Joey Cloudy online

If You Smell Something Stankin’…

If You Smell Something Stankin’…

it’s me I’m the shit 

to the devil with your politically correct false modesty 

noble savage hand writing 

my woman’s writing her novel 

on the computer 

I can’t write 

on the cursed machine 

I don’t trust 

the binary code of machine language 

I want more 

than neatly, typed spell checked pages 

to survive me 

I want you to see me 

dancing the nutcracker naked 

singing for my Last Supper 

rachmaninoff and ramen noodles 

white crow sings in the corner of the room 

my belly burns with emptiness 

burning and empty 

except for coffee and chocolate 

emptying myself 

I am empty 

as the chained dogs’ bark 

thinking in circular logic 

writing in lunatic cycles 

the music stops 

I get up, turn the tape play on 

a bald Irish woman wails away at the wall 

of lost love in the corner of the room 

my old lady pounds away at the keys 

like Horowitz or Van Clyburn 

big blue super computers IBM g40 monitor 

think I’ll work on my acceptance speech 

I’ve been working on them for years now 

but still no word yet 

from the Pulitzer or Nobel Prize people 

maybe the speech isn’t good enough 

think I’ll work on it 

some more 

fuck America 

fuck god 

shit on the hydra heads of America 

shit on god 

what to wear 

black leather motorcycle jacket 

what do you wear under a kilt 

doc martin combat boots 

my madness spreads over the pages like a virus 

that effete sissy warhol left 

warehouses filled with garbage 

for the critics to ahhh over 

I’ll leave great cords of notebooks 

filled with this chicken scratch I call handwriting 

the Freudian and Jungian shrinks 

smoke cigars as big as a Clydesdales cock 

but sometimes they’re just cigars 

I lie in my coffin awaiting the inevitable 

analysis 

sitting in their chairs over my grave wearing tweed jackets 

trouser-less old men in white silk slips 

predictably, blame this life on my mother 

the air conditioner duct taped in the window barely 

cools the room 

the compressor whines 

under the strain of neglect and old age 

don’t we all 

what is this but 

the scatological paranoid rantings 

of an undiagnosed manic depressive 

the feminist will cry 

misogynist, chauvinist, sexist 

the religious fundamentalist will join in 

with agnostic, atheist, heathen 

the ex-wives will all sing 

dead beat, dead beat, dead beat daddy-o 

my progeny the cock roaches wait 

for the price of these lines 

these erratic scrawls of graffiti to get as high as giraffes pussy 

yes this is the part where I mock you for breathing 

but it’s hard to laugh when you have worms for a tongue 

heaven and hell are just two words 

for oblivion 

academia shouts 

he isn’t a poet 

where are his polysyllabic words 

obscure literary references 

and oxford pin 

that isn’t poetry 

it’s just rambling beatnik stream of consciousness 

narrative in verse hip hop 

it’s just a fad 

he can’t be serious 

it’ll never last 

the literary critics will whisper 

he quotes rock stars, movies and comic books 

nigga puleeeze 

and the cockroaches who will feast 

on my legacy will speak in insect language 

one dead poet taste 

just like another 

rather Kafkaesque don’t you think?