1. |
||||
Awkward
For anyone who has ever said something in mixed company
that made the whole room fall silent:
...
That queasy unease of not fitting,
have not yet come to terms with strangeness.
Alcohol distracting your self-consciousness
until you drink yourself right out of the conversation.
Awkward,
teetering on the edge of creepy.
I know this.
I'm the best there is at what I do
and what I do
is very awkward.
Give me a sentence and I will stumble over it.
Put a beautiful woman in front of me and watch me stumble
over her.
Babble incoherently,
like I am the kung-fu master of social faux-pas,
the super-duper Shaolin monk of awkward.
Take any moments you ever felt like you made a fool out of yourself
tripping over the curb, the ill-advised drunk dial,
the ever-popular (WHORE!) Freudian slip
I have outdone you.
I told one of my good friends I thought she was gelatinous.
I think I meant bootilicious,
I meant it, as a compliment,
it didn't come out that way.
This
is my life.
Once, I got a dragged to a party by a girl
who in the past, I thought I was in love with.
Did not want to go.
Disappointed in myself for falling into old patterns
I faked small talk for two hours,
tried desperately to find a way to escape.
Suddenly there I was,
full-on panic attack in the middle of a room full of strangers.
Once, my skull split on concrete
Maybe my split skull split personalities
because the other one
Who speaks in whispers of contempt
Started to get a lot louder
it said “They will never understand you, these people.
Do not trust their humanity
it is flawed.”
The fear of ever having to explain
makes me pull away,
become quiet,
Suspicion is a wall I put around my emotions
so no one will be let too far in.
I push against that wall.
Smack my head into it
even as I feel the brick split my skin.
Bleed,
go vulnerable,
make the awkward charming.
The thing that makes the girls giggle.
Feel its shoulders ease
Make it swagger, yeah.
Command, the awkward,
own this moment,
own that shit ,
like this is who I am and motherfucker what?
This moment right here?
This is your redemption,
This is your revival
This is your release
This is... (gyah noise x2)
|
||||
2. |
Nerd Love
02:06
|
|||
Nerd Love
I want a nerd girl
I want glasses taped together at the middle love
I want superhero on your t-shirt love
I want messy, smelly, nervous, awkward flop sweat kind of love
I want a girl who can dirty talk in Elvish
I want a girl who when she angry screams Khaaaaan!
I want a girl who during an orgasm
sometimes screams Khaaaan!
I want 12-sided die used as anal beads kind of love
Okay... maybe that one’s a too much
But see I want a girl who understands
that comic reading time and watching BSG
Are things you do in silence
But watching Holy Grail or The Big Lebowski
are things you do screaming at the screen
The kind of girl who understands that role-playing
is something you do with cards and computer games
As well as in the bedroom
You think you know kinky
We will watch Anime then
Cosplay on some Blue Angel shit
I want a nerd girl
who talks about her action figure
and vintage Star Wars memorabilia
and then stays up late to watch Adult Swim
while we cuddle on the couch
A girl who measures the milestones in her life
with episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
But fuck Buffy I want a Willow
Seasons 1-3 Willow
If you actually get that reference
I will propose marriage to you right now
I want a girl who shouts the lines to my poems back to me
when I forget them on stage
see this is not just about being a nerd
this is about devotion
Wrap me in your geekiness
Show me the depth of your awkwardness
And insecurities
We’ll dive in
Wholeheartedly, together
And when we climb back out
We’ll make a stop at the backs of my retinas
So you can see how beautiful you look through my eyes
We will dance
Even when we know people are laughing at us
Fuck it, because we know people are laughing at us
Getting funky fresh with our spastic selves
This
Is nerd love
And when they see our unabashed joy
In who we are
And how strong we can be together
They will be dumbstruck with fear
When they realize how hollow their own love is
Compared to ours
Because only people like you and me
know how hard it was just to find each other
We will show them,
What real love
Looks like
|
||||
3. |
Next Gen
02:53
|
|||
Next Gen
We say nerd, make obscure pop culture references.
The audience smiles because they identify.
They laugh,
and sometimes we are not sure if it’s with us or at us.
The revolution already happened
and it was on every movie screen in the country
written in box office receipts.
It’s Big Bang theory, it’s Family Guy, it’s South Park,
it’s Adult Swim, it’s Cartoon Network.
