Trinket Jerry

Trinket Jerry senses your anger.

The gill-like organs under his lying tongue tell him exactly what booshwah you're going to spout,

before you ever open your mouth.

Trinket Jerry the bullshit fairy

knows you better than you know yourself.

He's got your number on his ticket,

your Shinola on his shelf.

"You're not making any sense," you complain bitterly,

following Ole Jer's latest escapade,

his Big Excuse Parade.

He senses your anger with the tiny hairs inside his big jug ears,

But Jerry just rocks on like a resistant virus

and there you are, Queen Twitchy of the 11th Hour,

wondering how Trinket Jerry turned I'm-with-stupid into us.

_______

An off-the-cuff mess for Toads. (whispering) The password is..."trinket."

HOW NOT TO WRITE A LOVE POEM

1. IT'S ALIIIIVE! Make *everything* alive. Sighing hearts, weeping skies, smiling trees, warbling coffee tables, all of these are good, and will make your poem both busy and awful. Whee!

2. STOP DROP AND ROLL Use "burning" and all its variations liberally. Burning lips, fiery fingertips, barbecued bosoms--go for it, Sparky, and you'll have one smoking pile-up of a poem.

3. LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN And again and again. Be sure to use antiquated, flowery contractions like "e'er" and "ne'er" as often as possible. Pretend it's 1750 again. Use a quill pen. Die of some extinct plague like cholera. Please. Right now.

4. FORMALITY IS NEXT TO BANALITY Sprinkle your love poem with lots of comically overstuffed words like "dost" and "thee." Wear a hoop skirt or frilled sleeves. Get run over by a horse and carriage. Do it for literature.

5. BEGINNER'S LUCK Forget what you've heard and write about what you don't know. Make it clear you've never so much as held hands, but have decided to compose passionate odes to breathless desire. Or, if you've sampled the entire Boston Symphony Orchestra, write something fluttery and virginal. Go for it! Use your imagination!

6. GO WITH OLD RELIABLE Finally, don't give yourself a headache trying to jam clever words and phrases into your awful love poem. Go with moon/June, love/dove, palpitate/regurgitate and before you know it, you'll be employed by a greeting card company. Good luck, writers!

Short Fingernails Rag

With white Mickey Mouse hands, I disguise my touch along your railroad bones.
If you feel a little goofy, ginned up, off-balance,
it's because I'm directing traffic inside your ears--
cartoon buses with walking tires jive to Cab Calloway, 
on a highway where I goon the intersection with my Mickey Mouse hands--

One finger for stop,
one for go,
and one for vo vo dee oh doe.

I Am Joe's Mutated Descendant

(Another in the popular "I Am Joe's..." series of articles in which Joe's spleen--or whatever--speaks to us in a friendly, confidential way.)

Hi. I am Joe's mutated descendant! You see, eons ago, Joe wandered down into a creepy, dank, lightless cave, and despite Mrs. Joe's strenuous objections, he decided to live there. Yes, it actually was the first "man cave." 

Over millions of years, Joe and his descendants adapted to this unforgiving subterranean world. By the time I came along, it was a whole new ballgame! With no light to see by, eyes became superfluous and disappeared. Living in a world of total darkness, albinism replaced pigmentation. And Mrs. Joe finally got something she wanted...sex with the lights off!

However, I got bored living inside an underground cave, and decided to come out and live on the surface. With no pigment, I looked like Mr. Clean! I knew I would need a job in order to survive, so I bought a pair of sunglasses and learned to play piano and sing.  Stevie Wonder termed my music "disturbing." All the same, I'm the king of white blues! 

I even got married. I have no idea of she's pretty or ugly; it doesn't matter! We have two beautiful children and even though my wife refuses to feed them the lichen and small invertebrates I was raised on, we're a happy family! For Christmas she gave me SPF 5,000 sun block in an industrial drum. How thoughtful is she? 

So there you have it. I am Joe's mutated sightless albino descendant. Musician. Family man. Regular dude.

If you found this article informative, come back next month for "I Am Joe's Vestigial Tail." Also, don't miss Joe's childhood memoir "How Many Fucking Bats Are In Here, Anyway?" , available from Carlsbad Press.  
_____

for Corey's "Cavern Of My Thoughts" challenge at Real Toads. 

This Poem Is the War Bird, the Cat, and Ashes

This poem is the war bird, tethered.
This poem is the cat, crouched, waiting.
This poem is ashes, flame's dark warmthless daughters.

Once-soft Goddesses wearing gauntlets
hurry new dawns into a red sky unready;
The bones of songbirds make trinket jewelry
for these light-drunk chippies, unsteady.
It is not the war bird who is tethered to these dime store deities--
they desperately tether their silly selves to him,
his talons,
his keen eye,
asking him in a rush, blathering,
to tell them of rising, of honest blood, of sky.

Quiet becomes rare currency
in a plaza sick with ambrosia barkers.
Weaving between pillars and the busts of noble dead,
comes a common cat, traversing the markers.
It is not the feline who lives at the edges and margins,
but the noisome voided screechers calling themselves master--
vomiting,
wearing bibs,
insensible to the common cat, crouching,
stalking the dull bird under their ribs.

Here is what we did and what we were,
here and here and here. Weep for the beauty of it,
write poems and songs and marble art,
to present to these defectives--our citizens--steeped in shit.
Everything skips a generation, so the wise ones have said,
before we cored them and tore out their tongues,
all the while
pasting on a laurel wreath.
See our favored girls, pampered and scornful,
smiling ice from rot-sweet teeth.

