This is God, Please Leave a Message (Poems Vol. 3)

• A sardonic cocktail of poems on faith, despair, and the absurdity of life.

THE MATTER OF FAITH

They fell into rage,

loud as the roar

of war movies.

Someone told them

the stars held no meaning,

that they’d just scattered

across the sky by accident.

Wallpaper peeled

from the walls

beneath a leaking roof,

and the floor drank water

like a drunken sponge.

Floral patterns

poisoned their eyes.

Floral patterns

blurred their thoughts…

So they steeped their heads

in heavy wine

to smooth the world’s sharp edges,

buried all ten fingers

in jars of trinkets,

hoping to soothe the noise,

letting themselves be nibbled,

letting themselves be nibbled…

They remembered

ancient rituals,

they remembered

where they had spilled

the last breadcrumbs of belief—

but their Lord

was still lounging by the pool,

ignoring time,

baring his teeth at pesky mosquitos

that brought him gifts,

sunbathing, forever at full strength,

grinning, pantsless.

And when their Lord

still didn’t pick up the phone,

they grew angry again,

ground the crumbs of faith

into dust,

and returned to their homes

with leaky roofs,

with peeling wallpaper,

sat down

and cursed the endless rain.

SILLY, SAD JOKE

“Pull my finger,” I say.

You do, and my nose falls off.

“That’s a dumb joke,” you think,

and burst into tears right in front of me.

I want to comfort you, make you laugh,

so I say it again:

“Pull my finger, just once more.”

You do—

and this time my head shoots upward,

up like a rocket,

through the clouds, past the stars.

But you don’t laugh—

(not that I could see it anyway)—

you just tremble and cry,

because now you’re

completely alone.

ZEBRA

Goddamn zebra lying in the road

between the shopping mall and the vintage park —

flattened like a pancake,

soaked into the asphalt,

all speckled with gravel.

This zebra got rid

of all her black stripes,

leaving only the white ones:

white, square stripes,

boringly symmetrical and symmetrically boring,

like the skeleton of a pixelated fish.

Goddamn zebra, letting people walk all over her,

cloned across the whole damn city

and the cities beyond it —

let’s face it,

she’s not original at all.

So everyone just rushes across her,

or straight-up runs her over.

WRITERLY NONSENSE

Wormbrain in a foreign-tongued rain,

lips like grenades & a snapped vein,

fingerless hands of futuristic hipsters,

shattered roses & half-spilled oysters.

A four-eyed face without a nose

& an ancient statue in a towel-pose.

Nonsense on top of nonsense

& a drop of disappointment in every sentence.

An old typewriter, burning the page

& the writer’s head —

overloaded on the wooden desk…

while his bored body

went off to the bathroom.

THE RUSTY FISH

A lucky fool

catches a tiny fish –

of course he wants to make a wish,

but the fish isn’t golden,

it’s just rusty.

So the fool

slams it against a rock,

takes it home,

fries it in a pan,

and eats the whole damn thing.

Barely chews –

pretty much swallows it whole.

Three days later

they find him dead –

in the same apartment,

on the floor, beside his bed.

They say he must’ve died

in terrible pain.

When they open him up,

they find a few

sharp rusty objects

that shredded his insides.

“Why the hell would someone

swallow rusty nails?”

the coroner wonders.

Stupid poor bastard…

But to hell with the man –

this is a story about the golden fish,

whose only wish

was for people to stop

bugging her

with their stupid little wishes.

So she simply rusted over,

hoping no one would

ever get any ideas again.

Except, of course,

for that greedy little idiot –

who didn’t get it

at all.