2 poems read at Susquehanna Art Museum on April 22
“snaggle-teeth” by john rogers
four fingers waving
goodbye. One talking shit on
poor kids with bad luck.
black clouds like wet drapes.
Face like a storm, makes the trees
rattle snaggle-teeth .
sunrise...now, sunset.
Bottles clink. make lovely chimes,
little speech bubbles.
Ruler, Knuckle Slap!
wake up on a carpet floor.
I need clean toilets!
(4/20/04)
~~
"poetry is a waste of time...shit, fuck it." by john rogers
i feel completely harmless
blowing steam and words
into empty space
like a dog whistle
that not even dogs can hear.
i sit in corners and make myself into the ideal wallflower
pale and motionless/observing
feeling sad and discombobulated
like a child trapped in a refrigerator.
my warped reality
is my only reality;
where i watch bright girls
dance
to black rhythms
while i sit sulking and hulking
and beam my invisible light
out at the masses.
this whole universe is a bleak cocktail
of orange juice antifreeze arsenic vodka motor oil
paint thinner and cyanide.
quite a tasty blend
if you enjoy drinking suicide.
the weird concocted world of mine
where dimensions collide
kids fall off bicycles
and fall into pits full of snakes and lions
where
you lose at poker
and you get blasted with catsup.
weird universe
with no universal form of communication
so i feel unwanted and untalked to
as i wander the days
speaking broken German to Englishmen
while calculating the probability that my creativity
has already run out
eating a lunch of foreign cultures
playing wild trumpet solos
and deciphering the physics of gravity
in its relation to smoking crack
for yr health
on a gymnasium floor.
the ugly boys kiss the girls and they orgasm
but when pretty ol' me kisses them
they die, or run!
o sorrows!
o crazy world!
what the hell is going on!?
i throw a plate
at yr ruddy face,
o ye unescapable fate!
if you wont stop this sea
from killing me
i just might build a boat
and live on it
just to spite you.
~~
(John Rogers, ©2004)