happyku
by Roger Mugs
happy happy glad
happy happy glad glad glad
happy and then sad?
night and then
you’re up again
at the buttcrack of dawn
or an unfortunate hour before
I welcomest thou
and praisest thou
for giving unto me
an excuse,
nay an explanation,
nay a justification
for my in progress
male-pattern balding,
unexcused by my previous 26 years.
Hurtling along these highway streets,
traveling through the night
as the music pounds its way
into my head, heart, soul
driving!
Pushing!!
POUNDING!!!
faster!
Further!!
HARder!!!
HARDER!!!!
into the night,
into the darkness,
into the music,
wherever it may lead
this was a stinging
critique on love,
and the insanity of it
or the insanity of me
and my bipolar disorder
and my anxiety
and my hatred
and how i’ve probably not trusted a soul my entire life and have subsequent problems doing so in the present or any forsee-able future,
but it ended up
dead as the leaves
replaced with something
now as i re-read it,
decidedly more dead
and probably
better.
black and red
hedge trimmer in hand
i set to work conquering
these unruly bushes
until a spark of
amber flame licks at my elbow
and then power’s out because i
cut off the cord in the
course of some friendly fire.
giving up i
purchase a new gaming system on the way home
stop by the liquor store and pick up a bottle (or eleven)
order pizza and return home to rip my clothes from my body
stripped to my boxers i stand before
the monster screen i’ve earned through years of
something like hard labor
and burn new callouses in my thumbs
and cataracts in my eyes
passing two hours four hours ten hours – more
i drink and i drink
i play and i play
i order food and order more food
i indulge in any and everything i can possibly
afford in an effort to squander my savings
before my eyes close for rest
seeking comfort and hope and joy in a hopeless world
red eyed and naked
i forsake the cleanliness of my couch for the convenience
of not visiting the bathroom
and press on and press on and press on
lying sick and pre-hung over (quite drunk still
if you will)
i open my eyes and cry myself back to sleep
knowing i must return to the thing
the only thing
which brings meaning to my life
wishing i could abandon it and hope for something
new
perhaps different
suit and tie
replace fecal matter and i
showered climb
into my honda civic
and return to my hopeless world
boiled and fried and steamed if you will
a little bit more and the stagnation
ought to settle in exactly as i anticipated
this thought of yours would rest on the
shoulder of a miniature fly (that is a fly
much smaller than a normal fly – a fly
so small in fact it could never be captured
and thrown against a wall so hard as to stun
it and then have a piece of hair tied around
it’s little neck to be kept as a pet because
you see its neck would be much too small)
or at least it would stay that way until next
year sometime in the autumn of course
these are the liars rules
you must put on the liar shoes
learn to lie like us liars do
walk the path we made for you
the quandry of freedom understood
but we keep it like any liar should
in the shadows no passerby could
see our eyes under our liars hood
a liar can bend what’s in the light
any decent liar knows the liars might
that could take the day into the night
infecting everything in the liars sight
the liars spread throughout the land
and no one dares to lay a hand
on the liars lines, drawn in the sand
but what you can’t do, a liar can
no one can know what a liar sees
the words he speaks carry his disease
all the liars wonder who the liars could be
it must be you, it surely can’t be me
in the liars soul is a black hole
that is eating up everything we know
this liars world is growing cold
with these liars rules, etched in stone
upon the cusp of morning
lies my awakening
my time of revelation
my time to light the torch
to guide, to lead myself through my time
my scale has no differing weights
the lodestone knows no black nor white
only what is before it
through the brightening storms and icy breaths
I do not wade, but open my eyes
to see not water, not lies
but truth, the timeless battle
there is no water
that is more pure than fire
that is less pure than fire
no darkness is devoid of light
this city white
as the moon rears
its glowing head for the
first time in months
hours before the sun
will see the light of
day we drag our feet
through streets of coal
breathing the toxic
air as we run full speed
chasing the exhaust of
this bus in front of us on
these streets so gold
grease covered gloves of
white hold hands fixing
rust and old metal fused
to plastic pass by our acid
leaking batteries we neutralize
with the coke we drank
for lunch the same coke
which failed to neutralize
the chicken fat covered
patty of cow meet we
devoured this place
smell it all the damn time
in the gutters of the streets
in the hallways
in my room
smell it all the god damned time
the decay
creeping into your head
to my head
follows me all the time
like a shadow
or a bruise
manic and inviting
follows me all the god damned time
creeping into my sheets
fowling up my room
the stench that follows me
talks to me all the time
it’s voice a shiver
down my spine
all the time
oh all the god damned time
hiding around corners
and mirrors
and monitors
and pictures
or thin air
the smell of decay
practicing your poetry with perfect punctuations and no room for fluctuation built up your forces and your stations and your place where you play patron with your cut-out cardboard population needless to say your alone
(alone)
and your best friend is you
one the color red and one the color blue
and both are you
but which one is you you couldn’t guess who
might as well be self-absorbed
because everyone else either leaves or robs your grave when you are dead and to keep these thieves around requires you to play pretend and it’s such a lofty game that you just wish that it would end or be alone
(alone)
that’s the magic word of today
lone like a wolf with it’s predicessor a
lone like an alcohaulic
or god
alone like every word you say
sentences like their friends
and happiness comes
like a present in my pants
quicker and more
fragrant
than i had anticipated
cold bites fingers
toes nose driving us into the car
for ten minutes of heat.