This poem is the war bird, tethered.
This poem is the cat, crouched, waiting.
This poem is ashes, flame's dark warmthless daughters.
_________

for Hannah's mini-challenge, "boomerang metaphors".

 
 

Close Your Eyes And Think Of England

You said,
"stay in the compound,
mind the babies,"
but the babies grew while you were out in the cane fields.
Now they roll those laughing bones
and speak the local dialect,
distrusting the gendarmes like natives.

"What about the girls?' you might ask,
if you were ever here to ask.
That is the girls.
In the afternoon, they walk barefoot and hatless,
with a pack of stray dogs trailing behind,
hoping for a bit of biscuit.
The dogs are brown,
the girls are brown,
and neither have ever been to England.

Reach for me in the night; pretend I'm a receipt.
Drop your suspenders off your shoulders like a coquette,
while I close my eyes, thinking of the fox hunt
with me as the fox,
but this time
with a cane knife beneath my petticoats.
I've been in the trash again, yes I have.
Better strangle me now.
Howl, man-hound, though you never had the scent.

The household budget allowed for two Arabians.
Our oldest and I go riding,
but not side saddle. 
We are as wild as Indians, painted like Zulus,
shrieking in island French, 
our cheeks rouged with fresh chicken blood we get from the cook.

You complain about the fare every night,
addressing us as if we were the candlesticks,
blustering about everything being too spicy.
The girls and I,
we doctor our dinner until we hallucinate,
just to be able to bear it.

Still, how bold you are, how genuinely manly,
coming here and conducting a successful business
in this sweltering mosquito hell
where the women cast spells
and the men are weak and lazy.
How amazing what you manage to accomplish
wearing a sturdy wool suit
in this place where you couldn't claim to truly know
anyone at all.
______

for Fireblossom Friday, featuring the art of W.T. Benda.

"Close your eyes and think of England." Queen Victoria's famous advice to English ladies being depended upon to produce more population for the Empire.

Ruination

My love complained
that, within my brain,
my heart,
my soft little breast,

behind my deflections,
my affectations,
and all the rest,

she found me unknowable,
impenetrable,
mad, melancholy and inexplicable.

Is it (I asked)
the lazy way I've dressed?
or the time I've spent lounging as a lady may do
of an afternoon in my machine gun nest?

Why now, why this way?
Why when my hair is not looking its best?
Are there any other serpents caught in the lace
that you'd like to get off my chest?

To me, this seems unfair,
this demand of me to share
my moon
my stars
my air.

She said, you are a broken bird
whose beak is too silent and dark
to say the words that speak my mind
or ever hold my heart.
_______

The Vagaries Of Hunger

Ian cried tears on to the hard shell of a dead crab and knew in his heart he was finally a man*
I'm telling ya,
used to be I would have had a great big shiny new WTF? ready, at a time like this.
I would have said,
"A crab, Larry?" (Larry's been calling himself "Ian" lately. Hey, don't ask me.)
A honking dead, stinky, stupid-ass crab? Really?"

But now,
I know better. 
Now,
I know to keep my yap shut,
like when somebody invites you to their church and you can't weasel out of it;
it makes about as much sense as a drunk-butt family-values congressman in the back of a squad car,
but you have to be respectful.
You have to act like it's the unveiling of a masterpiece, for the love of mike.

Or Larry.
Cos it's my man Larry having the epiphany right here on East Warehouse Street,
bawling like the football game ain't on tv.
I have some tricks.
I have learned to get creative with it, during awkward moments
when I'd rather be in Arkansas hunting runaway My Little Ponys
than sitting on the curb like a lost pigeon,
watching Larry turn on the waterworks over a dead crustacean.

I plan the week's menus.
Lean Cuisine, reduced fat Oreos, 
big ginormous tubs of mac and cheese or caramel swirl, for when I feel weird.
I think about Gina,
who I loved like monkeys love bananas,
and who, if I didn't talk to her for more than 24 hours, I went all gonky.
I think,
WWGD?
if she were here, with weepy Larry,
who really isn't a bad guy at all, God love him.

"Larry," I say softly,
thinking of the time I tried to get that barn cat to trust me,
"Honey...are you ready to go home, now?"
Larry looks off into the middle distance, nobly, like an explorer.
Oh, boy.
This isn't going to blow over any time soon.
I decide to work on his weakness, as women have done for centuries:
"Are you hungry, Lar? How about a double bacon cheeseburger from Burger Barn?"

We set off, leaving Crabby to his fate.

We're almost there, 
to that palace of deep-fried happiness,
where I will get a large order of french fries and a strawberry shake,
and Larry will have his burger and regain his equilibrium,
and his not not-endearing Larryness.

It could have happened,
smooth as a dolphin's back,
but no.
Just half a block from our blissful calorie explosion,
who do I see coming our way, but Gina.
Gina, who I loved more than babies love their blankies,
more than pyros love a match,
more than anything, really, in all this world,
and she just walks right by without a word.

Then I am crying, just like that,
and I can't stop.
Larry, who never knew Gina or what she meant to me,
looks over and, saints bless him,
knows better than to say anything.
He just takes my hand and squeezes it like a stress ball,
and I love him for it, speechlessly, through my tears.
_________

*This is for Out Of Standard, with Isadora, who asked us Toads to use one of an array of first lines for our poem today. The first line of this is the one I chose. I plead guilty to having written the rest.