Voyeur, Redondo Beach

“Down by the ocean, it was so dismal”

I see her, the fat woman on a dented turquoise boogie board.

No, I don’t slobber all over myself with words like “Rubenesque”, that’s demeaning.

Certainly ridiculous in this scenario.

The gulls sound like sirens, even with French fries in their beaks.

The woman is just regular old fat, not “voluptuous” or anything.

Momish, I suppose.

She resists rhythm, lyricism, completely.

Almost.

Something about her reminds me of the last contact corona of an eclipse.

She is really getting pretty far out now.

Purposeful.

This occurs to me too, dimly.

Does anybody else see her/care?

Hm.

I consider fetching the tanned, muscular 20-something off his stilted throne, but don’t.

Maybe she would want me to?

Oh, wow, she just about ate it pretty hard there in a swell.

Distant.

What does it sound like that far out?

I bet we’re making eye contact right now, she and I.

Pretty sure.

The riptide sometimes feels like the tug of a willful child.

A disproportionately strong one.

There is a sense of wanting.

Is it nice to be wanted?

Must depend on your personal situation.

I look around.

My head feels not unlike that buoy out there.

Usually I would eschew the double negative.

You know, just say “like” instead.

This situation demands a little care.

Funereal?

What will my brother say when I tell him about this?

Smirking “natural selection”, but that’s not fair.

It’s wrong, imprecise, you’d have to see it for yourself.

Oops, there she goes, slips out of view.

Did she go under, or just pass the horizon line?

When you hear a song and there’s a tone that makes you physically roil with sadness.

It’s primal.

Defies description to the point that I might need adverbs, which I never use.

Beyond the horizon, I think.
What do you think she’s seeing out there now?

Extrovert me, Jesus!

My story is there’s too many flashing

pixels vying for supremacy over

this holy Hollywood junta in charge

of my flashing, weeping neuronal

shadows, but it ain’t so bad, hey man,

what are you gonna do? Nobody bites

their tongue in this constituency,

I don’t, Shirley don’t, I say la vie

est belle belle belle, and all this

fancy French reminds me, have

you seen La V In Rows? Here:

v v v v v v v v v

v v v v v v v v v

v v v v v v v v v

v v v v v v v v v

v v v v v v v v v

v v v v v v v v and well you get

the idea, it’s a pretty long one actually,

that beauty goes on for hours and hours,

a bit of a snoozer, so I just gave you a, uh,

truncated version, but it’s got this

sort of austere charm, right? The poetic

equivalent of a still photo of Helen

Mirren frowning on a beige background.

You should check it out, make sure

you check everything out, because

have something to say, is the point,

and this helps, silence is the golden

idol that gets God sticking your sorry

fork in a wall socket, because he knows,

because ignorance is the enemy,

and that CO₂ won’t leave your lungs

all by its lonesome now will it?

#ihavenogeneration

Man, I go cruising down these streets

like nothing lurks in the dark, because

now the night belongs to young archeologists,

blind opossums rooting through blackouts,

it’s just offal, tales from the intestinal crypt,

we are all squirming eyeless wasp larva

but we’re happy in these hexagonal walls

and we dream of stinging someday, dream

our asses off, and I feel long lost and Canadian

I just write whatever, I’m not afraid of internal

contradiction or hypocrisy anymore, it happens

(or does it?) gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble,

I would like you to know, I am in on the joke,

we are all in on the joke, there’s a joke, isn’t

there, yeah, I know, I get it, hahahahaha

you see?

Neurotica, U.S.A.!

Guy at the grocery store has stolen

my face, like literally, my face

is on the front of his head which

is on top of his body, and come

to think of it, looks like he’s got

my body too, you can tell because

it seems awfully soft and pudgy

for a guy so young, like you want

to look away, it’s embarrassing,

it makes your stomach moan a little.

Anyway, this guy has basically stolen

my, like, entire person and now he’s

got a cigarette lit up (indoors!), thanks

for the free PR, asshole, and I’m afraid

he might try some funny business here,

all of which, in line with previously

aired concerns, would reflect poorly

on me, but it’s not me, I don’t think.

Creative writing prof once told me

doppelgangers are cliché, and this

bastard sure fits the bill, all shifty eyed,

like you’d expect a damn doppelganger

to be, all sort of quasi-hiding like he thinks

plain sight is a rock in the crick, like

he’s a human mudpuppy with my face

and body, and it’s pouring rain outside,

which might be cliché too, brownish

liquid slowly percolating through cracks

in the corky white tile, bacterial cave kisses

surprising the lady who meanders past with

her toddler in a cart shaped like a fire

truck, oblivious to this, like, battle for

humanity going on all around her.

