Bad Poetry Mode #2: I'm Incoherently Angry and Earnestly Attempting to Offend!

For some bad poets, mode #1 is a dead end. After all, one
can only whine at the gaping void at the center of our lives
for so long before their lungs wear out. Frustration naturally
sets in, the poetic voice grows hoarse, and a life’s work that
began by bravely crying “Listen to me!” soon starts to croak
“Fuck you!” at everyone and everything. From this con-
tingent comes the dross of the “poetry slam” scene, that
faux-antisocial business where the poet attempts to rise above
the effete and common run of poets by snarling, spitting, and
generally making an ass out of him or herself. This “shocking”
stuff is a futile game, I think, and fundamentally dishonest. If
you’re really that much of a rebel, it’s unlikely that something
as flouncy as poetry can a) quench the burning rage deep inside
you and/or b) express the true depths of your vileness. You
might just be better off robbing banks or smashing small por-
celain figurines.

My excursions into this field are tentative and goofy. I feel
ashamed to write this way, although this shame is not enough
to stop me from doing it. You see, I’m the happy-go-lucky sort,
with no grudge against the world. This, for some reason, makes
my bad poems in this vein somewhat akin to what happens
when an aging pop diva’s popularity starts to wane and all of
a sudden they’re prancing around in black leather thongs and
caterwauling about how they like to whip people over synth-
esized “hard rock” background music. Not that I consider
myself an aging pop diva, mind you. Or that I have some-
thing against leather thongs. Or whipping people, for that
matter, provided they deserve it.

Uh-oh. Now I’ve gone and got myself all flustered.

Anyway, without further ado, allow me to present to you
my “peevish urchin” poem:


Piss Shit Fuck Face (A Pastoral)
by Kevin-M

I take heroin every day
and I hate Jesus,
at least I hate Jesus, the “messiah”,
not Jesus, my dealer down on Avenue C,
even though that shit he sold me
last week
Wasn’t any fucking good.
It made me throw up
Into some rich bitch’s baby carriage
and then I had to run from the cops
(Those fucking pigs,
they hate it when you throw up
wherever they say you can’t throw up
as if a little puke ever hurt anyone,
you pigs.)

But I don’t give a shit,
you know, not anymore.
Not since Peanut O.D.ed
that one time in back
of the Sizzler.
Peanut, he was a filthy
kind of pederast and
sometimes he set
stranger’s bathrooms on fire,
but he taught me one thing
and that’s that

LIFE
makes you so you gotta
eat the maggoty cowpie
eat the maggoty cowpie
eat the maggoty cowpie
all the way straight up ‘til you
kick it!

for...





good! (fuckers)

But it isn’t always so bad,
at least not when you’re high
and you’ve got a place to
crash
and a tattoo of Patti Smith
on your scrotum
and then life takes on a piss-yellow glow
and the piss-smelling streets streak by
all damp and frightful
like the effluvia from
a west side hooker’s hoo-ha