767 Humor poems

I had a tapeworm, and imagined it flat—paper-flat—like a strip of caps, pallid red, a quarter-inch wide with bulbous BB bullfrog eyes peeking out of my asshole as I lolled in a crowded fetid basement swimming pool (the kind that used to be in inner-city Ys: windowless; steamy; concrete-block moldings chalky-cracked), and you whom I’ve neither seen nor heard of for thirty years were saying I’d give everyone in the pool my tapeworm, which you knew had eaten my insides and now had threaded through both my intestines and was trying to get out. Where were we? Everyone was old, old— gray, infirm; flaccid and thin or fat and bald, all ill flesh drooping— the women in rubber-flowered bathing caps and black one-piece suits as if we were all on an outing from a nursing home. I couldn’t see myself to see how old I was, but you were thirty, at the peak of your beauty, as when you knelt naked on the motel room bed brushing out your thick dark waist-length hair after cheating on the lover you were cheating on your husband with, who was at that moment waiting for you in another motel room from which you had slipped to meet me secretly: a secret inside a secret, buried, encased, as if if we dug deep enough into it we’d find what we were trying to get or stop.

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second, which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant committees and even to me. But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next moment and to the next. Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead— well not zipping—And if I try to get out of this time machine, open the latch, I'll fall into space, unconscious, then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that. So I stay inside. There's a window, though. It shows the past. It's like a television or fish tank. But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim in backward circles. Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance to see what I'm leaving behind, and sometimes like blackout, all that time wasted sleeping. Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment at having lost a library book. Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting to be found charming. Me holding a rose though I want to put it down so I can smoke. Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me because the explosion of some dark star all the way back struck hard at mother's mother's mother. I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow. I thought I'd find myself an old woman by now, traveling so light in time. But I haven't gotten far at all. Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like; the past is so horribly fast.

I’m watching football, which is odd as I hate football in a hyperbolic and clinically revealing way, but I hate Bill Parcells more, because he is the illuminated manuscript of cruel, successful men, those with the slitty eyes of ancient reptiles, who wear their smugness like a tight white turtleneck, and revel in their lack of empathy for any living thing. So I’m watching football, staying up late to watch football, hoping to witness (as I think of it) The Humiliation of the Tuna (as he is called), which is rightly Parcells’s first time back in the Meadowlands since taking up with the Cowboys, who are, as we all know, thugs, even by the NFL’s standards. The reasons I hate football are clear and complicated and were born, as I was, in Nebraska, where football is to life what sleep deprivation is to Amnesty International, that is, the best researched and most effective method of breaking a soul. Yes, there’s the glorification of violence, the weird nexus knitting the homo, both phobic and erotic, but also, and worse, my parents in 1971, drunk as Australian parrots in a bottlebush, screeching WE’RE #1, WE’RE #1! when the Huskers finally clinched the Orange Bowl, the two of them bouncing up and down crazily on the couch, their index fingers jutting holes through the ubiquitous trail of smoke rings that was the weather in our house, until the whole deranged mess that was them, my parents, the couch, their lit cigarettes, flipped over backward onto my brother and me. My husband thinks that’s a funny story and, in an effort to be a “good sport,” I say I think it is, too. Which leads me to recall the three Chihuahuas who’ve spent the fullness of their agitated lives penned in the back of my neighbor’s yard. Today they barked continuously for 12 minutes (I timed it) as the UPS guy made his daily round. They bark so piercingly, they tremble with such exquisite outrage, that I’ve begun to root for them, though it’s fashionable to hate them and increasingly dark threats against their tiny persons move between the houses on our block. But isn’t that what’s wrong with this version of America: the jittering, small-skulled, inbred-by-no-choice- of-their-own are despised? And Bill Parcells— the truth is he’ll win this game. I know it and you know it and, sadly, did it ever seem there was another possible outcome? It’s a small deposit, but I’m putting my faith in reincarnation. I need to believe in the sweetness of one righteous image, in Bill Parcells trapped in the body of a teacup poodle, as any despised thing, forced to yap away his next life staked to a clothesline pole or doing hard time on a rich old matron’s lap, dyed lilac to match her outfit. I want to live there someday, across that street, and listen to him. Yap, yap, yap.

I killed a fly and laid my weapon next to it as one lays the weapon of a dead hero beside his body—the fly that tried to mount the window to its top; that was born out of a swamp to die in a bold effort beyond itself, and I am the one who brought it to an end. Tired of the day and with night coming on I lay my body down beside the fly.

I knew something was wrong the day I tried to pick up a small piece of sunlight and it slithered through my fingers, not wanting to take shape. Everything else stayed the same— the chairs and the carpet and all the corners where the waiting continued.

I left my head somewhere today. Put it down for just a minute. Under the table? On a chair? Wish I were able to say where. Everything I need is in it!

I Joe You lie About pineapples There are none under anywhere I look I see I find only dirty tulips Or orchid ribbons Orange With big black words A royal sky: It lets one see And what a good thing a white shirt is! Nice Nice to see red by night to know pink well to understand yellow birds to realize black and white Terribly nice Mirrors are Nice (Terribly) To see by To see by me You I love I love Indians pen points Hungarian plaster sweetmeats five A nice number to love by If feather pillows didn't leak Out onto green floors Where normal shoes belong With blue socks With white stripes And Boston newspapers All about news And things I like I like fried chicken smashed 'taters thickin' gravy not biscuits an' chawklit pie wif mushmeller toppin' And I simply love horoscope! (Crunch) The sky is aflame! Red (A jet of anti-matter gas is exploding harmfully against the upper atmosphere) But tomorrow is Tuesday And I shall see the four seasons on one branch of pink trees displaying Ivory lilies insisting Upon white privacy (Or they threaten not to root at all) I, personally, vote for blue And to hell with Easter I prefer red and green mother Christmas black birds of passion sunsets that consume pink nuns and salty peanuts and Renoir who bores me But most of all I like shoe polish And the big sun rises over Delhi. . . .

I love to do my homework, It makes me feel so good. I love to do exactly As my teacher says I should. I love to do my homework, I never miss a day. I even love the men in white Who are taking me away.

I’m fond of frogs, and every day I treat them with affection. I join them at the FROG CAFE— We love the Croaking Section.

God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings. God did not listen to me. God is not a good listener. I said Stop it please, I’ll give you wedding cake, money, candy, marijuana. Go talk to married people, politicians, children, reality TV stars. I’ll even set up a booth for you, then everyone who wants to talk to you can do so without the stuffy house of worship, the stuffier middlemen, & the football blimps that accidentally intercept prayers on their way to heaven. I’ll keep the booth decorations simple but attractive: stickers of angels & cats, because I’m not religious but didn’t people worship cats? Thing is, God couldn’t take a hint. My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend said to stop sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can’t be some new Asian Jesus. I tried to enrage God by saying things like When I asked my mother about you, she was in the middle of making dinner so she just said Too busy. I tried to confuse God by saying I am a made-up dinosaur & a real dinosaur & who knows maybe I love you, but then God ended up relating to me. God said I am a good dinosaur but also sort of evil & sometimes loving no one. It rained & we stayed inside. Played a few rounds of backgammon. We used our indoor voices. It got so quiet I asked God about the afterlife. Its existence, human continued existence. He said Oh. That. Then sent his angel again. Who said Ummmmmmm. I never heard from God or his rookie angel after that. I miss them. Like creatures I made up or found in a book, then got to know a bit.