Tangles

It's not clear the tangles have anything to do with us. We tried snipping them with scissors, but those broke into two metal sceptres the children had to play with. We begged them to leave our hair, babies, possessions, and lovers alone. They just stuck bubble gum in our mustaches and tied up our headphones so we couldn't listen to pain-killing music. The animated cartoon figures on TV said all we had to do was be friendly, shake their hands, hug them, share our brand name candy and brand name furniture. Instead, we drew them on sketchpads, their tentacles unloosening their grips around our handkerchief necks, which didn't deserve to get sneezed at. We lifted weights, and when those were floating in the sky, we picked up mountains and jabbed them at the tangles. Still, nothing worked. There's a simple answer and we're not getting it. We're trapped around fingers and their grip resembles death; we saw him in a line-up, we could pick him out.

Federal Poet, The Countdown with Bob Marcacci

Catch the new issue of The Federal Poety (an esteemed D.C. poetry organization I'm part of) here: http://www.blehert.com/TheFederalPoets/Federal_Poet_Fall2006.pdf Listen to me reading "Collage" here, on The Countdown show by Bob Marcacci, a PJ for miPoradio: http://www.miporadio.net/BOB_MARCACCI/

I Should Be Asleep

You should be asleep now. So, stop reading this. Turn off the computer. Turn off the lights. Forget to brush your teeth. Pray to a deity you can't name and aren't sure you answer to. Put on those footie pajamas. Put on the rubber ski-mask and the devil eye shades. Say goodnight to the cracks in the ceiling that wink at you. Say hello to the spiderwebs in your dreams that will catch you. In the morning figure out what parts of you are left, which ones haven't been eaten.

Five Fifteen to Go

The basketball game has its own rules, different from all games of the past and those of the future. Fouls are punished with thrashings by an old-timey pirate wearing an eye patch. Three-pointers allow the scorer to run around the arena with a posse of adoring fans. Rebounds add another hundred dollars to the honor students' scholarships, while depriving the other school of Bunsen burners and other laboratory equipment. The winners must answer calls from the president, who talks about what great touchdowns they ran back and asks advice about which wars they'd prefer, which terrorist warning would make them most afraid. The losers watch their moms and dads deny their paternity, while a guillotine is lowered down by ropes for the coach, who is relieved to finally get this over with; the newspapers had been storming at him for days, the administration telling them to drink hemlock, kiss babies, eat cake.

Wince

The onions winced instead of us, because we wielded too large a knife, and our hands seemed too certain they should be cut. What if we had, instead, put the onions in baby carriages, brought them to the nursery under the cover of night. Would our parents find out we had children, and would they be disappointed that they turned out to be just like us? We should see how many layers they have instead of dicing them into bits. The color underneath might be gold, something we value, rather than a ingredient of our already too spicy lives.

Test Tubes

How many test tubes are their in my pocket? One of acid to throw in the face of my prosecutor because he's going to throw me in the slammer. One of radioactive spider stuff to turn me into a super-hero so I can kiss girls upside down. One of wine so I can sneak drinks into the laboratory and get drunk enough to hit the wrong switch, electrify the chemicals, and give me super belching powers. One of fake nitroglycerin, that will scare my nemesis until he learns I can't harm him, then he'll throw me in front of a truck, but I'll fly away because I'll have discovered my mutant powers. One of poetry, the genre that falls so quietly out of the container you might think no one saw it, or read it, at all.

See

I see myself in a black umbrella, covered in syrup, waiting for the rain to fall. When the first drops hit my body, I'll spray confetti across the sky. If it hits a wandering vulture, I'll stay really quiet and still until it pecks at my ear, then I'll jump up and yell, "Surprise!" Because it hears that word, it'll turn up its hearing aid, and momentarily distracted, it'll be grabbed by a mountain lion prowling through the forest. Since the beast was hungry, it runs off before noticing me lying there, another victim, soft and fuzzy like a meaty pair of dice. Except I can't be rolled for numbers, since no tattoos of ones and sixes scar my body, which is much less muscular than it should be. When my rolls of fat hear this, they decide to drag me outside, where a blizzard is about to destroy all traffic. I see myself in a red poncho, soaking in dish washing liquid, ready for the snow to pile up around me.

An Exciting New Book

A tongue in cheek library catalog card from me. See http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/

You Don't Remember

For the pledge of allegories -- to the Eskimos of France -- because the ice isn't too cold. For lemon fresh smells -- to the Paris of Oklahoma -- because your bed wasn't made. For intelligent squirrels -- to disagreements over poetry -- because I'm wasting time now. For a chocolate bonbon -- to eating what you want -- because you don't want a thin corpse. For figuration in all its forms -- to abstract painter alcoholics -- because you need a hangover. For mushrooms in a garden -- to unreal toads in the closet -- because you swam here. For untrue allegations -- to the newspapers that print them -- because I haven't said anything. For whispers tangled -- to the noise that unwraps itself -- because I've run out of language. For winter storm warnings -- to the TV patterns -- because jet planes fly over me daily. For remembering everything -- to snoring during the day -- because my eyes aren't open.