But they never ask why.
Since humor is our greatest weapon,
the easiest defense mechanism,
we made jokes to preempt the ones made at our expense.
We were never comfortable here, in this world
maybe that’s why we spend so much of our lives in others.
For my part,
The Crow and Gwen Stacy are how I learned to process grief.
Peter Parker and Matt Murdock helped me cope with bullies.
Green Lantern taught me about the power of will,
how every emotion exists in its own wavelength of light
and has own power and consequences, kind of like life.
Strangers in Paradise taught me about love and friendship.
I spent a long time thinking I was David to someone’s Katchoo.
Spent even longer being the Katchoo to other people's Davids.
Didn't realize I was actually Francine,
I've been Francine this whole time.
I don’t really care if you get that last part
It was comic books that taught me to be more human.
But this is just my story and it’s been told before
Superheroes may give us something to aspire to,
but everything in our lives has become so
commercialized, compartmentalized and processed
that we are all mutants now.
We don’t like telling this story.
For some people the word nerd
became synonymous with white.
So being a nerd became trying to be white.
Or nerd became another code word for gay,
because it was better to say you were a nerd,
than it was to say you were gay.
They don’t like hearing this story.
So talk about how you like Star Trek again.
Make them laugh again.
Do a little dance, they like the dance.
Leave out the part about Uhura and Kirk
being first interracial kiss on television.
Forget Ton Stark’s alcoholism, Speedy’s drug addiction,
and don’t even mention lesbian Willow.
Don’t tell them we escape into fantasy worlds
because they still beat the shit out us in bathrooms
in the real world.
Tell them this is Next Generation
and we are all nerds now,
that this is a whole new kind of pride poem.
This is the remix of the original OG (Old Geek)
So hell yeah I am that nerd, these are the things I love,
and I don’t care if you get it.
This is no longer about being a nerd.
This is how we be human.
|
||||
4. |
||||
40 Nerd Letters
Dear Boba,
I still think of you
Dear Heroes,
When your second season sucked, I walked away
haven't looked back
Dear Hermione,
You're just too young
Dear Shatner,
I said horrible things about you
Your hair is fine
It's your acting I can't stand
Dear Zelda,
Thank you for the fun times
For every thumb blister
Dear Willow,
I love you, simple
But only seasons 1-3
Dear Jar Jar,
The nightmares stopped eventually
Dear Dude,
There will never be enough white russians
for me to just abide
Dear Rob Liefield,
I did read your comics
all of them
Dear Donkey Kong,
I will never stop looking up for barrels
ready to run
Dear Daredevil,
I'll always love you
You are all there ever was
Dear Michael Bay,
It was no one movie
your everything is impossible
Dear Xander,
We are mirrored nerds
we will battle this to the end
Dear Boba,
I still think of you
Dear Lexx,
I love you, simple
discovering you on late night sci-fi channel was a delicious accident
Dear Green Lantern,
Your power ring came too late
I was already in the other room with Daredevil
Dear Smallville,
No
Dear Attack of the Clones,
I thought you'd be too shitty
They said go anyway
they are fools
Dear Eliza Dushku,
You are the definition of unrequited
Dear Nerd Girl,
I'm sorry about the whiskey
and the tampon
I'm sorry I can't stop calling you
Dear Monty Python,
As soon as you made me smile
I was yours
Dear Preacher,
I liked the book too much
Is the movie still happening?
