I don’t want your fucking parodies

I don’t want the cliché

I want Jack in front of me

Singing and dancing

Ecstatic and mad

Alive and drunk

And digging everything

And I’m digging him

And Allen

And Neal

With poetry

And jazz

And soup and

Sex

The synonyms of

Beat

Not cool

But mad

And crazy man

And not

The nonchalant

Beret-wearing

Black-turtlenecked

Ponytailed

Freaks

Pretending to understand

Because their friends

Pretend to understand

When they can’t really see

That the whole point is

Not to be nonchalant

And bored

And cool

And say stuff like

Far out

Because everything is

Right here

And mad

And exciting

And the whole point is really

To see the

Madness

And enjoy the

Crazy shit man

And love

Life for what it

Is

And not pretend to

Love life for

What it

Isn’t

Ode to Doom 2

My favorite childhood activity,

Roaming the dirt halls of

Earth distorted by Hell’s

Intruders.

I seared the flesh of

Demons in an attempt to

Save the world from hell.

I possessed the body of

My faithful Player 1 and could

Feel the backfire of my

Rocket launcher disrupt my

Balance and could smell

The rotting flesh of my bloody

Opponents.

I found contentment in the

Catharsis in seeing bare

Bones of exposed demon flesh.

The retro 3-D graphics immersed

Me in an entire world of Hell’s

Inhabitants. I sensed the demons

Around me and could hear their

Footsteps coinciding predictably

With the distinctive roaring.

Each enemy had a specific

Sound, some sounded like they were

Sleeping standing up, some sounded

Like they were being tortured. I knew

Each one’s sound by heart and heard

Them in my dreams as I slept.

As I played each level over

And over again, though I’d memorized

Every enemy in every corridor,

Anytime mother asked

“What would you like for dinner?”

my heart skipped a beat.

I was so on edge, every muscle in my body

Completely focused on the task at hand –

Must get to the exit.

Instinctively, I reacted to every move.

I knew each sound and every note of the

Simplistic midi music and any sound that

Differed from that I knew and understood

It’s meaning.

ID Software, your game was genius.

I knew every level by heart as well as every code.

I knew exactly how to get to each key and each

Exit.

I just wish I knew what that last demon

In that last level – (that I always had to use

IDCLIP to beat) said. I could never understand

The poor sound quality of potential speech – not

Above the music – not above the sound of it

Spitting out demons at me.

My juvenile wanderings of your brilliantly

Violent game delighted me. Long after

3-D graphics evolved past that, long after my other

Games wore out, long after midi-quality was an insult

I still love you.

Doom 2, until I meet my tomb, you too, will

Always be loved.

Creepiest fuckin prince I know

He walks to me and he talks with me and tells me

He appreciates me and what I do

And has cut my face with a

Straight razor when I got too

Close but he has always been

My fucking prince

He has always loved me

Though he hurts me

And I can’t stick around too long

Cuz he’ll cut me again

And I’m always afraid I’ll

Like it a little too much and he

Says, “I’ve missed you .” with

Eyes that show recent heartbreak

And anger

But sincerity and truth and

feeling particularly truthsome I told him

Potentially too much and now he

Knows just what I mean when I say

I can’t write about him

And how fuckin painful it is but how

Comforting and wonderful he is

On this night when we concluded

That we loved the same man.

Diary of a Thought

I popped into

Her head

Just long enough

For her to say, “Oh!”

Then, as she put her fingers on

Mavis Beacon’s home row,

I saw the infinite white,

The rectangle of infamy,

With one inch margins.

And I fled,

Terrified that I might be

Trapped there

Forever.

I feel guilty about leaving her there

Sobbing about her lost epiphany,

But not guilty enough to go back to

That horrifying

Fate.

Supervolcanos

for Johnny

Your chest covered in

criss-crossing tiny lines,

scars of your past fits,

but “fits” sounds like a

fake Victorian ailment.

It’s not a fit, it’s a

constant state of being,

slowly boiling, rising self-hate

that whistles and erupts into a

secret-telling scar.

You can’t help it.

Don’t even try.

It’s there and always will be.

Magma. Waiting.

Like Yellowstone National Park.

Any minute the thing could blow and

not only would your head be gone,

but there’d be a seething, massive, murderous

crater in it’s place.

If I weren’t so fucking weak

I might do it too.

Which reaffirms and convinces me

that this path is mine.

Walking it is impossible for my

child-bearing hips to handle but I can’t help

worshiping Kali,

goddess of creation and destruction

so fuck it all

let’s blow each other off to hell

and be lovers in judecca.

Boy do I

wish this wasn’t so

easily relatable

to Neal and Carolyn

Cassady.

You could have

at least

done this at a

time when Jack was

available.

I have no

fall back

now. Nobody I can like

in between.

Until you

come back

from San Francisco,

I’ve got

no one.

