Category: Poetry

If only Tom would catch Jerry, diminutive, big mouth,

Rip off the head, masticate the hairy skin, the whiskers, the tail,

The meat, the innards,

Consume it all,

Boil down the bones,

Drink it,

Urinate it,

Shit it out!

We live in an unfair world!

And Tweety, piss-yellow, diminutive, big mouth,

Safe in its cage,

If only Sylvester would catch it,

Rip off the head, masticate the feathery skin, the wings, the tail,

The meat, the innards,

Consume it all,

Boil down the bones,

Drink it,

Urinate it,

Shit it out!

We live in an unfair world!

Nic Haghori

                       For The Reader’s Digest

Hi, I’m Joe’s anus.

I like to talk, but Joe doesn’t very often let me.

My idea of a good sandwich

is liverwurst on white bread

with a side order of onion rings.

I turn my nose up at vegetarians.

I only have one eye and I

constantly concentrate on keeping

it trained on my inner self.

I don’t know anything about art,

but I do like Norman Rockwell.

If I had one wish

I would be Treasurer of the United States,

or maybe Bert Parks.

My favorite sport is baseball.

I thrill to the crack of the bat

and the towering blast exploded over

the centerfield wall

and into the mezzanine

where old drunks get their pockets picked

by truant schoolboys.

Like that of the housewife, my work

is never done. I have never slept a wink

in my entire life, and yet,

I am certain I have a firm grip

on what dreams are.

Willie Smith

Pad over to the Poet’s pad.

Surprise the clown making love to his fist.

Hoping thereby – he grunts – to get a

handle on some angle for an ode.

Gets out, between gasps, concentrating on

his two-stroke: “Booze in kitch, cabinet under

sink, Popov – beside cleaning fluid can.”

Spurts across the room at a shelf

stuffed with self-help books.

Myriad animalcules die –

dried to a horrid death –

on the binding of a Webster’s. The

Poet snaps. Zips. Buckles. Slouches

onto the couch. I re-enter

with glasses and the bottle.

The Poet replaces his glasses.

Mumbles, hates to wank in focus.

Pulls from his pants a ballpoint.

Rolls eyes at the ozone. Explains he’s

fingering the Muse’s organ.

Play her like a fugue.

Force every register howl.

In his grave Bach flips.

I hand the Poet a vodka flip,

highball just now invented.

Both eyes out of his skull lower.

Chugs the flip. Falls

to scrawling in a spiral pad

snatched off the cocktail table:

“Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

Sip my drink; suppress a grin;

start the session with:

“Are you no longer,

then, I take it, Napoleon?”  

The cat across the room catapults;

caterpillars into the Poet’s lap; glares up

like I’m in the wrong pigeonhole.

We chase the cat under the sink,

whooping like Genociders and Indians

hammered on hard cider. Exit drowned

as rats in a failed thought experiment.

Anything held against me, the Poet

screams, I – hustled out the door,

into the back of the van – never meant.  

Willie Smith

Preacher been fucking the wife.

Get into a gunfight up and down the aisles;

shooting through pews, winging hymnals,

dinging collection plate;

ricochets whistle ire,

targets praying to acquire.

Near nail the sumbitch

with a beautiful shot,

him skeeting across the choir.

The Son’s hardly settled 

with corn and coke to watch the fun,

when off the rafters echoes click-click-click!

Man-o’-God’s rod emptier’n Satan’s heart.

It’s eye for an eye, tooth for a tit,

dick for a brain. Rush the altar,

jab about, poke around.

Spot Romeo crouched in a niche,

begging Jesus spare a little change;

into a mouse, maybe; so he in

some smelly little hole can hide his hide.

Clap muzzle to temple, jerk trigger, skull explodes.

Blood, brain, bone, hair spatter the cross.

Shrug – no longer cross with the

minister now administered to.

High time head home, get the wife stoned.

After, me and God sit down

to shoot craps with the cops.

Either way I come out on top.

On accounta everybody knows

every good old boy to heaven goes.

Willie Smith

Once upon a time you could only hold one conversation but now you have the ability to communicate on many levels and simultaneously. It starts with the toes the lips the nose the eyebrows it starts with the heels the calves the backside the shoulder blades the back of the head. The things pointing upward and the things pointing downward it starts with. The fingernails grow because you can no longer chew them down to the quick the hair grows because you can longer visit the hairdresser and so you have abandoned fashion like you have abandoned the ones that loved you. The soil turns to slush the roots grip you like a despondent lover the dripping water burrows into you like a worm and only stops once it has dropped out of the other side like boredom like excitement. To your new friends the maggots the worms the beetles the spiders to the rats to the fox you are the noseless wonder the superstar and they welcome you like you have never been welcomed before finally you have found that true home.

John McClure

Darned my socks, dammed the pots and pans.

Tinkered around the garage. Puttered into the kitchen.

Fixed a stew. Vomited into the sink.

Shit in the wastebasket.

Beheaded the doorknob with an icepick.

Pumped the shotgun with buckshot. Ducked out front,

mowed down the lawn. Emptied the garbage

on top of the slaughter. Dumped in the empty can

the handful of rats the arsenic finally took to a better life.

Raised the can high overhead. Crashed it down

like the Great Depression.

Out flew rats, bounced off the apple tree,

ricocheted over the swingset, like stiff acolytes grinning.

Dented the galvanized can,

till it took an edge keen as a guillotine.

Chopped off rat heads, teased out teeth.

Scratched across the walls outside

how deliberate a butcher I demanded being known to be.

Then hungrily hung myself from the apple tree.

But the limb snapped,

and I fell choking atop smashed grass and beheaded rats,

to continue one more week to die the life of a working stiff.

Willie Smith