Dear Batman and Robin,
You were my biggest mistake
I'm sure that makes the DVD sales all the more sinister
Dear 6 of 9,
As you spouted Borg rhetoric
I imagined you and me in Pan Far
Dear Karen,
I'd of swallowed that billy club
just like I did the betrayal in "Born Again"
I still think of you as Miller's
Dear Peter,
They say a man never forgets his first redhead
how easily time flies
Dear Boba,
I still think of you
Dear Veronica Mars,
I'd of broken you in half
Dear Cris,
I'm sorry I stalked you
I'd try to forget me too
Dear Transformers,
I can't be with you again
just accept it
Dear Dr. Who,
No
I can't watch you die
again
Dear Joss,
I wrote a poem about you
No one really read it
I think its stupid
Dear Life-size Darth Vader Statue,
I finally stopped wanting you
Dear Last Dragon,
I was drunk
um... actually that's it
Dear Des,
Maybe it was the Superman t-shirt
or the fact you were awkward too
You were the first time I learned
nerd fantasy girls can come to life
Maybe you're still a nerd
Call me
Dear nerd girl at Nationals,
I was your biggest mistake
Dear Terry Moore,
You are more than Strangers in Paradise
more than I could ever put in a poem
Dear Boba,
I still think of you
Dear Boba,
I keep pictures of your first action figure in a box
each one, in its original package
|
||||
5. |
||||
Battle Cry for the Skinny Fat Guy
Oh ye of skinny arms and skinny legs
But protruding belly
Lo, I sing to you of the skinny fat guy
Oh ye paunchy brethren
Know that when you order the extra cheese
I am with you
Know that your indulgences are not evil
That you too are sexy
Praise be to the women who have love for love handles
Gaze
Gaze into my cheese gut
Be not afraid
Tis better to find joy in life
To love thy self
Than waste away spending hours at the gym
And to all the washboard abs of the world
The shirtless sweat hogs
I drum my belly in defiance, and because I find it soothing
And I stand here before you happy and unashamed
To tell you
That while you’re at the gym
I am at the bar, on the beach, and at the poetry slam
Talking to your girlfriend
Being more emotionally available then you will ever be
We are the brave of belly fat
We are the heroes of happy hour
The cuddling corpulent
The soldiers of second helpings
We are the freemasons of foodbabies
We are the Monday night midnight ice cream sandwich
We are smarter than you
Will love harder than you
Because we had to work so much harder to get there
Beware washboards
Because paunchy
Is coming out
Punching!
|
||||
6. |
Play With My Hair
02:31
|
|||
Play with My Hair
I leaned my head onto her shoulder, and she caressed my hair
I said, “Don’t do that”
“And by don’t do that, I mean, do it again”
“But don’t do that”
“And by that I mean, do it over and over again”
But don’t do it again
Because that’s just another thing I won’t get to have tomorrow
Another thing we won’t do for each other
In the mornings we won’t have together
When I was younger, I kept it short because it was easier to manage
Still do
And also so during sparring matches in Karate
I wouldn’t overheat under my headgear
Look around, most of us fighters have short hair
So no can grab it
Use it as an easy way to manipulate your head
But your soft caress, fingers running through scalp
That’s a much different sensation
A different way of manipulating the head
Fingers reaching deep into genetic simian memory
Social grooming only seems a cruel term when you don’t understand what it really is
This is how we build intimacy, family, community, still
This is what your mother did to comfort you when you were a child
This is what helped you sleep
This is what we would have laughed about while dancing
The “ow my eye” when you whip around to fast
Nuzzling the back of your head while spooning in bed
Is really sweet until someone can’t breathe
The tiny hairs in the small places that stand up to soft touch
Breath, kisses
Tracing lines with fingers to learn contours, rhythms
This is you build foundations
How “someone I’m seeing” becomes “my girlfriend”
This where comfort becomes intimacy
Where intimacy becomes love
This is the scent that blindsides you some idle Sunday morning
When you slip on a t-shirt she borrowed when she stayed overnight
Never comes out your sheets no matter how many times you wash them
This is what you implied when you played with my hair
So don’t do that
And by do that I mean do it again
But don’t do that
Unless you intend to do it again
And again
And again
|
||||
7. |
||||
Dear Nameless
You are every girl I have ever had a crush on
And there have been, way too many of you
Because I can crush so easily
Have a weakness for a pretty face and weird quirks
A sucker
For those little moments
The way you once ran your fingers through my hair
I didn’t tell you that that time you borrowed my pen
And wrote on your hand
I liked the idea that you were using my ink on your skin
The way we squeeze a little too hard when we hug
Hold on too long
That time we walked
Arms around each other
To the train station
I would have kissed you
Gone home in your arms
If not for your drunk co-worker
You are the pieces that creep into my dreams
Make me able to get through work the next day
You are also three years I wasted not noticing others
Because I was convinced I was in love with you
You are not the same girl each time
And this feeling
Only lingers so long
So if are even remotely interested
You better be obvious about it now
Because I’m no good with subtle clues
And if you are out there wondering whether this letter is about you
The answer is yes
And also no
There is reason it is addressed to “Nameless”
If I wanted it to be to you
I would have used your name
You, are an apology for every could have been
Which is to say
You also are Julia
The only one whose name I am brave enough to say aloud
As it is almost certain I will never see you again
I sorry you were not the one
I know it isn’t fair when I call on you
Do not know where your tolerance for it still comes from
Do not understand, the continued kindness
I do not deserve it
There is no rhyme this time
And I hide the photograph angel
Bury it somewhere in my subconscious
Where I can pretend to forget where I put it
But in my weaker moments
There you are
Hovering
Like all those photographs I can’t bear to part with
Maybe things would be different if we met now
Instead of then
We could forget all the reasons we could, should, not be together
Pretend the word impossible means possible
Love, like every never, is now
Then I remember how unfair that would be
Place you in the box under the bed
Where I put all the regrets
I prefer not to think about
|
||||
8. |
This is Not...
