Poem with an Attitude

I want to be the poem you wouldn't lend
To your younger sister to read,
The poem you wouldn't dare bring home
To introduce to your parents

A punk of a poem with a Mohawk haircut
That sports a dirty gray tank-top that says
"Don't mess with me.  I'm psychotic"
A poem with a pack of cigarettes
Rolled up in its right sleeve.

I want to be the poem that slaps you
Alongside the head and bellows

"SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

I want to be the poem that declares Jihads
Against Kardashians, against the cast of Jersey Shore,
Against Fox News, corporate whore politicians,
And that most persistant of all evils, rhymed verse.

I want to be the poem that drives the fast car
With exhaust manifolds loud enough
To rattle nursing home windows.
I want to be the poem that runs Stop signs,
That won't slow down in school zones,
A poem that knows no speed limits,
The poem that flips off cops as it roars past them.

I'm the poem that doesn't want to work.
I just want to loiter on the street corner,
Smoke cigarettes and leer at women
As they cross the street to avoid me,
Being fearful that I might accost them.

I want to be the poem that sexually harasses you,
The poem that you lock your door against,
That you fear enough to install a chain-bolt lock
To make doubly-sure that I stay out of your life.

I'll find my way in anyway.
I'll rifle through your drawers, lift your diary,
Then sell your secrets to the world.
I'm the poem that will steal your money
Your books, your stereo and flat screen TV,
Forcing you to stay home with only me
Left to read for entertainment.

I'm the poem that longs to lead you astray,
The poem that will persistantly stalk you,
Relentless as an estranged lover,
Obsessively possessive,
A tad bit vengeful.
I want to infect your world like a virus
And swell into the cancerous tumor
That begins to devour you
Until you think of nothing else but me.

I want to be the poem that camps out in your head,
The poem that you'll keep repeating incessantly
When Alzheimers has your mind in thrall,
Droning my lines in a sing-song voice,
Your head bobbing to the rhythm of the verse.

You may have figured it out by now.
This poem is trying to seduce you.
You know you like the bad boys;
Byron, Baudelaire and Bukowski,
Poets with chips on their shoulders
The size of boulders and passions
Hot enough to make your heart smoulder.

I want to be a poem like theirs,
A two-fisted drinker of a poem
That swaggers into a bar and takes
Possession of it by sheer force of personality.

I want to be the poem that drinks Dos Equis.
I want to be the most interesting poem in the world.

I want you to notice me.

I want you to want me.

I want you to love me.

I want to be your poem.

Written After Viewing Another Evening of Armageddon on the History Channel

We’re adrift upon a frail craft on a flat earth,

Listening to the thundering roar of cataracts

That cascade over the rim into a fearful void.

Tis said that a dragon lurks there to feast upon

Crews of ships that plummet over the edge.

We need to cast our grapples toward the stars

Before we turn in a frenzy of madness

Like caged rats to lunge and claw at our neighbors,

But we’re powerless, as our ship

Drifts perilously closer to the rim.

We’re attempting to balance barefoot

On a razorblade edge of disaster,

Fearfully peering up at the rumbling volcano

That intimidates us with its imminent threat

Of engulfing us in fiery immolation.

Mired in impotent frustration,

Insanely groveling to blood-crazed visions

Even our best minds snap under the stress.

Goaded by his God of Chaos, a rooftop sniper

Has a pregnant Mary squarely in his sight.

We’re standing vigil at a death-watch

In a lunatic asylum’s intensive-care unit.

Labored breathing- - -erratic heartbeat- - -

Our life-line monitor is Cable Network News.

We listen, like lemmings, for the siren that signals

The start of our mad dash to outdistance our doom.

We’ve divined our fate from the entrails of vapor

That coil across the sky their message

Of irrevocable nuclear devastation..

Fields of mushroom flowers bloom over our cities.

Swarms of angry missiles sting the shuddering flanks

Of a frightened, fire-scorched earth

That quakes in convulsions of pain.

Splattered upon what few walls still remain

Are only enigmatic figures, shadows of life

That have been extinguished in a fury of fission.

New York- -Moscow- -Beijing- - -obliterated.

“Look on your works, ye mighty, and despair!”

But wait!  From beneath the ash and radioactive soil

From which man once coaxed his gardens,

A loathsome creature wriggles its way out of the death

To face the eerie loneliness of the radium green night.

What evolutionary process does this monster herald?

What cruel gods will it choose to fashion in its own image?

Will this foul beast reign in a world any more brutal

Than the end-times conjured forth by power-mad men?

     *    *    *    *   *   *   *

Cruel Devourer, let me post this poem

On our front door like a mark of Passover crimson,

That my family might be spared the horrors

Of this looming holocaust of annihilation.