Jack’s in Mexico.

The kids don’t

exist, thank god.

You’re in San Francisco

with your

women and

cars and

Allen, (whose identity

still perplexes me)

indulging completely with

some

other

girl

no doubt

writing love letters

to her

while I’m

cleaning your

goddamn jeans

and who’s there to

clean my

jeans

huh

nobody

I’ve got to

do it

myself

I’ve got to

clean your

jeans and my

jeans and

I

HATE

doing

laundry

William Wordsworth or how Scott Hess made me hate trees

Yes, this is the Wordsworth rant. So don’t ask me. In fact, if I start on Wordsworth, I can’t stop. I have to finish the rant. Cuz he’s just so fucking canon and he so totally sucks.

Talking about trees does not an epiphany make. As far as anyone can tell, Wordsworth was just talking about trees. What that has to do with him is a total mystery. He doesn’t even bother explaining it. Just “OMG TREES! OMG I”M ENLIGHTENTED!” Umm… Wordsworth, they’re just fucking trees.

Romanticizing nature is ignorant. He ignored all the horrifying and ugly things about nature to satisfy his need for incomprehensible epiphanies. He thought nature was all flowers and landscaping, but he wasn’t paying attention to the violence and pure destructive power of nature. Hell, even plants compete fiercely for sunlight. It’s willful ignorance not to notice this.

Patronizing peasants. He thinks they’re closer to god because they work the fields with their hands. You know what that peasant woman would say to him? “Fuck you, you rich pansy. Why don’t you come here and work the dirt and see how fucking close to god YOU feel?”

He keeps people out of his poetry. Daffodils. The daffodils poem will always kill me. Some shit about some daffodils and a solitary stroll and maybe it rains, but I can’t tell cuz some epiphany spooge gets in the way. Anyway, his fucking SISTER writes down this walk they all went on one day, and there was this patch of daffodils and it started to rain and they all had a lovely time with some daffodils, strolling in the rain. SHE writes a poem about bonding with friends. HE writes a masturbatory poem about daffodils. Fucking daffodils. What an asshole.

Seriously, he was in love with his sister. Or she was in love with him and he was ok with it. She wrote down everything that happened to them so that he could write poems about it. No kidding. He couldn’t even be bothered to keep his own goddamn notebook. What an asshole.

I came into school one day

Wearing an awkward pair of

Old Navy jeans

And carrying a rainbow

Of Sharpies

I told my friends to sign my pants.

“Write anything you want!”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

And they did.

Bryce signs seams.

Hasta la Victoria Siempre, love, Lola

ALOHA BLANCHE

Anarchy symbols

Random sayings

And phrases nobody understands anymore

Covered these Old Navy Jeans

I always thought I’d remember what each one said

I wasn’t counting on

The passage of time

And the washing machine

Erasing my memories

You say that my

unease

and discomfort

intrigues you,

as if it were the same as

flashing eyes and

red lips.

You say that I

like it when

people hurt me,

as if I’m either a

perpetual emotional victim or

into BDSM.

But what do you really know

about me?

I only accept pain

from myself,

as a personal and private

punishment.

I wouldn’t say that I like it or

would ever accept it from

others.

What are you,

 a sadist?

You’re looking for

baggage that goes with

yours?

My psychological

deformities

are not

your problem

your business

or your motherfucking

fetish.

A L’Hopital

Every day after school, they bring me to this room. Four beige walls with mauve and cornflower trim. The carpet is mauve, cornflower and sea foam. All the furniture is wood with mauve and sea foam plastic cushions. There are windows into the hallway and I peer through the beige blinds. I can see across the corridor and in her room is the corner of her beige plastic bed frame. It doesn’t want to upset anyone by being metal. I imagine I can make out her thin tufts of white hair.

I turn around and the television is playing a show with middle aged women wearing taupe and yelling at each other. The sound is off. I have six My Little Ponies in front of me. All carnation pink, lilac, or baby blue. In a box next to me, there is a doll house that came with one tiny baby doll in a periwinkle diaper. Someone bought it for me, but the house’s trim matches the baby’s diaper so I can’t focus on it. The periwinkle house lives in the box with the smiling girl in thistle overalls on it. The baby lives with the My Little Ponies.

Today there is someone else here. She is middle aged, and watching television. She looks like the woman who was here yesterday, reading a book. There is almost always someone else here, but they never talk to me. I am jealous of them because they don’t have to stay in this room. I hate them because they turn on the taupe women and I can’t reach the controls when they leave.

The adults feel sorry that I spend every afternoon here, staring at infinite beige, mauve, and cornflower. Grown-ups see me get excited to drink deep plum pop that tastes like blackberries and watch Clarissa Explains it All with her colorful outfits. They feel guilty that I can’t wait to go back to school with silvery pencils and wall trim with brightly animated children wearing primary colors. But what can they do? She’s dying.