02:45
|
|||
9. |
||||
4 Stages in a Doomed Relationship
1 Initiation
In the past, there was a lot of not you in my life
so it was easier to not think of you constantly.
There were whole days you weren't here at all.
Now, there's a lot less not you.
In an effort to not think about you
I've been thinking about you a lot
The other day a friend pointed out
I mentioned your name
six times in twenty minutes.
All I could think was:
”Daaaamn!”
I'm in trouble.
I know this story.
Know exactly where it ends.
Know too well my tendency
towards self-sabotage
It doesn’t matter.
I sleep in spurts now.
I don't trust this feeling.
I've been here before.
It's a lie.
2 Infatuation
There is a creepy sense of romanticism here.
3 The Semblance of Love
She are smile thrown backward against the sky
Schoolyard butterflies made out of flames,
fluttering up to my chest
Every time I hold her hand
Her voice a steady rise of warmth through my whole body
Scent on the bed
the sense memory that spells out the words: “Home,”
every time.
Body where I still believe God exists.
Like it’s the last place he cared enough to show off,
every inch a testament to faith in sacred ground.
Tucked under the covers holding tight to each other
like if we squeeze hard enough we can become one person.
There is no place, more peaceful
than these moments
I think this is all we get,
what’s left behind when everything else turns to dust.
We are eagles with wings outstretched
gliding on updrafts of each other’s empty spaces.
Talons clasped together and spiraling.
We never notice the ground is coming up fast.
4 The Inevitable
I try not to think about it.
Know enough to know
when there's too much back-story,
too much history to deal with.
I can't compete with that,
shouldn't have to.
You are here (heart).
This is all the guidance you should have needed.
Find myself trying too hard to look happy,
trying too hard to smile
I swear every time I see someone
who looks like you from the back,
a little burning sensation lodges itself
in the chunk if my heart where you used to live.
I don't think I was ever in love with you.
That doesn't stop you
from invading parts of my subconscious
I thought were finally safe.
There will always be a piece of that still belongs to you.
Women can smell the desperation on me.
Feel the cold of your ghostly shadow
when I hold them.
But I still hope one of them
can patch the hole you left
fill it up with all this not you
I’ve been missing.
|
||||
10. |
Lost Girls Quartet
09:09
|
|||
Lost Girls Quartet:
Wendy, 25-years-old
Dear Peter,
It was never like this with you.
Never knew I would grow to be this.
To be where thimble kisses have no place.
I now have hips and breasts,
have kissed and been kissed
and licked and sucked
and so many more things in so many places
you have never known.
I taught you things Peter.
I have never stopped teaching.
Lost boys become lost men
and I have so much more to show you now.
I now own the window you once flew into.
I own the whole damn estate.
I own my life.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been downsides.
Menstruation can be a pain.
I suspect this alone would make someone like you
never want to leave childhood,
but in truth with all your magic
you were never the strongest of us.
That was Tinkerbell.
Then there is the hoot and holler
of the men my age.
They can be aggressive when they are drunk.
But I know how to take care of myself,
being with you taught me that.
When one tried to take what would normally be given
I told him:
“Motherfucker, I’ve fought pirates with hook hands
That drunk frat boy stuff don’t mean shit to me”
and then I dropkicked him in the face.
But Peter, sexuality is a gift.
Responsibility is not as dire as you made it out to be.
Getting older can be beautiful.
You should see my parents now.
The way my mother kisses my father
softly, sweetly, every night before she goes to bed.
The way they have grown weird together,
stopped caring what everyone else thinks of them.
