Autobiography no. 25

It has been said that democracy is two wolves and a sheep
deciding what is for dinner
but what no one bothers to mention is that
if three sheep and a wolf decide what is for dinner, the wolf still eats. 

Hallow Ultima

She lay silently on the couch with a blanket over her body.
My eyes touched lightly upon her, as sanguinary as the mosquitoes
that delighted in feasting on her skin on long summer nights as I sat nearby, unbitten.
I intended to protect her or consume her- I had not yet decided which
when her eyelids fluttered open and she guilelessly said
“Why would you want me? You could have any woman in the world.”
I smiled with my teeth bared and replied
“That is a silly question. Because I can have any woman in the world, I wanted you.”

Autobiography no. 24

There were turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving and I took them from the refrigerator
and heaped white and dark meat onto the plate then piled cheese and gravy on top.
As I reached toward the plate to microwave it, my hand slipped
and the Corelle plate fell to the tile and shattered.

I was overwhelmed by fear of punishment and when my mother came to investigate the noise
I blamed my younger brother though he had only been standing nearby talking to me.
We were young but I shall not ever forget the way he looked at me as I accused him
and let him protest in vain, frozen by my injustice,
frozen by my fear of the eventual anger of my father.

I knew then that I was destined to be among the worst of men,
more evil than even Judas Iscariot- for Judas only betrayed a god
but I had betrayed my brother.

Autobiography no. 23

I was eating two pounds of baked beans at the table
and using tortillas instead of bread because we were out of bread
and I was struck with a desire to write about my very short imprisonment
and the only paper I could find was the shopping list I made days before.
I wrote some shit that was boring and predictable, then decided to finish my beans
and drink more beer and resolve to go to the grocery store tomorrow.
Most of the piece was not about being thrown in jail for being crazy-
it was about being angry at my cat for scratching the hell out of my leg for no reason.
At the end of the shining obverse of the grocery list, on the last line of paper, I noted that
there were possible replacements for every item on the list, many of which would be better choices-

just as there were a million replacements for my poem and that every one of them was better than the one I pretended to make before this one. Maybe the precursor is real, scribbled in rough handwriting in blue ink. I do not remember and in any case should not be trusted.

I feel the same way about what I am doing now as I do about shunning the cat who cut into my flesh, but I no longer give a fuck about introspection or grocery shopping. I wonder if there is a limit to how much I like to talk to myself. As everyone knows, that is the only reason I started pretending to be a poet in the first place. The problem with honesty is that it is short and life is long.

I finished the beans and a few tortillas then brushed my teeth and went to bed and I, the child who dreamed of being Heracles or Ajax, will slave away in a kitchen tomorrow but now I am free. Free to talk shit and be mad at the cat and write bad poems and ignore the way that other people feel.

The poem on the back of the shopping list is almost certainly better than this one, which is not skillfully made or particularly readable. I hope the list gets thrown away anyway.

Autobiography no. 22

I notice that I have nightmares only when I am afraid of losing Her.
They are not the twisted bloodied horrors that haunted the sleep of my younger years-
Instead She appears as a vast formless desert where one cannot die of thirst
Or as an ocean scoured of every living thing where one cannot drown,
And always always the sun beating down incarnadine.
Or it may be that I am that ocean.