Slipper Lying Face Down Beside Dead Campfire, In The Gloom

'For what I felt then, there, fireside, was patent rejection at the notion that my loved-one had been taken by a werewolf and I had been deemed, by this beast – which stank – unfit. Not tasty. Or whatever … I had been deemed unwanted, dispensable, unbecoming. Whathaveyou. And then, when I felt this little sting on my right ear’ – he touched his right ear – ‘and brought my hand before my eyes and beheld the blood, a little spatter on my finger, a little, ever so minute, smear, and realized that I’d been bitten, by the werewolf, ever so slightly, like a tiny nibble, like I’d been tinily nibbled on … that was when I felt my strongest sense of rejection. For, as you can imagine, I realized, logically, that the monster had nibbled on my ear, dubbed me untasty, unwanted, dispensable, left me for Sheryl … nibbled, in effect, on my ear, and then dissed me in favor of Sheryl, which I didn’t blame him for since I would probably have done the same, had I been a horrible werewolf, but all the same … had nibbled on my ear (the werewolf had) and found it wasn’t so good. I didn’t taste so good … but you have to understand that it was also incredibly bad then to have woken there in the dark in the blush of the dying embers and realized I was alone, that a monster had just passed through here, that it had picked around the campsite in search of something that tickled its fancy … had left then eventually and left behind what obviously hadn’t tickled its fancy … and it was terrible, you realize, to find yourself lying there left behind. The moon had settled behind the trees. The girlfriend, my girlfriend … gone; and, yeah, everything as before except with one or two things here and there amiss, and I … well, I just lay there. A discarded or overlooked entity. But, granted, it was bad to have realized that Sheryl was gone and that she’d been taken and the monster now obviously had her etc.’

Ghost House

The slideshow was fascinating at first, the
gore-development looking suspiciously like
the warped soul’s half-smoke coagulating and
retreating to the bell tower. Alone dickering with
charm’s special effects: the abductee’s whirring escape
flirt. For a long time preserved in the dead oxygen
of Zoloft capsules, each kiss spring out pixie thin.
This way we all leave houses that don’t want to let
us go, along country roads lined with cussing sneering
lawn ornaments. If you squint they turn into dull orange
skulls creepier than this. Pick up your cane, Aphrodite,
your cane made of carnivals but when they die and
peel off there’s only a heap of old dusty leaves on
the threshold, chip-tune ringing forever through
the hallway. Fans have since the seventies launched
white-eyed raids on the famous Hollywood ghost house;
what’s left of you stamp jaunty and mad, peg leg,
for it’s finally been sold.

We Shall Go All The Way

Rot’s smeary knife blunts delivery of life
like slow mail carrying the transplant –
the mouse ears I decided to get without kitsch
surgery. I know that many bacteria will froth around
the hole the mouse gene will be insert into,
but I’m committed to this: I nod when confronted
with the alternatives. An Avenger’s sleek suit
or Leonard Nimoy’s blurry nudes. The process
by which these ears will grow will either smell
like a spoon breathing back the polisher’s huffs and
wipes; or it would look like life as it stands
like a dish-washed spoon up-right and true.
Well, ‘true’ according to lab standards…
When I was a child, I ladled a toy flying saucer
into the air because it fit so nicely into the silver
burrow. This is why the trans-plant needs to be
authentic, for I am no longer a child. Gouging out
rot’s bad fuzz from the lab’s grouting will
make the difference between Spock, the vaccine-
sensitive mutant, and the many cosplayers 
who have not seen ears as real as these.

How We All Play, And Suddenly Emerge From, The Video Game Saying Something Life-Changing

Aquaman finally learned how to wet the surface,
handled the leak with a hustle and a sweaty rap,
honest fat and navel closure – if life was going
to be this mean at least let us choose where
the shrapnel should stick and spill,

at least let the garage remote control
shuffle the tarot reading to DONKEY
or KICK ME over the incubus’s snoring back, 
puff pieces defining the bordello
like a message written in push pins

behind the red, hungover dawn eyelid,
antennae scattered over the carpet: 
they might as well have been us
playing Tecmo Bowl like
tomorrow would suck us in,
they might as well have been
the monster reworked.