They are like children again.
I think you really love someone
when you can't wait to be old with them.
I want to be old with you.
Peter life is magnificent.
Please, leave your Neverland behind.
You are missing all of this.
Tinkerbell Writes Her Only - and Final - Love Letter to Peter Pan
Dear Peter,
I loved you once.
I don’t know if you ever knew that.
I loved Wendy too.
The depth of my love knows no gender.
No restriction of monogamy.
Peter, I was the one who told her to leave.
I told her things I never told you.
Taught her things you would not believe.
If only you would have bothered to ask.
You always thought I was mute you silly boy.
She needed to leave Peter.
Just as I need to stop being your little fantasy girl.
Do you have any clue how long fairies live?
I’ve been alive for centuries.
These eyes have seen empires come and go.
The things we could have done together.
Have you ever seen a fairy orgasm?
It’s like a sunburst.
Peter, there have been t-shirts made of my image.
I am an icon.
You are an afterthought.
You have no magic without me
and I have been protecting you for years.
There is no fairy dust left here for you.
No happy thought will save you now.
They are coming for you Peter.
I hope you have learned to run.
Dorothy Gale 3AM Hollywood Boulevard
My whole life I have only ever loved three men.
I know that must seem hard to believe after all these years,
but it’s true.
Though I have known straw men,
men whose insides I splintered and left
crumbled and broken on the floor,
who I burned to cinders.
It is true I miss them most of all.
And what of tin men?
Those cold metal-suited men who watch this sing and dance.
Who might have rusted under my wet.
I suspect not one of them ever found a heart.
There have been so many cowardly lions.
Scared little boys hiding in men’s clothing, there have been legion,
and so many types besides.
There have been poppies to help me sleep,
and a whole multi-colored plethora of horses and drinks.
I have been to all sides of the rainbow now.
Auntie Em passed the spring I turned 18.
I left Kansas for LA when Toto died two months later.
Spent the first few months searching for traces
of my two absent parents.
I lost my virginity to a 26-year-old bartender on New Year’s Eve.
That was over 15 years ago.
I now own 13 pairs of ruby slippers.
No matter how many times I click my heels I never seem to get home.
I am writing this on a bar napkin.
Drank too many martinis and have no yellow brick road
to lead me home to my studio in the Valley.
Eventually some cowardly lion will offer me a ride home.
I will wake up in an unfamiliar room in the morning.
I will repeat this the next day and the next day.
I am well paid for this song and dance I do but I am tired.
I never thought I would miss Kansas as much as I do in this moment.
Never thought I would ever say those words again
yet here I am chanting them like a mantra:
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like...
Alice at 50 Writes to her Old Friend Cheshire
I started to agree with the people who tell me it never happened.
I think it’s easier that way.
They say story, adolescent fantasy, drug-induced frenzy hallucination.
Your floating grin, no body, no face, just eyes and teeth,
substitution for some face I’ve not allowed myself to see.
Years of therapy tell me you are some sort of coping mechanism,
the caterpillar a metaphor for some childhood trauma,
a giant smoking phallic symbol.
The mad-hatter is a drunk father, a overly touchy-feely neighbor.
The looking-glass some sort of body acceptance metaphor.
The jabberwocky the horror in my own reflection,
all different faces for something they tell me I refuse to face.
They say all the drink me, eat me should have clued me in.
They don’t know.
There is no metaphor here, no coping mechanism,
nothing funny in my father’s tea and cake, no pedophilic neighbor.
I am not in denial about anything.
I was there.
You know Cheshire, they never believe you.
I have a daughter.
Since having her I have learned I am not mad, not crazy.
They have simply forgotten how to be children.
Forgotten a story can exist simply for the sake of its own wonder.
Her father only stayed until I told him.
He took her from me when she started to tell the stories too.
They tell me you are not real.
That this cold grey I have known for so long is the real world.
That this loneliness is of my own doing,
but my child was the only thing I ever created
as beautiful as the Wonderland I once knew and she was taken from me.
So tell me how is this world, better than yours?
At least there, they only ever wanted to take my head.
In Wonderland, I was confused, maybe frightened at times,
but never broken.
They tell me I am broken Cheshire.
The white rabbit has been dead for so long now.
The last time I saw him alive his watch had cracked.
He was crying Cheshire.
