rad poetry #8: for darby larson (WE HAVE REACHED 100%!)

RAD POETRY THANKS DARBY LARSON AND EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED US REACH OUR FUNDRAISING GOAL: YOU ARE THE FO SHO OF THE MAD SWEET SHIT. WE STILL HAVE PLENTY OF POETRY VIDEOS TO POST AND WILL KEEP DOING SO UNTIL WE'RE DONE, AND YOU CAN STILL GET YOUR OWN POETRY VIDEO FOR ANY AMOUNT YOU WANT TO GIVE US




TICKLED PINK

for Darby Larson

How can a person have a problem
When their body is a breath machine?
I want to own a house, no
I want to meet a tetherball queen.

There's a ladybug in my Cheerios
But it doesn't even creep me out
And though it rained all on my xylophone
That silly thing was never even really very loud

I / need you / more than you / need you
If you wait wait wait then you'll know that's true
If you wait too long then I'll dream of you

You never bite my hair when I
Really want to bite your hair
I been to Nevada but I've
Never overpowered a bear

There's a little lamb skull in my microwave
But I'm saving it for my roommate
There's a hitchiker in a Superman cape
But I wanna drive alone and sing along with all the rain

Oh oh no: don't listen to me
All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink
Oh oh no: don't listen to me
All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink
Oh oh no: don't listen to me
All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink
Oh oh no: don't listen to me
You oughta get some pizza with Motown Benny

JC | KGM | JT: LIVE IN AMHERST 2009

rad poetry #7: for t. leaven nympho

RAD POETRY THANKS T. LEAVEN NYMPHO AND BRYAN COFFELT



No One Ever Works On Trying Anymore. There's Just Too Much Sun Or Something.
by Bryan Coffelt

for T. Leaven Nympho

I.

The rise and fall of physical media -- an Xbox + Camus.
A creed is dripping on my shoes a little. The doubling of
the heart finally happens as the sun is directly above
Old Navy. It's like you've chosen to ignore God's AK.
Now we must bear all consequences of the lack of
God's AK.

II.

Um, a priori, "finding out Hot Topic is not for you."
So we learn to "conquer ourselves," conquer our whole
Comic Sans bible study. You will become pregnant
with two sharp blows to the head. Call them
Husqvarna and Fox Racing. These will be burned
to discs and stored in your safety deposit boxes.

III.

Choosing an attitude towards bearing children --
maybe a "switching off." Stashin' the nina when
the cops are in my heart. Like watching a
chat room happen and saying a/s/l all the time.
Wondering (all the time) what Ellen Page would
actually look like when she's preggers.

IV.
Choose one of your children as the coward
and one as the hero, and, um, well, they'll
choose if you don't. "Camus will have
none of this anthropomorphism." The
jailhouse of Kantian eBaynomics. The
friend-shaped keloid scarring disaster.

V.

Existential stumbles / in line at Wendy's.
Your conception of condition and freedom,
your Baconator. Your filthy obstacles, your
backwards numbering. Your scientific truth
is the washing instructions for your new
Banana Republic jeans. We will name
flowers after you when you die.

