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.

The Meaning of Life

Based on a true story

Guy has a really incredible bowel movement, and when I say guy there, it’s just a guy, not the name, and definitely not the French name, like capital-hard-G “Gee”, what is he, a queer or something? So guy, whose name incidentally is actually Guy now that I think about it, but pronounced the English way and earlier clarification still stands, has the kind of magical shit where it’s firm but not to the point where you have to strain, and you basically don’t have to wipe like at all, and the experience of passing this lump of waste is so religious, so profoundly moving, that you practically get post-partum depression, but it gets the rest of your day in order, you know, like you think you’re going to go out and do something great, like you think if everybody could have pooped your poop this morning that maybe Israel and Palestine could even get along or something like that.

Anyway.

Guy (who’s an atheist, by the way, not that it’s particularly relevant to this situation) says: Thank you God for this really incredible bowel movement!

God says: My child, I am gladdened that you were able to enjoy that poop. I myself am too holy to have an asshole, which is a vaguely amusing audible pun, but anyway I’m glad I was able to devise that function in a way you could enjoy.

Guy says: So God, what brings you to my, like, humble commode?

God says: Well, I so enjoyed seeing the positive effects of my works that I’m going to give you the chance to ask me for any one thing you may desire.

So I can already practically hear you whining about how God doesn’t grant wishes, he’s not a genie or something, and I guess you have a point, but like I said, this is based on a true story, and that’s definitely what was said, and since this is like really a third or fourth-hand account at this point, as in guy tells a guy tells a guy tells a guy (oh, and those guys I just mentioned aren’t named Guy, and they’re not the earlier guy from the story either), so maybe it really was a genie and it just got changed along the way, like oral tradition or something. If you can’t get past it, fine, you can think of it as a genie if you want, but that’s exactly how these errors start to pop up in stories that keep getting passed down, you know.

So Guy says: You know what, God? I’m actually all right for the time being. That poop was wonderful, and to ask for anything else would be greedy.

I guess that might seem unrealistically unselfish, but it was a really great turd, see above florid description if you doubt the veracity of the claim. Anyway, I guess that’s the point, is that life really isn’t so bad if you, like, stop to smell the roses, which I realize is an unfortunate choice of sense-based moral given the somewhat malodorous implications of the above, but what can you do? That’s life, I guess.

B + E

Three nights after two white males seventeen to twenty,

approximately as tall as my imagination can grow them,

threw a rock through the sliding glass door that mutated

it into a pile of icicles, the shattered termite mound of quartz

has already been replaced by just another new sliding glass door,

and I almost wish that the jagged mouth was still open,

that the too-large piece of plywood could still loom

on my behalf, crude, coffinish, but motherfucker try

to throw a rock through that, just try to violate my living

room again, now smelling oddly like a pine forest.