Issue 22/23
cover photo of Louise Brooks
publication date 12/17/1983

This Poem Again

David Spicer

This poem is about poetry.

This poem is not a poem, but a chant redundant without craft, an anti-poem.

This poem sucks, like most poems do.

This poem is for Delbert Silverfart, who shits a poem a day, has a thousand
            turds in mediocre magazines nobody but pathetic poets read.

This poem is my Big Toe contribution to literature: I sit in my room,
            masturbate with words, and claim I’m the third member of the
            English Language Trinity, along with Milton and Shakespeare.

I’m better than them, though.

This poem is not surreal as honey on a wienie, but real as the eyeball
            of your dead grandma.

This poem makes me sick.

This poem is bitter chocolate I eat to remain sweet, at least in my
             rational dreams.

This poem is Freud’s mistress, Hitler’s pincushion, Gandhi’s heart anointment.

This poem is really dedicated to nobody but myself, so if you don’t read it
              I’ll cut off your bananas and pomegranates.

This poem is self-conscious.

This poem contradicts itself, plays with language like a little girl
              who pretends she’s a yellow monkey.

This poem is awful, could ramble forever about itself, just might do it.

Don’t take this poem seriously, don’t wash your legs of it yet, I have
              a million clichés to say in this poem.

This poem is a brilliant image, a cardinal on a brand new tar highway.

This poem is sticky as my lover’s peanut butter hair, but not as pretty
              as her titties.

This poem is a joke, just like you.

This poem eats wild raspberries, this poem is ridiculous, like a glib artist
              from Philadelphia teaching at a two-bit Tennessee college.

This poem has many lines to go, and promises to break.

This poem rapes hard core felons in their sleep,

This poem wants to meet the gas oven goddesses, the bridge-jumping jackasses,
              the paranoid pimps of bastardized songs.

This poem is the forgotten circle of Dante’s Hell.

This poem is a roller coaster tracking down the rib cage of your trapped body.

I want this poem to caress you like an angel’s razor,

I want this poem to make you laugh as though you’ve lost your last child.

This poem is taking too long to write, is trite,

This poem is becoming monotonous as a wasted simile.

This poem’s desire is to be the beautiful onomatopoeia,

This poem is the surfing champion of South Dakota.

This poem sprinkles black pepper and Coca-Cola on your genitals.

Oh this poem is giving me a headache in the ass, I hope it’s giving you one too.

If you’re an editor, this poem will scream at you to take it because it’s clever.

If you’re an ear audience, this poem will sing you punk lyrics of a 35-
                year-old kid.

If you’re an eye audience, this poem will not make it on the page.

If you’re an ad agent, this poem will convince you not to hire me.

If you’re a bus driver, this poem recited will cause you to brake too soon
                and kill a poet on a Honda.

If you survive this poem this poem will French kiss you in a rose bush,
                thumb fuck you when you’re making brownies laced with arsenic,
                and open arms wide for you in an Arizona sunset.

This poem was almost never written, because I love poems about poetry.

This poem, I promise you, will never be finished, it will end with an ellipsis,
                a solar sunspot, an eyelash wanting a new globe to sit on.

This poem thinks it’s a video game, but it’s really a doughnut without the
                hole, a car without the starter, a wife without birth control pills.

This poem bores me to death, but I can’t quit, I’m obsessed with this poem.

This heart of mine makes me think that Hank Williams could have written
                this poem instead of dying in the back seat of a car with a full
                bottle of whiskey.

This poem is making my asthma reappear, making me grateful that I’m
                already dead.

This poem Edgar Allan Poe’s muse commissioned me to write.

This poem is repetitive.

This poem is talented.

This poem didn’t know it was going to be written.

This poem is explicit rather than implicit.

This poem laughs at all poets except myself, because I take myself with
                a drop of ink.

This poem is a blessing of beautiful days, a file cabinet of octopuses.

This poem is in love with itself, like everybody else is.

This poem is the Me Generation’s anthem,

This poem is a Venetian blind man looking out the window to see a DC-10
                 explode in the middle of a rock concert,

This poem will give that fool his sight back.

This poem is still full of energy, is a carpenter without a level,

This poem is a baker with too much yeast,

This poem is my latest wolf cub,

This poem is a bisexual dwarf,

This poem is more violent than a shotgun full of tootsie rolls.

This poem is childish, you say.

But what do you know?

This poem wants a cup of mocha.

This poem cuts wheat in the time of Russian famine.

This poem sweet talks all the women I want to pork at three o’clock in the
                 morning, the stars jealous of my poet’s virility.

This poem will not make me quit writing poems.