rad poetry #6: for matt bell

RAD POETRY THANKS MATT BELL



YOUR FOREVER SHAKE AND YOU

for Matt Bell

There's something wrong with a voice.
How any word is just your air massaged,
whether you compliment a new scarf
or read a son's name off a telegram.
How we borrowed the command for quiet
from wind, so when people say shhhh,
what they want is for you to feel cold.
How, when caught by light, we shut up.
What any voice is out to say is wait,
over here. And once they can see you,
who cares to make sure they heard right?
Still, you turn up the jar boy's wail.
You shout goddammit to the white
out on the freeway. The phatic function
of language changes like taste in rhythm,
so the parents go If, gee, say, a zebra
and my girlfriend says It's all like, like
calumniation of original intent and shit.
She's right. Praise is no more than a
pinfeather and prayer has no color but
a space for color. All enough to make you
feel silly ordering people to feel better
and too self-conscious for long distance sex.
But you talk. Ta-talk. Hock up phlegm just for
enough room to spit out no, that's not what I
meant. And then you talk about headless
girls naked and asleep in a fleece of pine sap,
or the price of Milk Duds, how you made out
with a cottonmouth bite, precious instructions
to barbers and pepper wielders, all your opinions
on all of the sky's insurmountable whims.
You plead and cavort and joke and affirm
and lecture and mewl and bray and slip in
and warn and cheer and clarify and say
good night which means I want to be alive
more and I want part of that life to be with
you. You look out over the crowd and say
Thank you, it's really great to be here!
which really means it's great to say
what you've made to say, like to say
The sentence is a house of language
that wants to be such a good home
no word ever leaves. But everything
lives, if it can. You scream a name and
creekbeds answer. You learn to go
hum down the sidewalk just for you.
Whatever you do, you don't interrupt the
phonebooth band. In parkas and shoeless,
the members hunch all over town with strings
of digits, and they whisper come on now.
They listen for someone to hear them.
Most of what they do is tap on things.

Dragons With Cancer: An E-Anthology

My friend Bradley Sands and I wanted to do an e-anthology of real and unreal stories. We did it. It's out! Click the pic. Plus visit Magic Helicopter Press for lots of cool announcements: upcoming chapbooks, e-books, and our first full length.

rad poetry #5: for j.a. tyler

RAD POETRY THANKS J.A. TYLER (AND ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN SPREADING THE WORD THESE LAST COUPLE DAYS) (EDITORIAL COMMENT: I FEEL LIKE FOR SOME REASON THIS VIDEO SEEMS ANGRY BUT MAYBE IT IS JUST TIRED OR THE POEM IS MAYBE VERY SAD, WHAT WITH ALL THAT ARK AND NONE OF US THERE: HAPPY EASTER!)




THE MISSIONARY POSITRON

for J.A. Tyler

is the name of a personal ark
christened by a lava lamp
and Calvinist by discretion,
which means empty. We all
drowned. Inside, there are ovens
full of cushions and lightbulbs
illustrated with Bible scenes.
Thousands of jackets but no
buttons. Instead of blinds,
power strips. Everything is dark,
except now and then a pink light
strobes the floor like a cockroach.
All the bedrooms smell like licorice.
The shower spits wriggles of paper,
each one offering a clever reason
for the last. Everyone you love is
represented by their thumbprints on
silverware, none of which is ever
washed but soaks eternally in buckets
hidden around like Easter eggs even the
parents forgot about. Open the fridge:
it's just frozen latkes arranged to spell
the time. Each room is through a room's
fireplace, so maybe it's a good thing
we're dead already, right? You're right:
sometimes I think of my brain as a
coked out deli manager, running around
with pumpernickel and ham in a juggle,
screaming BE MORE RADICAL! at the
sandwich artists. Life is a lot of
clarification and limited-time options,
which is why it's good to listen to
real people and turn everything they say
into a family of origami frogs and hide
under that person's bed, arranging frogs
forever and letting worry do its heavy thing,
like some kind of mega dumbfuck at the helm.

rad poetry #4: for laura ellen scott

RAD POETRY THANKS LAURA ELLEN SCOTT AND JACK CHRISTIAN



A GIANT REALM
by Jack Christian

for Laura Ellen Scott

We stood by the mill and told the stories of Fred, Ned, and Ed.

One time, Ned flipped a cement truck. Ed owned a confident dog.

Fred leased farm equipment. Fred became obsessed

with the unevenness of his face. Ned said, God says

cut-up in church. Ed caught a fish with his hands.

Ned didn’t eat right. The donkey nearly died when Fred

fed it cake. The donkey nearly broke my fingers

when I saved its life. A blue heron nested by the picnic area

on the Upper Catawba. Below the dam was the Lower Catawba.

We stood in the mud. The dog killed a muskrat.

Fred climbed after pawpaws. Ed found a bundle of wire in a stump

by the creek. Ned said we could be in touch with anybody.

When the blue heron landed it was because of our noise.