Author: Roger Mugs

we cannot say we feel your pain, only that we will not forget you mumbai

poetry

anyone who ever said
that life was good
and could be done
by anyone
never slept in a bed
while the building next door
exploded and shook
the whole room until
we stood in the door way
hoping (and then pray
ing) we would live to see
another day

no one who ever talked
such a way knows what it really
is to lose and loss so numbing
they forget to pass on the wisdom
to the next generation

because life really ends up being just about one thing – its just a question of how long until you finally own up to what you already know

poetry

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

unless notified to the contrary please continue to write your horribly distasteful (that is, bad tasting) poetry

poetry

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

black and white

poetry

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

because someday the end does come

poetry

high on achievement
and digging a hole
knowing the bottom cannot
be as warm and soothing
as your arms but somehow
hoping to dig through
to a nice patch of sod
on which i’ll lay and wait
for the sun to shine perfectly
down straight from above
to warm me as i develop
hives from the otherwise
pristine landscape
in the six square foot
wide hole i’ve dug in the
time we’ve spent together
while i was trying to make
a name for myself
or some moron named roger

flame in, flame out.

poetry

bowl of red
boiling spice
to dip our delicacies
boil, entice
our senses with

cow throat
cow heart
pig intestines
         –  ‘my friends,’ i ask, ‘do you not realize what was squeezed through this?’
pig stomach
(among other things)

6pm I ate you down
4am you woke me up

climbing back into bed with
an arse afire