This is a Bad Poem

My original sin in presenting this piece is to speak it with a man’s voice, that

lacks both the music of a women’s

and the thunder of God’s.

Tonight I will bite and murder slam poet’s entire style at the same time.

I will say things just because they sound cool when they rhyme.

I’m a chrome-lightning, multi-paradigm wind-chime.

I’m the macho borracho that curb-stomped the Gestapo.

I’m a well hung, sprung-out, punk-ass bungalow-junkie.

I’m a man of the world and I’m a man of other worlds

And I’ve only been doing this rhyme-thing so I can have sex with girls.

Depicting a conflict which is self inflicted.

I spin my fiction out of vindictive friction.

I’m spraying clichés faster than gamma rays.

I’m braying inane, more of the same.

I stay extra lame, like a human brain.

But I might win the slam tonight, if I spit a sound-byte

So tight that the light-bulbs blow like your mind

I might be untrue, but kind.

I grind like a finey on a cocaine high

when Ride the Lightning comes on KMFY.

But don’t you see? That flow was weak.

I didn’t say anything, all I did was speak.

I embellish my pretenses at the

expense of making sense.

My words spew like light refracted.

I’m tactless, the wack-ness.

If these lines were meant to impact kids

And the revolution is back then

We need leaders to enact this

So that the poetry slam would just

be soap-box practice. 

This is how I make a slam poem:

I retrace my steps to something real

And I degrade it. 

I make it my rude answer to any unasked questions.

I only wanted to tell the truth for once.

But the truth is, this poem is so trifling it is stifling.

The subject matter is far too self involved and

My rephrased clichés are less fresh than a whore’s bath.

The vulgar word play is my ego masturbating.

"This is a Bad Poem" at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

This is my parody of slam poetry. This is a Bad Poem.

"Three Regrets" live at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

"We are the Orphans of the Dying King" at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

Perfect

A perfect coin sun shone upon
the highest leaves and trickled
all the way down onto the grass
and our faces.

The river below was the cloudy
hue of water in a cup that a
painter has been cleaning his
brushes in. Aloft all the birds
chased each other. Squirrels
grabbed acorns and dragged
them into the trees that they
had recently fallen from. The
stretching flowers were politely
vain.
A spring breeze pushed the only
cloud away.

And then
the girl with the pretty, long hair
told me she loves me!

She Doesn’t Know

It is silent.

Her voice---like music resounding
Greatly---is gentle smoke in the air.
Yet it devastates me. She says,
“I don’t know.”
Airs of disdain point her nose.
Her eyes sharpen,
Lashes rigid.
Derision raises her eyebrows several
Degrees.
So I say something clever quick like,
“I think you’re going to miss me!”
Her lips are red-flower-petal coals that
Burn and lacerate my soul.

“I’ve no control,” I confess; pressing
Against velvet flesh.

Trapped for months and
Her limbs are pleasurable fetters.

Her hair---the scent of yellow summer
At its purest---reaches down long
Vines in which I contemplate inevitable
submission to entanglement.
Facing her, as I feared she is not smiling;
However stolidly feigning self-assurance.

But even still the dark points in her eyes rival
The mystery of the void at its deepest.

What she doesn’t know is that her face glows
So that I’ve grown slightly blinded to those other
Duller faces.

I lay down at her feet
In abject devotion
And she is cunningly aloof as she steps over me
And continues to walk away.

Label Murder

I am a masochist,
A pacifist.
I'm worthless.

I am a misogynist,
A chauvinist.
I'm flawless!

I am in disillusionment,
Full of lament.
The discontent.

I am a communist,
A socialist.
The arsonist.

I am the dillatante
That people want.
An idiot savante.

I am machizmo,
Pure libido,
A dildo.

I am a narcissist,
A nihilist.
Depressed.

More So

The ankle-high grass is a softer sand between their toes.

He wears white and she a brighter shade of red.

To her, as he expounds, his words are a plainer song
That he sings beneath the shadows of blacker clouds.

They can hear the river from here, but they cannot
See it.

To himself, he thinks her hair seems longer as he presses
The strands between his fingertips.

An infinitesimally small gap closes
Violently.

Trees rise higher around them.
The very chill of the air is sustenance.

She struggles not to imagine him
More so a hulking devil trying to
Disguise himself.

And passing that moment of first
Humble embrace on the unfurling
Trail:

He strains to not relate her more so
To a razor in silk.

Untitled

She has a waterpistol tattooed at the top of her hip

like a cum-target.

But I'm always overshooting.

I was aiming for her heart

when I came on her tits.

Running my hand through her hair

a hank falls out like

strands of her beauty in my hand.

Disgusted

I hit her in the nose with the hard part of my

forehead

until she told me to stop.

She didn't cry but she bled a lot,

Peering at me out of two perfect round sapphires.

And I even admired the way

that she ran away.

5150

I take a long pull off of my watery beer. Then, as I loosen my necktie, I wordlessly curse my boss and coworkers. There is no music playing on the jukebox. John the bartender just finished hosing off the thick plastic mats from behind the bar and is dragging them back inside from the alleyway.

I stare into my beer and I try to think of someplace I'd rather be, but my thoughts dwell on neighborhood trifles and my pensive outrage toward my draconian employer. I sink into my own lonely helplessness. There is not another person in the bar. To me, John might as well be a robot. We never talk and I don't think he likes me.

I nod to John as I walk outside groping for my pack of Newports. Placing a cigarette in my mouth I notice someone near the alley, leaning against the bar's brownstone facade. She's wearing tight bluejeans and a black sweatshirt with the hood up. Long blond hair pours from the left side of her neck down almost reaching her hips. She plays her fingers through it and I notice a white paper bracelet on her wrist.

I light my cigarette and feigning nonchalance say, "Hello."

She swiftly lifts her head but her startled gaze never seems to focus on me. I hesitate, worrying for a moment I had frightened her until she smiles showing all of her teeth still looking all about. She giggles, "Come here," then she turns into he alleyway. The black sweatshirt flies in a high arc into the street.

I follow eagerly after her. Looking down the dimly lit sidestreet I can see this strange girls head showing over the other side of the dumpster. Her arms stretching up she pulls all her hair behind her. As I step quickly to meet her I toss my freshly lit smoke into a puddle. I come around the side of the dumpster and stop short.

She looks directly at me now and her demeanor has turned angry and searching. She wears a men's white tank-top and her pale skin is speckled black and brown where it is caked with dried blood. Covering her are long lacerations that have only recently been treated. The flesh is pinched up and protruding a little where the deep gashes have been closed. They don't look like stitches so much as staples; identical, in sight, to the staples that we use at the office.

Gawking for several moments, I mutter repeatedly, "Oh, I'm sorry," in a very pathetic whimper.

She lunges toward me, a light flickering on her hand as she thrusts it toward my torso. The knife hesitates an instant against the resistance of my abs, just before slipping into me. The pain is more intense than anything I have felt in my life. In agony and rage I desperately grab her small cranium with both of my hands and I dig my thumbs into each of her eye sockets. She cries out and trying to stab me again, slices my right flank. Still holding her head tight between my palms, I use all my strength to smash her skull against the brick wall behind her. I do it again and I don't stop until she is slack and unconscious. And I stagger out of the alleyway.