HOLLOW STATES
Chewing on an old computer hard drive
the maestro's teeth indirectly manipulate his bowel movement's
memory foam into the shape of a duck. Knowing that when it
morphs, Nutella provides the gloomiest of thrills.
An optical illusion of the hotel's impending implosion
made possible by the folded spaces between
acupunctures on the fake luggage in the lobby.
The elephant in your silence grandly twitches its ears – ears
wired to Nowhere's three densest gravitational loci.
Combining to form a chicken in the drywall: both real and imagined.
After wearily climbing off his gurney, the patient saw it
covered in meatless dots. In heavy silence.
Wonder what happens to the loose change in the pockets of mall Zombies.
One looks like it has a booger duct-taped to a leak.
The back-alley acupuncturist says he loves 'doing' fake luggage.
Deals directly with the symptom of said luggage not being able
to 'move their hollow states.' Some really empty people, for example,
require a special apparatus with a special built-in sack.
Darth Vader's gifts on Christmas are all really amazing; they are
all stuffers of the hollow states of amputees such as himself.
How he meditates on stopping the seizure from crawling –
with the sound of a pencil sharpening – down his
favorite pig roast. In the next room someone's routinely
measuring a stormtrooper's Ph.
- Tyson Bley
(featured in the poetry forum 02.20.12)
editor's note: I always thought there were clones of Shrodinger's Cat filling in those hollow states. Finally, thanks to acupuncture, we have room for that extra toothbrush. - mh
MY GARDEN TOOLS AREN'T WHERE I LEFT THEM
'I recently had a very pleasant experience,' my aunt wrote on her blog. 'On an impulse I joined a one-man masquerade. I lay down in the street and pretended to be a speed bump. I will spare you the gory details, save to say my garden tools aren't where I left them. A common misconception about toasters: the glow of their inner mechanism calls attention to the lesions on very yeasty bread, and the undertones resulting of this interaction bare close semblances to the calls coming from the plumbing, which are as spooky as the cry of the creature desperately seeking a cave to follow you into. While getting beaten the shit out of in pool halls does not perpetuate the mean, destructive myth about depleted serotonin levels in the hideously deformed. Psychopathy uncoiling into the inhuman, asbestos embodiment of one painfully intimate O.J. Simpson. Only an experienced chunk of taffy, when aiming a hairdryer at it, mutates into a flesh-colored origami crane. I THOUGHT turning into a speed bump would be a terrifying prospect for my dysmorphophobia; I'd taken a placebo, ya know? - which I knew well and which I trusted – and already, in my head, it was ramifying into images of a translucent, if tire-tainted, carapace lying in the road, crammed up against the sidewalk. I looked like a glass condom. In one bed-time story, a scary omen got really heavily sedated – the boy hero had potted it with a dart gun or something – then collapsed on the floor and was revealed to be a bed sheet. Pfff. And in another, artificial resuscitation was administered to a robot that had swooned at a picnic. 'What are you worried about?' they demanded when he came to. 'The calculation machine you used to revive me – it is extremely valetudinarian.' 'Yeah? And?' They thought him an ungrateful prick. 'Well, I now have extreme anxiety over this and that, and one thing and another.' 'Such as?' 'Well...'
- Tyson Bley
(featured in the poetry forum 06.15.11)
FAKE BLOOD
hallowed image of bodybuilder in yearbook
his irritable bowel syndrome staring back lifelessly
through-the-looking-glass raw meat
my memory of the helium school bus expectorating squeaky
crystals of déjà vu, fogging up the windows
the vast spectrum of our numb gums
strobe lights in a fish tank when she bit down
a religious experience's aerosol derived from hotel dishwater
from the very pit of obscurity, slave labor cooked up
an incarnation of cupcakes, hippocampal silicates
aggregating into flamboyant slice of pizza
the average growl of tires in milligrams
go! but your jealousy will make false teeth
will you walk through my scrapyard carefully minding
infestations here and there of squishy parts, welts
as edible as the square mile of sleeping sickness
locusts spread vast polymers upon enraptured wig
there is nothing appealing about DARPA
or its propensity to inflict cabbage, to cause cabbage
to mass-produce cabbage
plus your mother's subsequent transfusion into
a hilarious dance, disguising incest as a so-called
biocompatible blast in wheelbarrow, ash shape-shifting
antlers under your pillow covered in old, old blood
- Tyson Bley
(added 06.15.11)
PLEASE HELP ME FIND THE DOLLAR I LOST
Godzilla of blue Smurf crotch electro waffle lust
bugs for Kate Bush occult screwdriver forebrain yew-yaw
struggle for alignment of the internal organs on the Mexican platter
my navel out of danger crafted by the most skilled medieval cosplayer,
the instant my mom said, ‘Get your shit together!’