in preparation for a test
i apparently care more for
than i have cared for much
in my exasperatingly short life
i find myself blissfully
joyful having not even yet
tested
happy more to be done
than to succeed
restitution is something
i make not because i ever
felt anything was broken
rather offered from a sense
of obligation
but then i remember
as a friend you were alright
but as with the pack of
mmm… skittles
i am devouring at the moment
you always let me down
like a good sugar high
hope sometimes
pokes it head out
slow like a turtle you
knew it was there
all along it was just
a matter of time but
every now and then
hope catches you by surprise
like a kiss in the dark.
Today I want to be an editor
starring at a computer all the day.
Yesterday it was an advisor
pretending to be busy all the day.
Sometimes I want to be a teacher
until I start to teach all the day.
Tomorrow I want to be a writer
if I can only focus all the day.
all the times i’ve cleaned
this mirror still the monster
is there vomiting his orphan
words
crying
as am i
this has got to go away
like cell phone rings that
never rang or waking up from
dreams mid-drive
leaving
town
trying to become an ant by
pill or smoke or shrinking
machine
i could lift my own weight
and many times more
not be such a monster
with a hunched back under
the weight of all the
miles i can’t ever reach
or with eyes
so large
making
the
villigers flee
seeing them run away
for minutes, and understanding
why
what kind
of monster am i?
life is being one
with all others and objects
I am, no is not
my own perception’s
skewed by your image of
my whole existence
the sunlight hits the
ground in skeletal shapes
except one tree stubbornly
resists its leaves drops
of red blood shimmering
and quivering at the
end of the street staring
at you like a slap in the face.
my thoughts are filled
with meaty ideas
dripping with sauce
much like spare ribs
and smoky sweet too
filling the air
with wafting illusions
of bar-b-qued hare
but really I’d settle
for just some hot links
to satisfy my appetite
for mental hi-jinks
it doesn’t take a trained
nose to recognize
your stench from across
the room
rounded the corner to find
my head implanted where
a (ahem) pain-less window
would have worked much
better than
the door i encountered
Don’t look my way
It’s too early in the day,
Your soul is not tucked in yet.
Romeo coughs at the back of the bus
Here comes tuberculosis.
An old Juliet shouts repeatedly to herself
“Shut up! Yes God I know. I know. Shut up!”
Dorian, the unaltered beauty, sneers
Give the lepers their bells back
So they can sing their melody again:
“Unclean, unclean, unclean…”
Jane scratches her invisibility cloak
blood under her fingernail is the same
ghastly red as the “Stop requested” sign.
The metallic box spits two people out
While Tarzan bites his nails thinking
“I hate my mother. Does it me make evil?”
Inside the bus, one happy thought lingers,
“At least I’m not suicidal…”
And outside, it’s better to hate God than your mother
Otherwise, you better have tales that would make God vomit
and reconsider his creation.
in a small
chapel with
elaborate wood
carvings we
listened to the singer
who drank beer
and rambled
between songs.
i closed my
eyes held your
hand lost myself
in the vocals
finding God more
in this than in the
elaborately carved
wooden chapel.
real friends don’t play pretend
and make ammends if they offend
surely with no intent
to damage you but by accident
and real friends are by your side
would never lie
or leave you dry
or let you die
but real friends do not exists
like unicorns and sentiments
like aliens in rocket ships
but much much more like sentiments
night comes as my pillow
envelopes my naked head
beckoning me to dreams
i fear will be forgotten on
waking hours before the sun
rise.
flaking from your yellow skin
scaling drizzling down to
test new native lands
leading slowly
south
