maybe it would float away
if not tied down
with the expert knot knowledge
of Old World sailors
in lupine skins.

The lead wolf,
tall enough
to threaten even a bear,
asks me if they've arrived
in the great Land of Canada
and I,
used to myth and magic,
reply unwavering that no,
the great Land of Canada
is many miles north.

As much as a wolf
can look let down,
this wolf looks let down.
He asks where they are then,
if they are not
where they thought
they'd be.

This last bit
is asked through
gritted teeth and a
sideways scowl
at the navigator,

a wolf fumbling with a
compass hung around his
neck, trying to balance,
in his hairy lap, a sextant
and a yellowed map.

I tell them they are in
Kansas City
and the lead wolf
expresses damnation,
cursing, "Ah me,
the Land of Kansas."

And I say, "Ah no,
the Land of Missouri."

One of the wolves howls,
an angry gesture,
still confused by a moon
half-full and another wolf
tells him it's all a matter
of philosophical perspective,
optimism versus pessimism.

The Joke's on You

I wrote this because I'm pretty sure the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just pyrite and the grass is always greener until it's in your contract to mow it.

Fool's Gold

Thinking I am lucky
always makes it so, like
all the luck in the world
is mine for today. At the
very least, the wheel only
lands on fortune and the
sweet realization of all my
secret dreams. These I
keep under my pillow and

in the journal I'd write
if I could keep it up,
but I don't because that's
evidence for them to find
when the coins vanish in
my slick palms like a
magic trick gone horribly
wrong at the end of the
casino parking lot rainbow.

Thunderbolt of Lightning, Very, Very Frightening

I'm going to self-publish all these fantasy type poems at some point, I guess. Um, so here's another one in that vein.

Osteomancy

It's like this,
Rob is on the shore
skipping whale bones
on a calm sea, waves
barely cresting enough
to still be waves
and the end result
just ripples at Rob's
ankles, washing back
the lighter bones
so he can toss them
again, when he decides,
"Hey, let's divine the
future with this shit,
these bones. I mean,
why not, huh?"

And that's how
it starts, a new
age of magic
on the northwest
coast of America.
Osteomancy in the
hands of a surfing
stoner, reading meaning
into each position;
an oracle of Oregon
picking at the
inner-wreckage of
a majestic beast to
find lotto numbers
and pick-up lines
with roots in ancient
mythology.

Rob comes to you
as a swan, with bedroom
eyes and the graceful
curves of aerodynamic
intelligence masking
human ignorance.

"My place or yours?
Mount Olympus
or Mother Earth?"

Belief

So I was thinking about belief and how, if I make myself believe in something hard enough, I can change my own reality, duh. That's what magic and religion are pretty much all about, with about a million little modifiers to make it not seem selfish. But if you see the collective and the self as one and the same, those modifiers are unnecessary. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Or something like that. I think I could say something about Prometheus and fire from the heavens, but I'd sound pretty crazy and it might be a bit of a stretch. ANYWAY. I wrote this little list poem in about, uh two minutes, so don't expect poetry gold, just a brief look into my thought process, beliefs and disbeliefs, and opinion on the teen vampires of Twilight.

Uh, I guess I should thank NPR for the "This I Believe" thing. Thanks NPR. Maybe one day I'll write a real one. By real, I mean one they'd play on the radio.

Also, I think maybe only Abbi will find this amusing.

Belief

These
I believe.

That on more
than one occasion
I have slipped into
a world unseen by
even the most devout.

That religion is
the illegitimate offspring
of magic and that
belief in one negates
practice of the other.

That ghosts are
the remains
of the remembered.
Someone, somewhere,
is making ears burn.

That witches have
more fingers than
most people, but
only when seen
through black glass.

That blood is
the most important
thing in the universe
and our bodies exist
to contain it.

That this too
shall pass
and not
a moment
too soon.

That vampires
would never,
ever,
sparkle
in direct sunlight.

And that
nothing should
be taken
too seriously,
even poetry.

More Urban Legend Poetry

I like the tale of the vanishing hitchhiker, but I fear that as hitchhiking is less acceptable these days the tale itself will vanish. Eh, I don't know why I'm worried, people still go looking for Nessie after all.

Also, I've been playing around with line breaks, obviously. I think it's funny that it forces you to read it in a William Shatner voice, but I mean, isn't that kind of annoying too? I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Phantom Hitchhiker

Often the
drive home
leaves me
wanting
for company

and you
shouldn't
want for
anything
after

you're
so far
gone
as to
pick up

a lonely man,
thumb out-
stretched
and clothes
old enough

to be in
fashion
once again.
But that's
where

I am
tonight,
driving
so far out
it seems

like I'm
in another
world with
this man
who

claims
to be
deader
than disco,
but still

around
because he
is
remembered
by his

lover,
still alive
in the
Keys with
someone

that doesn't
fade
at the
county
line

and would
I "just
please
go
make him

forget."

Urban Legends and Line Breaks

I'm reading a book about magicians. Not illusionists, like Houdini, but people that claim to use magic in the paranormal way to change reality through force of will. It got me to wondering whether urban legends exist, not necessarily in a physical way, but on a more viral, symbolic level; American monsters created by the magic of storytelling, no less real than vampires or Baba Yaga. Of particular interest, the Rat King, partly because clever taxidermists have made it a post-mortem reality, but also due to its intrinsically frustrated nature. What if, in a city so large and so packed, the frustrations of her people were made manifest in a creature like the Rat King?

City Magic

Two people
are on the verge
of going
opposite directions
because one used
Mapquest

and the other,
his heart.

It's melodramatic
that way
because we'd both
seen it in movies
and decided
it was art

imitating lives
real people lived,

especially, if not exclusively,
in New York City,
Land of the Rat King,
he of the writhing,
emotional knot
in giant rodent form,

splashing through
the sewers, existing

as a piece
of unbroken,
break-up magic
some forlorn
magician
cast under

the light
of a neon moon

and under
the weight
of leaden tears
the volume of
contaminated
wading pools.

Too much pressure
for so short a depth,

but my feet crack
anyway despite
reason and science,
all the bones
ground to powder
and all the skin

in sheets
clean enough

to write

your
very own

defixio.

When
in Rome.