Knew he had somewhere to be
but had no sense of when he needed to be there,
whether he had gone there already.
He reminded me so much of my father then.
They tell me he was.
That I should stop hiding behind the stories, to grow up,
but this adult world is so ugly.
I miss your smile.
I miss my friends.
The rabbit hole is gone now, or lost,
I only know I can’t find it.
So I started digging.
I buried the white rabbit in the yard.
There are so many things buried here.
I am falling now.
I’ve been falling for so long.
I know eventually I will stop.
I know I am coming home.
|
||||
11. |
||||
Kingpin
1
“Benjamin Franklin is cold”
Benjamin Franklin is on the hundred dollar bill
An amount I have never seen in real life
I name my pet mouse Benjamin Franklin
The spinning of his exercise wheel a squeaky lullaby singing me to sleep
I am awakened only by my father’s footsteps as he comes home from his second shift of the day
Each step a slow tired crash of lead on wooden floorboards
When I leave for school the next morning
He is passed out on the couch
Mom and dad fight about the usual
Money, rent, food
Mom screams, then dad screams
When he can take it no longer
Dad storms out
His footsteps make the house tremble
He seems a giant to me
The worst is when something gets switched off
This time, it is the heat
Benjamin Franklin is not moving
He is frozen stiff
2
“I make a friend of horror”
At school, there screams and taunts
They call me “fatty”
At some point after the tears have begun to soak into the collar of my shirt
I fight back
I turn my size from something of ridicule to a tool of intimidation
After beating my tormentors
I get a reputation
Smaller kids give me their lunch money as “protection fees”
I isolate myself for hours in the library
Learning from the mistakes of the past
I study war
Nietzsche, Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Macarthur, Musashi
Learn the language of manipulation
I develop vision, principles of leadership
“I divide vision into tactics and strategy.”
Fists pounding faces until blood spills
Maimed limbs, snapped vertebrae
Concrete tied to legs thrown in the river
These are tactics
“Luck is opportunity meeting preparedness”
Always practicing and training
Building influence
Leading by example
Embracing horror more than any of your enemies
This is strategy
I shave my head because a lice infestation in the neighborhood
“It adds to the impact of my presence so I leave it that way”
A union man gives me fifteen dollars to start a fire
A maintenance man gets in the way
He goes up too
I am twelve years old
3
“I am a magician. I know how to make things disappear. Evidence. My past. People.”
4
“A man without hope, is a man without fear”
Heroes are only as good as they are useful
A worthy opponent sharpens your skills
All heroes must fall
We love the fall
Build men up just high enough to knock them down
Everyone wears masks, has secrets
Sides of themselves they hide from others
Everyone has confidants, friends, and lovers
Every secret has a price
I once bought all of one man’s secrets
From a former lover turned junkie who needed a fix
Junkies are very useful
I ruined the same man’s best friend
Made him question his faith
I use agents whenever possible
I met a man named Lester who was good with projectiles
Never missed
There was another named Mary
Had multiple personalities
Many of them were very useful
The insane have many uses
To kill the friend
To kill the lover
Twice, I did not even need to ask
Take the hero’s hope from him
A man without fear is easily broken
5
“We created Kingpins”
It is your fault
It started with Prohibition
Post WWI an entire empire built from a single law
Bugsy Segal, “Lucky” Luciano, Myer Lansky
In the Depression, it was nickel and dime gambling
Economic hardship breeds desperation
Desperation leads to violence
There has always been crime
It’s just human nature
But you wanted me
Needed me
I built your cities
The infrastructure that keeps them going
You made me
Idolized me
Romanticized me
I am Fisk, Scarface, and Soprano
I am Capone, Gotti, Amin,
I am your pusher, dealer, and supplier
Your drugs, your weapons
I am your political ideology, your religion
I am the secret history of genocide lurking just under the surface
I am whatever you need your villain to be
I am your Kingpin
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12. |
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In Memorial
For Michael, Shannon, George, and Kieth
1
Michael, last in the line of God’s smiting fist
It seems you were not with us long enough for people to understand
That you drew so much more than just a bunch of pretty pictures
Even though, that is probably what you’ll be remembered for
Still drawing through cancer-induced bone marrow hell and making it seem easy
In your absence we will all sharpen our pencils and strive to be better
2
Shannon, the day I heard I was at a poetry slam
It felt like someone had ripped my heart out and stomped on it
Could not breathe for 3 minutes, did not want to perform
Could only remember the only words I ever said to you:
“Beautiful, in every possible sense of the word, beautiful”
It is the only epitaph I can offer
Only 20 years old, God, what the hell were you thinking?
