Jay Sizemore writes

Mother’s Day 2017

It’s Mother’s Day, and I am thinking about carbon monoxide,

I’m thinking about what’s left after the lush greenery of the Irish hills.

The gardenia we planted last year died in the late season frosts,

the cherry tree we planted was murdered by carelessness.

It seems I am destined to watch things wither,

to see my skin become a patchwork of inflammation and rust.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I know there is no cure.

I don’t know why I want to fuck every beautiful woman alive.

My brain has begun changing words to fit its own narrative,

a story of puzzle pieces forced into wrong places,

and a reality distorted and disarranged as abstract art.

The President is a lunatic as I am a porn addict

and a lazy and purposeless drinker capable of some messy arpeggios.

If you must know, my whole life I’ve felt this endless yearning,

as if my body is nothing but a fog machine

pumping out tendrils of emotional need to any possible recipient,

any possible reciprocation to manifest a version of self-worth

just as temporary as a lover’s high.

I am the rocket ship that refuses to land,

I am the butterscotch candy that sticks to your teeth,

I am the little boy you laughed at for being myopic and clumsy,

who grew into a man myopic and clumsy,

with no compass to navigate the treachery of social interaction.

I just want you to like me, and let me do what I want to do,

and do what I want you to do.

I just want to be anything other than this coward,

with nowhere to hide this rage and lust. 

 

 Me (Jenny Saville) -- Harry Vincent

Jay Sizemore

Drag

What a drag it is to die,

to find life’s price tag

and see it yanked free

by a thieving hand,

indifferent

to integrity

of life’s binding seams.

No one has been arrested

for removing the “Do Not Remove”

from their mattress,

as no one has been arrested

for removing the floor.

The homeless are forced to sleep on

a bed of widening nails:

steel spikes on a sidewalk.

Now they float like plastic shopping bags

caught in the spiraling wind

that holds them aloft

until gravity’s inevitable magic

deposits its trash into the sea,

and the autopsied whales

reveal what they’ve been eating.

Here’s where I tell you

I once jerked off in a plane,

in the bathroom

watching porn on my phone

while people waited outside

in the jostling cabin

35,000 feet above the ground,

and I felt how Donald Trump must feel

parking his cart on the green,

triumphant and dirty

like a kid smirking

through chocolate-smeared lips

driving the fish insane

as he taps the aquarium glass

next to the sign that reads

“Do Not Touch the Glass.”

These orgasms aren’t pleasurable,

they’re just more lubricant

in the gears of this messy machine,

the interlocking teeth

rusted and gritty

with the detritus of our bodies

they grind joylessly

into the red dust of decay,

and we wonder

why there’s always blood

in the mouths

of our politicians

dried to the enamel

of their dead-eyed smiles.

They’re just watching the dirt

shift and groove

beneath the heels

of the countless corpses

they drag to their graves. 

 
 Golf Caddy Instructs Trump -- Edward Steed

["Just imagine the hole is world peace and the sand traps are nuclear Armageddon and the club is your ability to deal calmly and rationally with complex situations."]