This poem will not make me famous.

This poem will not even be published, Ann Landers, so you don’t have any
                 balls if you don’t print it, because editors are eunuchs, except me.

This poem will decorate the walls of Berlin in 2120,

This poem will live forever and die the first chance it gets.

This poem is weakening, it’s done too many pushups, stroked too many pussies,

This poem is Nathan Hale, the first and last true poem of this nation.

This poem wants to be a river of many rotten logs, this poem refuses
                 to kill its weak lines,

This poem is the death of a humble man mourned by nobody,

This poem will gentle horses, stop the rain, call blackbirds swans.

This poem can do anything because it’s ugly and beautiful simultaneously.

This poem is a C- undergraduate term poem in a Creative Writing Workshop.

This poem says–So What? to anything.

This poem is impressed with itself, refuses to revise itself.

This poem is moving so fast ice melts before it’s frozen.

This poem is an epileptic thief, a sewed-up prostitute, a submarine
                 commander with no swabbies, only airmen.

This poem is screwing around too much, is in love with itself.

Was that said before about this poem?

This poem holds nothing sacred, not that you can be shocked anymore.

This poem, yes, this poem is not strident.

This poem has seven voices, is symbolic of Rimbaud’s libido.

This poem has an ego the size of Alaska.

This poem loves sounds: a cicada’s burp, a rainbow rose’s whisper,
                 a fat woman’s moans when she’s being laid.

This poem is a muffler, a wind breaker, a pair of shoes with holes
                 in their soles.

This poem is a cerebral carrot,

This poem disowns the previous metaphor,

This poem is going to end in exactly ten minutes.

This poem is a black hole, a beard of a serious poet,

This poem is the third sex staring everyone in the tongue.

This poem is overwritten,

This poem is racing against whatever is the opposite of time,

This poem wants to dance the Tennessee Waltz with the prettiest girl
                 in this room,

This poem is running out of gas,

This poem is going to fizzle like a released balloon,

This poem is a parachute with slits,

This poem is the horn of a steer on a Cadillac hood,

This poem is a masterpiece of garbage.

This poem lives at the Anger Hotel, eats at the Gut Grill, and drinks
                 at the Lollipop Lounge,

This poem boxed Joe Louis in the nose.

This poem was the last beautiful woman Rasputin saw.

This poem pitched pennies to the children of Bombay Harbor.

This poem is a litany of lies.

This poem is a cherry bomb stuck in your left nostril.

This poem is a magnolia hugging a guided missile,

This poem hangs on a Mississippi tornado clothesline.

This poem is more dangerous than a semi load of nuns armed with padlock keys.

This poem reserves the right to refuse service to phony Indians who write
                 poems about their Greek and Sioux adolescence.

This poem fears the stones of darkness.

This poem rides in the rear of a lime green fire truck,

This poem tasted yogurt yesterday and now has a habit.

This poem wants to be the fetus of a billboard model.

This poem collects old hags on Harley Davidsons,

This poem will take a cheap shot at anything for its own sake.

This poem fell in love with an albino squirrel today.

This poem is smarter than its author.

This poem is a shadow of light.

This poem is graceful as a forking knight on a chessboard,

This poem gets on edge when it eats steak,

This poem is the final testament of the first Neo-Romanticist.

This poem is a giant’s testicle disguised as an ancient basketball.

This poem is a battered car full of battered people.

This poem steals Queen Anne’s Lace in a dead town at night.

This poem is easy because Jesus loves everybody that doesn’t care about
                 this poem.

This poem will outlaw future poems about poetry by its mere breathing     
                 of hydrogen instead of oxygen.

This poem is Robert Bly’s biggest fantasy,

This poem is a betrayed confidence, a reservoir of a thousand jobless
                Cubans, a field of weak words, ironwood gone soft, a raccoon
                with its mask stolen, a grand street with no blue buildings,
                a giant without a world supporting his shoulders, a porch
                without steps.

This poem wants a red guitar for a girlfriend, a talk show for a father,
                Colonel Parker for a manager, Elvis for its patron saint.

This poem should never have been written, because any reason is valid.

This poem is Charlie Chaplin’s mustache.

This poem will forget you in a second, La Belle Dame Sans Merci,

This poem has pissed on me one too many times,

I’m gonna finish this poem now, because I have another headache, and
                 I’m lazier than this poem,

This poem that laughs, that chants, that does everything a poem should
                 and shouldn’t do,

This poem has been a good baby to me,

This poem is now an adult ready to puff its chest out against the
                 hackneyed moon,

This poem is ready to die without a name, so I’ll just call it

This poem again.