Facts

At the factory *you've never been to one* we manufacture facts *you mostly have wrong opinions* for the politician ghosts *why ghosts again?* We put them in large boxes *how about minuscule, tinfoil, ice cream* and mail them to congressional advisers *you live near D.C.* When the time is right *you're so cynical* we unveil them to the public *that faceless audience you think you have* which discards the old beliefs like cards in a bad game of Go Fish *do you remember the old rules anymore?* So, we don't really look at the facts *too hard* but they feel like sticky sea creatures *octopus, squid, jellyfish, dolphin* that want to be put back in the sea *you can't get close to an aquarium without squirming* They're more comfortable being undiscovered *probabilities only, not the truth* living inside a heavy darkness *hello my old friend* like maggots in jelly *not those again* that stare in silence at the submarines that dare to enter their depths *have you seen that movie, The Abyss? was it underrated? I'm scared, but I think when I watch it I want to drown, just like the actors pretend to, the couple sharing their breaths, pounding on her chest to make her live, almost dying*

Simplicity

In this city everything must be simple. Its babies must be able to disassemble engines, its politicians must be able to read the meaning of life from teleprompters, death must be able to read Gravity's Rainbow in his cracked mirror before he shaves some more lives. Instructions only come in the universal language of love and/or violence, and all the tabs work no matter what slot you put them in, even if strangers say it should be illegal. Schools are dynamited around the clock, because nobody needs to learn anything. Correspondence classes in Laziness 101 can't must enough students, and new employees a promotion each day till they are presidents and CEOs. Eventually, people will forget to breathe. All this will be left are the skeletons of cars that ran out of fuel, the shells of people who were soft as the insides of crabs.

Miserable

It's true the miserable are really happy. They hide their pleasure beneath frowns, like Ahab's whale diving back under the ocean. It'll peak from under their eyes, and you'll set your hook against them, ready to throw them from your sinking boat, but they swish their tails before you can shoot them. When it's their birthday they wear scarlet letters of pain, but they're actually glad they committed adultery with hope. They spit out its feathers and hide it under their shirts as a necklace. If it seems they're running out of life and nothing is worthwhile, they can still drink from the endlessly rocking sea. It cradles them, tells them they were once children who wanted to become pirates on Treasure Island, travel down the Mississippi in a raft, race frogs past gypsy steam boats, in the waves, under the sun.

Degrees

Like those in a thermometer shoved in your mouth. Like the ones stamped on your wall, burned black and blue, like beatings by your universities. Like others in the shapes you see in your eyes just after dreaming, that you can't get back and won't coalesce again into nightmare trips to lost schools and parents with parrot-shaped heads. Like those diagrammed in connections to stars and families. Like the ones the wind plays with, when it's feeling chilly and is willing to share it with others. Like others in missile firing patterns that target you and the place you call home, along with many others who are not oblivious of the dangers, yet don't think about it because doing so would freeze them in traffic, in bed, in the kitchen, drinking coffee with no where to go to escape.

Collage

The collage moved back and forth over the window, assembling pieces of light, butterflies, and people's faces into a deadly weapon. When artists wandered through the neighborhood, they expected to be safe, except for bridges. They ached for painters and poets to jump off them, but they managed to resist most of the time. When the collage shot their canvases and exploded their notebooks, the artists didn't know what to do. The careful examinations of images and words they'd assembled from their mind, like builders of exquisite mansions, were now nothing more than shreds. They picked up the bits of their lives and ran behind the bushes. Each one of them tried to put together what had been ripped apart, but they only found an incomplete mosaic, disconnected pictures and letters, much like the world.

Assasination

Imagine being a loaded bullet. All your life you've waited for this moment -- playing with other bits of metal in the factory, going through gunpowder initiations, graduating to your own box of armaments. You're finally in the rifle, snug inside its warmth, eager to taste a duck you remember from the legends of hunters told to you by a holster. Except, you feel horrible, chilled like the machinery that created you. You have the premonition that a doctor will tear you out of a brain, and that you will drop something that belonged in the sky, the head star of a nation that guides the people, who are a ship suddenly plunged into the dark. No wind, the squeezing of a forceps, the gaping, endless wound.

Making It Rain

I shouldn't have used pennies. One of them hit a stripper's eye.