“Beautiful, in every sense of the word...”
3
George, if you don’t understand why this man was a poet
Than honestly, we don’t need to be talking to each other
In my home “Brain Droppings” and “Napalm and Silly Putty”, were referred to as “the Good Books”
All our lives, as performers, we live with the eternal frustration: “Carlin, already did it”
We will never forget the Good Words, all 7 of them
The holy hymn of the foulmouthed troublemakers of the world
Say ‘em with me if you know ‘em: Shit Piss Fuck Cunt Cocksucker Motherfucker Tits
4
Kieth, you didn’t know Kieth
Unless you paid real close attention
Blink and you’ll miss them roles in Drop Dead Fred and the Royal Tanenbaums
Kieth was an actor, a neighbor, and a family friend
Lovingly tending to the garden outside our building
Purple violets and smile creating a small oasis of beauty in a desert of cold brick and mortar
A good feeling in a city to often bereft of them
These are the types of everyday constants you grew up with
Never expecting one day you would be blindsided while riding the elevator
By the fact that you will never experience these things again
A comic cover, a poem, a good joke, a smile and a waive
They are such small moments
The weight of them is so heavy they make the words on this page, seem like a bullshit coping mechanism
Cursing ourselves, because this is the best we can do to honor all this love
There is light in those moments
There is love in these memories
That will not die
For Michael, for Shannon, for George, and for Kieth
This poem is our promise, that we will never stop loving for you
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13. |
Speaking in Tongues
02:51
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Speaking in Tongues
They call it speaking tongues
Before there was language there was the beat
in cloud claps and stuttergasps
our eyes and tongues fluttering like moth wings
hypnotized by the light.
this is never going to make sense
I don’t expect you to understand
just feel where I’m coming from
feel it ya’ll
we’re all struggling to conceptualize this confusion
but our language is too limited
Asking questions like:
Why are we here?
George Carlin says:
“Plastic, assholes.”
Stephen Hawking tells us: philosophy is dead
My dad thinks
we evolved from when the aliens
jettisoned their space toilets.
Which makes us all space shit.
Like it’s all one big practical joke
and God can’t stop laughing
He wants us to laugh too
‘cause that’s the fastest way to get to love
A language spoken in the vibration of heartstrings
It comes out in the moments we still feel like children
playing with our toys
imagination the fastest way to someplace better
Our brains are still trying form this feeling into words
but when its gets to our lips
there are translation errors
Frustrated with these limitations
I took to turning the ring on my finger
hoping my belief in it would give it power
It’s no different than you wearing a cross, a yarmulke
Carrying a Koran in your pocket
I want to learn sign language
Breakdance, hip roll, salsa swing better
so I can relearn how to speak clearly with my body
know it will never be enough
Something more is happening here
The perilous line between idea and ideology
has left us all running on autopilot
babbling in sound bites
turned faith into dogmas and religion
ricocheting quotations off holy books
into the brains of people
voices trembling in song and psalm
desperate for something, anything
an answer
When we think we’ve learned the sound of His song
we get into wars with anyone who sings different
because we’re not evolved enough yet
to be comfortable in our own skins
Stuck in our mental tidal wave
the undertow pulling is out
We can feel it now
Terrified to let go
Dance, sing, love,
speak to God or gods
It doesn’t matter what you believe
if you’re an evangelical, agnostic, or atheist,
so long as the belief is true to you.
But I don’t want to preach to you
because that’s how the repressed,
speak to the desperate,
just ask any fundamentalist.
But the Promised Land is the place
where we come back ourselves,
own our stories,
speak the rhythm, the song
and the tongue.
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14. |
Reflections on Darkness
03:04
|
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Reflections of Darkness (II)
It is a sunny day in 1957, Helmut Gunther invited my father,
an army private of 19 to his home for dinner
Upon first impression, Helmut’s life was the model
of 1950s suburban Americana
Beautiful wife, house, two kids and white picket fence
Helmut Gunther, picture of the post-war experience
Helmut Gunther, proud former member of the Waffen S.S.