put the unstoppable Puppet’s boxing glove
helium speaking those words into perspective –
insects behind the sunny sitting room window hate
inundate their feet with Fanta pee try in vain to flee
feel important when their little hairs singe and smell good
on the cold radiator
therefore ideas grow out of acupuncture
their epic sojourn in the crawlspace of the janitor’s vintage hessian trousers
to eclipse, to educate, to repeat the mistakes of our nervous system
a view in three dimensions of the ballad from the balcony
betraying propellers on the caps on the soft susurrating notes
and now a dollar stays gone, its value a cross-stitched haunting
braces for a life of perpetual hectic roaming on the proboscis
of my father’s broken 1964 Cadillac
- Tyson Bley
(featured in the poetry forum 04.10.11)
BEDRIDDEN
‘choke him, choke him, choke him!’ all the Rice Crispies on the bed chant to the single Rice Crispie lodged in the Hoover vacuum cleaner’s mouth
bedsores full of static
a cobbled, novelty garden feature shaped like a sick person
a tenfoot shadow broke in last night
organic veggie coloring book for the bored ill
you will only show your ass when you’re dead
wake me up when death’s pimple crosshairs on the air mattress have turned cloudy
the fountains should be of the purest air
so yes, I want a germ-free Uzi to finish me off
don’t tell me not to eat in bed
- Tyson Bley
(featured in the poetry forum 02.24.11)
CHAT ROULETTE
people jump to horrible conclusions when I make Freudian slips
I don’t know –
all I know is that I have an excellent webcam voice
behind me at the end of a receding tunnel is a toupee shrine, hairy and elephantine, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling carpet dust
I am a shark fin with a flawed spray-on tan
a burger with a smiley face fingered into it – dry, polystyrene dough: anciently porous
it’s on days like this that I can sniff out luggage containing Lady Gaga’s E. Coli vibrator
I have prominent knees
my socks are secured to my ankles with toothpicks
going outside like this may raise influenza risk
a mule asteroid bringing all sorts of new and terrible goodies to Earth
I am sometimes terrorized by my reading glasses sliding off my nose
VEGAS: we are not alone
GENE POOL: leave me the fuck alone
I am on a boat. For realsies.
from here I can see the black, humped, furtive ninja migration:
it’s supposed to be a secret, but with so many, how can they remain hidden?
like a whale’s back diving slowly across the cityscape
the Earth’s crust is supercharged with conspiracy
a large building over there actually just now vomited
corporate emesis
slinking past a pauper assemblage, who themselves are merely ninjas in disguise
inflammatory Thai massage – the vulgar nudging exploitation of a frog
dry-humping a sports bra until it turns shiny and dings like a tambourine, whose shape it now actually resembles
Hell finally caught up
in order to have reprieve you must train sleep to drill a hole through the back of your head
don’t swim in any Vegas swimming pools
some people’s voices aren’t so good over a webcam
deceased rhino antimatter
eerie baldness: the mirror a serial killer holds up to us
the electronics of my apartment has just now actually perfected the humidifier’s parabola
- Tyson Bley
(added 02.24.11)
WHAT SHE’S MADE OF THEY MADE HER OF
Anatomical wind chimes is what male thought
made of her by entering at just the right speed.
A marionette with a degree in knots, her PTSD
gestures constituted the money shot. Check out
these shameful reunifications: anti-gravity syndrome
gets it from brothel acupuncture’s gilded pogos.
Who patented the painkiller output? She was not
really fooled by the crap in the mail, by
yuletide berserkers and 5-minute jerkers,
sitting on a cocoa throne with points of view
like a flurrying leak. On the bright side of the caribou,
there was a real woman, although lesbian jazz –
clenching the horns between its jaws – still
cheers me up. I’m a tidal load of strangers loaded
with strangers – orgasm flakes the zeppelin would
easily trade for the laser cab mistletoe.
Tyson Bley
(featured in the poetry forum 01.11.11) |
