Monday, August 31, 2009

august 31st, 2009



an older poem...

poetry reading

There are prisoners swallowing their own eyeballs out of pure insanity and all I can think about is how nervous I am at the thought of reading a poem in front of a crowd of retired, wealthy survivors of life who finally have the time and courage to fill a legal pad with stories of momentary perfection; fifteen minutes of personal immortality.  Ah, I shouldn’t judge so quickly.  For all I know this room could be filled with long-time word junkies, fingers pleading for a cigarette break, souls born to grip a pen like me.  I could be surrounded by dictionary fiends and highly influential sentence sculptors.  This book shop could be growing future literary geniuses inside of flower pots hidden behind the wall of the Fiction section.  Or they are just as I made them out to be: lovers of the printed word, fans of organized poetry readings, and recreational note takers taking a stab at the whole poetry thing.  For them the addiction is absent.  The obsession chose not to settle inside of them… and I continue to ponder whether they are the lucky ones or if they missed out on the good life. 


Tuesday, August 25, 2009

august 25th, 2009



Here's an older poem. I just realized it should be quintet, I can't believe I never caught that. Well, the title stays, the quartet can be in reference to my band.


the rupert pupkin quartet

My band consists of:
apathy on drums
self destruction on guitar
love on bass
and refusal on keys.
I am lead vocals
and sometimes I sing out of key.
Thanks for coming to the show
we had one hell of a time
playing for you.


Sunday, August 23, 2009

august 23rd, 2009



nod off

it's all been said long ago.
with beauty
and without.
with truth
and without.
with conviction
and without.

you are a recycling bin
with a solid heart
and a statistical mind.
you will search
through the night
and fall asleep
clasping a phantom presence.
only in moments
such as now
do you realize
the answer will always be
inches out of reach.

nod off young man,
Saturdays are infinite.


Saturday, August 22, 2009

august 22nd, 2009



vacuum

I think you’ve mistaken my desire to sit here alone. I am not troubled, I am not waiting on a friend, I am not scanning my surrounding out of boredom. This rooftop is beautiful and I just want to be alone, I want to sip my whisky and coke without the hassle of cordial, meaningless small talk. But now that you are here let us engage in just that. I do not despise people, in truth I love them, but I enjoy keeping to myself. I do not dread our short exchange to be, I am genuinely interested, which is precisely the problem. I can’t be a friend to everyone who needs one. A good, loyal friend is a full-time job, and I already have one of those. A true friend is by your side as oil paints the sky. But a true friend must also be there when the house of cards falls apart, when everything lies on red and the pellet settles uncertainly upon black. I’m already too old to be your acquaintance, so show me you’re worth fighting for… or get the fuck out of my way. I don’t have time for nonsense. I don’t want to waste your time, and I’m running out myself.


Tuesday, August 18, 2009

august 18th, 2009


some nights I just want to be a stranger 

I’m sorry I’m smoking.  I’m sorry I’m smoking.  I’m from Australia and we all smoke in Australia.  Where are you from?  I’m sorry I’m smoking said a short, red-faced drunk woman inside the gas station convenience store.  The man she was questioning ignored her every word as I paid for my toilet paper and collected my change.  I can’t go to the gas station across the street because I know and like the cashier.  I can’t go to the Rite-Aid down the block because the bus stop I pass is black and depressing.  Some nights I just want to be a stranger.  Some nights I just want to avoid loud, drunk Australian women.    


Sunday, August 16, 2009

august 17th, 2009



It's a couple months away, but I have a spot for a couple hours at the West Hollywood Book Fair on October 4th.  I'll be selling copies of my book for $10 and I'll be handing out postcards and bookmarks and what not.  I have never been so I have no expectations or promises.  You can get more information here: http://www.westhollywoodbookfair.org/

Here are two new cut-ups written by the lovely Erin Dillon and myself, as well as a new poem. We wrote these late into the night and I believe we used Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Bret Easton Ellis, John Fante, Jorge Luis Borges, Victor Pelevin, Charles Bukowski, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  I apologize to any other dead author I failed to mention.


down the hall

You can remember it like a horse on fire.  A flight of narrow wooden stairs painted delicate crayon strokes on the eastern wall of the town synagogue.  Doctors of Dissonance dropped from the ceiling and through the woolen carpet onto dead crabs’ claws.  Starfish baby cries smell the fruit and flatter the drunken sailors holding vigil.  Same-sized brown plastic bottles make a shadow in a handful of hard, dense soil; then a nostril.  He conducted with a woven baton, emptying the audience’s stomachs and eclipsing their imagination.  Turtles hardly crawled over the horizon lurking with slimy piccolos when googly horns disintegrated the chariot.  Falcon eyes hounded my merryoldsoul deep into the native night.  Alkaline batteries include our address for the future.


sufficient gruff

The hotel left a greasy taste of milk in my beaten shoulders.  Circular ruins prompt me to fill the mother of truth with a merry bonfire.  His habitually placid expression lingered around the water cooler, taunting delicate ankles and mingling with pimply telegraph boys.  Hermit was rummaging, trembling through his apologies that brought the first smells of summer out of a sledgehammer delirium.  Tenacious wallpaper peacocks waltz on unpleasant evenings such as this.  Everything previous to this was mutilated in a field at the Cinerama Dome, encasing a bolt of clarity into a pigeon.  At one point Jayne muttered Should we die in a quake, donate my bangs to the Siamese foreigners in apartment 3F.  A tremendous pale light paced like a subway imitating marble.  And although I cannot be positive, checkerboard insects spring from six-button double-breasted ulcers.


the midnight amnesiac

You’re a reasonable man so get off my case, get off my case before I unleash a side you will regret coaxing into existence.  I have hid patiently for decades beneath the crust, laughing occasionally for air.  I have driven my car into the dumpster and the dumpster fought back, slinging broken Cuisinarts and ratty bookshelves at my windshield.  Society is in its decline and you know it.  You can only use your bowling coupons for so long.  You’ll come crawling back any day now, knocking on my door in the dead of night gripping a bottle of turpentine and sobbing those gasoline tears of yours.  The bug powder took you by the collar and I can’t watch you tumble down the knoll once more, I just can’t do it.  We’re all packt like sardines in a crushd tin box and I sit here once again in front of the typewriter dropping the needle and sipping away with droopy eyelids and sweaty armpits.  I can’t complain though, I have fourteen cigarettes left and there are flaming lips awaiting my presence next sunset.  

I awoke to a man lighting a pair of underwear on fire in my backyard and all I could do was blink heavily and close the curtains with sluggish aggravation.