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I am not a New England poet

Not Stevens, nor Burns, nor Williams

No matter how hard I may yearn

My own vulgarities suffocate the verse

Squeeze it like oranges, until all the pulp

Like raw, unfettered experience

Comes writhing from a shriveled husk

The peel is wrinkled

By experience and ineptitude

By relativism and causality

By jokes and serious business

This Midwestern silence fallen over rooms

This minor majority whose voice is

neither proud nor fierce

Folksy, floundering

Cauterized from High Art, and

cradled in populism

Tall tales, classic rock, and sitcoms

Bread, butter, and sides

It’s the middle, baby

I [Eyes]

 The jokes are all about how Moses failed. That’s what my bible says, in my alternative world. The lynch point is when moses failed, or whenever somebody wrote about it for the first time. We use a time machine to fix that one, and suddenly everything is prim and proper. God’s smiling again.

 Thou shalt not worship false idols

 This one’s important because it’s about how you can’t believe in anyone more than you believe in god. Belief is love. So you don’t love your mother and father as much, who’s watching? Oh right, god and the government. Only one of them cares where your love is going though.

 Bearing false witness is basically lying. It just means that lying should definitely not be used to hurt the reputation or living condition of anyone. It’s just not nice. And the commandments are basically saying that you should be nice—to god and your neighbor.

 I don’t know how to really put this but I don’t believe in any of it, least of all the god bit.

 When you get to the promised land

You’re gonna shake the eye’s hand

 There’s an obsession with eyes and their relation to omnipotence. As a symbol, they encompass all-knowledge, the entirety of existence. They see; and because they see, they know that everything is going to be okay. They’re okay with existence because they see all of it at once like a big spaghetti strung together over wire. We live a chicken wire existence, because that’s the eye’s plan.

 He knows everything, and is hidden by nothing. There is a paranoia in it, really. If you see god everywhere, don’t you see something else. You can see yourself anywhere. Then I’m staring back at myself from the pond. The reflection is just a dynamic record of the areas around it. Look around yourself, you’ll see the places where reflections are kept. They wait in dew on tree leaves, and the quiet of the garden wall vines. There is something on that stone surface in order to keep out the peering eyes of something just around the corner.

 You see your face. Towards the river just around the tree, you see the face of papa. He wants you to know that he’s fishing just for you. Of course, if you wander down there without permission and see papa screwing the neighbor girl he might just kill you. So stay away. But yeah, papa loves you.

 II [Completely Different]

 Improvisation. Good times lead from it. They are dancing partners, I suppose. The good of this is that if you and I just fuck around and maybe something will come from it. Look, I just really want to make out. I don’t know why. I’ve never really felt this way before. Like I really want to fucking suck face with somebody else, so bad that I’ve actually stooped to calling it suck face. That’s how fucking bad I want this to happen some time soon. I’m super fucking desparate, aren’t I? That’s okay, I’ve never really been down that road before.

 And now for something completely different …

 [Cut to man with his pants down shoving a glass jar up his ass]

 And now for something completely completely different …

 I’m working, just not really at anything substantial or meaningful or necessary. There’s something admirable in science for good. It makes you feel better. It makes everybody else look on the world better. Science is a philosophy, a world outlook. The foundations of scientific knowledge are important to everything we know and think today. There is no intuition greater than that yielded by extrapolation. God is in the basement; he can’t seem to find a way upstairs because all his children are too busy trying to tear down the walls.

 Anything wrong with masturbating your own ideas until they spew into a blob of incomprehensible filth, well certainly. That’s what I think anyways. Just keep that in mind.

 So then, looking ahead and filing down the sharp edges on the mark. Now all I want to sit around listening to sad white guy rock. The thing I’m going to do today: wake up at 1 pm and wander around the house naked. That’s all I do anymore. Keep that in mind.

 Repetition builds meaning, thematic and otherwise. Look, I just want to convey emotion. It’s not really about looking for anything more. The plot is fucking bullshit. If you want something out it, it should be cerebral and full of fucking pathos. Just keep thinking about it.

 The images conveyed here and otherwise aren’t really looking for commentary. I’m just kind of splattering up there for people to maybe read one day. I’m not exactly proud of most of it. It’s just there in case anybody thinks they can find solace in the work of somebody at the end of their teens without really knowing whether or not their doing anything right. It’s difficult to say really, even for the people I look up to. What should I be doing?

 III [She]

 He’s pining for her

In a people carrier

 I’ve got a terrifying image in my head. I dream about it on the worst nights. The things come out of my head. The doctor’s map is filled with waste stops and wizard’s towers. Look at that, it’s just another route out of the land of Pharoah. I’d rather walk the ocean floor than go along the coast. Instead, we go our separate ways to places otherwise unaware.

 Although it might say a lot about the city or town

I don’t care what they got, keep on turning it down

 She cant make me feel that way and then just go away it isnt fair thats not what were about here in the promised land gossamer and barbed wire bound together i just want to suck face did i say that already?

 She kind of, would’ve sort of loved him if she could’ve

The story’s getting closer to the end

 Laying yourself on the tracks, in between two worlds. I’d rather talk about images than think about things. Sometimes, I’m afraid I over think every single bit of my experience. There are moments of weakness and shit character that overwhelm. I might have been doing the right thing, but I never really did. Nobody else remembers. The event itself dons a shroud of wiry red mist. The aftermath isn’t so much clothed. “Write your side of the story down on the paper,” she said. I wrote a single sentence. They can’t incriminate you if you don’t tell them anything. Then I think about these things and realize one other bit of information. These indiscretions and lapses are what makes for a shit person. It only takes one action, one sentence, one reaction.

 She’d rather be alone than pretend

 There you have it ladies and gentlemen. The complete story of what I think I feel at the moment that this thing ends.

As I stagger from my car to the door

I glance at the all the license plates

I’m too many years out of depth

Too many ABCs

not enough XYZs

 To all the kids betwixt

Don’t forget we’re still holding on

We’re still holding on

 The hush came quick like a wave

And all the eyeballs in the room

On my shaggy frame, and wide eyes

All those shrunken lids

Receded under wrinkles

 As I saunter up to the stage

I sink into the background

A red velvet curtain and bright blue banner

I’m a crass clash in stripes

The stage enlongates before me

 They don’t stop eating

And why should they, captive glances

Between their plates of mash

And my awkward routine

 To all the kids betwixt

Stretched limb to limb by forebears