So guy keeps rolling through valleys

of vanilla yogurt, vanilla ice cream, French

vanilla flavored coffee creamer, and jeez,

what happened to all the flavors here,

bastard probably stole them too, where’s

the, like, moral fiber of this grocery store,

and now he’s heading toward the front,

slow, but that’s just to avoid attracting

attention, and I never want to attract

any either which makes him look even

more like me, but the point is I take a dive

at him and tackle him against a wire rack

that showers us with beach bodies, both

best and worst, and Challenging Sudokus.

And you probably expect that now is when

I figure out he’s not me, like I’m losing

my mind or something, but what are you,

an idiot, of course he still looks exactly

like me, he is exactly like me because

he has stolen my face and body, but even

once I tackle him, it’s like, nobody ever says

what you’re supposed to do past this part,

when your doppelganger’s looking at you

defiantly, like he’s somehow got more

of a right to your face and hands and balls

than you do, and really who’s to say he doesn’t,

as a couple of guys untangle the two of you

and you both just stare, eyes rolling, lips smacking

up and down in perfect wordless unison.

Kuato

Alone again, it’s a race thing,

he surmises, but then again who

can say for sure, he’s so drunk now

that the oddly sleek and futuristic

Martian barstool  seems to rock him

to unsettled sleep, so drunk that

he’s covered in a solution of sweat

and tacky mucus and God only knows

what else. He’s in a baby sling,

his life is fetal, but it has advantages,

the bass drum influence of the human

heart in his sleeping ear dampens

this howling psychic miasma,

this future looming sharp and terrible.

These women, these women

should know he’s a man where

it counts, all he wants is a hand

on his scraggly forehead, sharing

in his toothless grin at the weight

of all he knows, all he’d whisper

softly in their ears if they’d just

open their minds, open their minds.

Assignment: analyze this poem in 250 words or less

The problem here, it’s tough to verbalize,

but so he’s like hiding this desperate cry

for help, the author, in gimmicks,

alliteration, haphazard, half-symbolic

hoo-hah, (and oh, don’t get me

started on the oozing parentheticals,

this sort of obnoxiously hyper-literate

and deliberate betrayal of grammar and voice)

and why? Why does he, the author,

do this? It’s sadness but it’s something

more, poetry is bogus, poetry’s the dog

you ran over backing out your driveway

(whosefaultwhosefaultwhosefault)

and so how’re you supposed to set

your jaw and take ownership, you can’t

I guess, you’re stuck with these glib, twangy

Southern political speech metaphors.

He says, he actually says in this poem,

I’m not even kidding, he says for real that

“time is a pendulum, and I feel now the force

component antiparallel to the direction

of my movement growing as I rise, saying

come back down and cease, come lie

with me, with my siren song of gravity.”

His words. It’s just a joke, what is the guy,

a physicist? A physicist-poet? No

such thing, poetry is garbage, poetry

is lame,  poetry is an excuse. Explain yourself!

I could go ask this guy why he does what

he does, and he wouldn’t have an answer, just

a dropped jaw, a masked chasm secreting

simile and evading the truth, the pungent

garlic on his liar’s breath never quite

enough to keep all of these fangs at bay.

Excerpt from my biographical essay on Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison, you lump of dog shit left directly

under a rack of those free green courtesy poop

bags they leave in parks, you brazen mockery,

flaunting of social order, when you invented

electricity, or whatever it is you did,

(I only read the first paragraph on Wikipedia)

did you realize it would come to this?

Thomas Edison, you putrescent butt nugget!

Thanks to you I have to bite my tongue

while my male friends study up on current

post-feminist rhetoric so that they can post

it on Facebook and hopefully get laid

for their sensitivity and intellect.

The point is, you’re a damn enabler

of the basest aspects of human existence,

a vicious circle of ignorance born of you,

Thomas Edison, you fecal smear,

this is all your fault, we are blameless!

Thomas Edison, you bucket of urine balanced

on a door such that it crashes down to drench

whomsoever should enter said door with pee—

how could you? An Internet radio program

just told me Sublime sounds like The Beatles.

That’s wrong, Thomas Edison! Am I

going crazy over here, you electric prick?

Thomas Edison, there’s a reason Prometheus

stands chained to a rock getting his liver pecked at,

is all I’m saying. I don’t know what the reason

is, why don’t you look it up on Microsoft Encarta

or some other outcome of your vile handiwork?

Thomas Edison, you dropped out of school,

and I didn’t, I went to college for four whole

years, and I drank and drank and drank there,

and that’s called learning about life, Thomas

Edison, we call that letting our children make

their own mistakes, and waste time, money,

brain cells, potential, autonomy.

I’m smarter than you, is the point.

Fuck you, Thomas Edison.