Nice, safe ex-Nazi
How does a teenage mind conceive such contradictions?
The good man he met, versus the evil he committed
Decades later, as Alzheimer’s slowly steals other memories
My father remembers with distinct clarity the disconnect
What the author Hannah Arendt called
“the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”
Only last year, a man my age whose name I will never know
Woke up in the morning, ate a bowl of cereal
washed his clothes for the last time
He listens to music
In this moment he and I are not so different
We both go to the window
Remember times when things seemed different
Before mortar shells and gun blasts
Stole our childhood
Both wish we were faster than bullets
But where I pulled away from my faith
He went headlong inward
Never made it back out
Homemade dynamite strapped to his stomach
A rational response to the years of horror clawing at his heart
The next life promising something better
I ate cheese
Watched on the news when you took twenty people with you
When I go, I’m only taking memories
Maybe some cheese
These stories are not unique
We turned our heads on Darfur and Wounded Knee
Forgot Japanese internment
Feigned shock at Abu Grahib and Guantanamo
We have already done the same
to Haiti, to BP, to LaVena Johnson
I guarantee we will do the same to Troy Davis
The list will only get longer
Selective memory is an opiate
Collective attention span only as long
as the next cable news cycle
The half-life of each atrocity getting shorter
as it ticks away at the bottom of the screen
And it is so easy to assign blame
Demonize faceless men so we can delude the one in the mirror
Religion has taught us that the solution is to deny, repress
Deny, repress
So easy to lie to ourselves
Darkness is ordinary
It is everyday
A neighbor inviting an army private to dinner
A boy in a small Middle-Eastern village,
or small town America
Is me
At the window
Thinking of bullets
Fists clenched
Eyes squeezed shut
Holding
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15. |
The Apparatus is Damaged
03:08
|
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The Apparatus is Damaged (Ask me)
Most of the time,
I am a walking contradiction
The bits and pieces you most often see
are the easy parts.
But then there are the other parts,
they come in the post-accident whispers
between dream and memory,
The apparatus is damaged,
so ask me.
Ask me about my childhood
look up the word hero
see a picture of my mom.
Who taught high school English in the South Bronx
for longer than many of you have been alive,
and raised two kids
on a NYC public school teacher’s salary.
Ask me about my nice guy status.
My disconcerting habit of falling for girls, who prefer girls
but aren’t ready to commit to that yet
and for some reason need my help to get there.
Like the girl who I took on a three day out-of- town trip,
would not let me touch her the whole time we were there
then told me she masturbated while I was in the shower.
Not as a come on,
but because she thought that telling me that would be funny.
Yeah, I get the crazy ones too.
Ask me about my days in junior high school
3 years of pent up rage
manifested into
crying the first time I beat down someone who teased me.
That I sometimes let people have cheap shots on me
rather than fight them
because I lack an “off switch.”
Ask me what bullet wounds look like.
How heavy a friend’s gun can feel
when you hold the backpack that hides it.
Ask me about faith, God, and angels
What I know...
Is that there are things about me you would be better off not knowing.
A history of bits and pieces
and lost days
I’ve seen a lot done in a name of faith and God.
The way a face looks
after being pounded into pavement
even after the person stops breathing.
About the gurgling sound someone makes
when they are stabbed in the throat.
The way bloods squirts out of man’s thigh
after being hit with a pick-axe,
as he screams the words “answer me”
to his God, over and over again.
To stand there and do nothing because you were told:
“Don’t get in involved”
The way the “angels” can look a lot like you and me after they fall.
You can ask me where the stories end, and my life begins,
but after head smack blood on concrete
that line is a little fuzzy.
I may never know the truth about everything that has happened to me.
Maybe that’s why I can remember lines from other people’s poems
better than I can memorize my own
because internalizing these pieces of me
and exposing them to you without fear
is something I struggle with everyday.
So I say things like “beautiful”, “amazing,” and “the apparatus is damaged’
because “I love you,” “brain damage,” and “psychosis” are too terrifying
but I’m trying.
I’m trying to build something here
I don’t what it is yet.
I hope to God it still looks like me
when it’s finished.
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Jaime Martin New York, New York
Jaime Martin is a writer, performer, comic artist, and professional nerd. He currently lives and works in New York City and wishes they would bring Firefly back.
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