I'd Like to Write Nice Someday

Legend John Hogl reads at Tony's Tonight. Inspired by his work, I wrote.


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I’d Like to Write Nice Someday

A poem to share with my parents
non-offensive to their suburb-slave-camp America
I’d like to write about trees,
magnificent, multifoliate trees, naked sunny
sweaty spread-legged trees
but when I see trees I see broken fingers
in bunches ripping out of the suffering ground,
tortured insomniatic ground of not Being,
To be the wandering corpse of Portland is my dream
I said no to Christ, your church blows, you corpse
nailed to broken fingers, no!

he said wander, I never knew thee; fine, I’ll wander,
go back to Bethlehem, stab you in the manger,
squeal! squeal! war-monger, anti-messiah!
squeal! squeal! dis-believer of free mind,
free poetry, free dance, cock, vagina sunrise
I am zombie writing sonnets on the complex
metaphysics of eating brains
I won’t tolerate rejection slips no more!
Perish publishers! Perish! I say!

I’d like to write nice someday
a brief lyrical piece about my ex-wife
how sublime the sun bleeds on the chains
of our domesticity, gashes in the wall
where you hurled your knives, how wide you spread
your legs for others our whole time
while I slaved to pay for our whole time,
the stars you scooped from my mind
and tossed in the trash I can’t get back
I did the same to you, we, same, the draft
is final, we fucked, fought, prayed
wept for escape to a safe place.
no more commingling in the kitchen
no more beholding left-of-heaven night-rising
as one wet organism, no more grace

I’d like to write nice someday
I’d like to not languish when I wake,
gag-whore.com morning! Wasted, wasting time
I languish, I can’t take a shower, too much work,
my cock doesn’t work, all I am is words
friends, universe, not enough

Lord, O dark lord let me languish no more!
Breathe your dark music into my lungs
that I may sing something true, a girl giggling
in the waves before the rage of going mute
my shoulders slouch from the weight
take this rage away

I’d like to write nice someday
a robin on a branch with a worm in her beak
in her brain are pretty constellations
she taught me how to sing, not pretty things,
true things, I knew the pretty, the true
is not always pretty, my robin taught me,
my robin is the prettiest bird in the world
my robin is Emily Dickinson trans-sexually risen,
hatching from the prison, moonward she rises
the worm in her beak is me
the sun on the leaves is blood,
conjugal of robin and worm, illicit!
crazy mashing bestiality of lives, crazy

I’d like to write nice some day
But when I wake the robin at my side
has tears which blaze on the feathers of her face,
I rise to lick them back to happiness,
more, more, I can’t lick fast enough
my face should not have feathers, she says,
my face is ugly, my feathers ugly
I desire the suffering ground happy
Every godforsaken leaf, robin, worm
It’s too much, I crack, I demand to be
swallowed by robin, demand to be not
neither robin on the branch
nor robin in my bed says yes.

I’m left with rage, blaze, life!
rage, blaze, ranting cunt and fuck on the mic,
poems I can’t show my parents
someday I’d like to write nice
today is not, there’s languish to lick,
there’s fuck off, God.