Frankenstein’s first impression of himself as
he watched an implemented electronic
advertising display and the cornucopia of
automata click-clacketing in: ‘I’m going to view
the altered hormone – instead of I: Altered Self – as 

the rehab of tomorrow.’ That’s right, Frankenstein –
I don’t get everything platter-presented like you do
lying back comfortably and getting a
creation wank-over like the E-cookbook
that now can talk the eel out of the bowl

so me, I can’t CHOOSE to sound indignant oh
wait – to say ‘I don’t get everything platter-presented’ sounds
pretty indignant erm, so … Wait, you over there with the
microwave oven’s brain: yes you, I KNOW you often
yearn back for the day the sorrows in your mouth

weren’t self-replicating from the starting line
of cells where your creator scraped his foot
and yelled: SPEAK!

like a gen
tle
man

Evil Inventor And His Vegetarian Henchman

here is where almost everything in the world is hypocritical and can’t blush
this amazing tendon can be snatched up at any time and used to bludgeon someone to death
now look for ethical justification and try popping those quantum pimples on its back
walk into the middle of a lawnmower carnage and wipe the blood and slime that hang in the air like a lightning storm no transparent café in sight or backyard party toddling on clear, delicate cups
the tendon goes into the batcave and is gnawed on, alone, this is the evil boss alone but he goes to sleep with a clean conscience: at least
why?
because he’s evil a seasonal gift-buyer and dabbler in fun autopsy (it comes in a box and when you shake it you hear plastic pieces inside and the swish of instruction booklets – perhaps also a mask, a microscope, a killer cyclotron and some kick-ass Tesla coils? 

you’re still a violinist so swing that tendon across the strings we can listen with our steel drum ears and fill with gloomy percussions the silences in your excuse for killing the zombie with a paper weight (magnet murder like a fancy excuse consisting of one large, pure umbrella)
spans across like molecules holding hands below on a pavement catching a baby falling from the tenth floor window no need for steel over eardrums to hear music in the deaf hollows
it crawls across on all fours like red bloody tomato skin chased by a drunk machete

City Voice

I wonder if the city has
seen the beautiful fiber sing
open bleeding throat,
that wet noodle with
the sentence written on
the side that squeals
when you stretch it.

If one can say things
in a robot’s voice and
if your vowels will wear
silver bikinis after the tattoo
seepage has been dragged
like cloth off an auction
piece: or the polluted oyster

if it knows how its black
perfume will stagger through
the gluten, a rubber band
shot from a finger through
total darkness, like a quarrel
in a dungeon: the word wants
an exhaust pipe, someone

mentally impaired to settle
with and feel buff and gingerhaired
bullying with poetry. Hands
that built a paper jet
that didn’t swerve to hit
the window and plop down
uselessly into the flowerbed. 
You can start smiling now:

for I love the dumb fume
of your breath and the
spiritual word. It likes
aerials on tall buildings
it likes to tie its cape to
them it likes things that
flap around them, to feel
like a radio DJ and what with
the skyscraper aerial cape
to feel like a sedentary superhero:

voices and songs transmitted
from these aerials will feel buff
and greasy-haired. ‘Apartment blocks
don't fly of their own accord,
you know?’ say the nanotubes
who are opening the doors and
walking down the stairs
dragging leashes snapped
at the necks.

The Postman Only Rings, Like, A Few Times

He got bitten and chased by dogs, mocked
by kids, hit by cars – and yet we liked
the misguided postman, the way he thwarted
our gardens. It was sunny the day he died.
We can no longer follow his messages the
way we follow tongues in the changing rough
craggy cheek, our tongue in cheek thank
yous when he posited the goods. What
was his name? Was everyday at work for
him a layer of blood, knee deep in kaki
knee-length mailman shorts and ballsweat?
What seeped into the raw open cuts in
his will? Wrists cut hands dogbitten fallen over
the picket fence – how’s that for putting
the wrong thing into somebody’s letter box?