GBV Poems

GBV Poems by thaxter e douglas

Guided By Voices

damned by flowers
the sky is discarded like a ribbon
as the earth is flattened
out to wallpaper as it has
passed the aesthetic pleasure
test to be pasted up in
God's drawing room. The
flowers stare angrily up into
blackness, waiting for one
of the pain pricks of light
to teleport itself large
enough for the flowers to
catacomb their way to
God's warehouse-"Good riddance,
sky," each flower mumbled
to itself, "You irritated the
hell out of me- whoever
heard of a blue flower?"

2/12/01
Empty Bottle
Chicago IL

Robert Pollard

driving, the
road's gone on vacation, leaving
unfortunate unhealed
gaps in the landscape for
ducklings to lean against-
when an absence is this strong
it's impossible to fall into
it- the ducklings pretend the
lack of a road to cross is
a mirror, making their feathers
speed-dial up a pretty
convincing afro of terror which
eventually becomes a dry sun-
a whole flock of lukewarm
suns that want to
be stars for the road to
deal with once it
comes back- wherever the
road went on its
time off was its business

2/12/01
Empty Bottle
Chicago IL

Tim Tobias

assisted
breathing makes the
bones aware of what
they took for granted,
except for the stray rib
that scoots over pavement
like a puppy, keeping
the bones from rioting
will take a police
force stronger than
skeletons, and
a stern parsing glare
from the planet Jupiter
will stop the muscles
from forming political
parties-and the skins are
the worst offenders of
all-flapping all around
poltergeist-like making
more noise than it's worth.

4/30/01
Burlington, VT
Red Onion Cafe

Jon McCann

less time
is required to keep a
gene that is grown
too big for its britches,
cause when a gene
escapes from its cell, it's
usually figured out how
to sweat out its
own time, unless a
prematurely huge cocky
gene might get trapped
between the seconds,
and none of the gears
want it, and its
time gets chewed out
and thin like a bad
typewriter ribbon.

5/7/01
Posthouse Cafeteria
Breezewood, PA

Nate Farley

assonance
is the key as wet rain
tries to whistle by
mellifluously, but as the rain
starts to dry off
the raindrops run
like cross country
runners in between
the nuclei of the
once sprawling earlobes -
everyone's retreated to
the nuclei in this
dry season, and
the cross country runners,
like forgotten websites,
never break a sweat.

5/7/01
Joe Mamma's
Pittsburgh PA

Doug Gillard

attenuated
bridges heap a small
boneyard of thin
lines in the bird's eye
wherein they nest -
where the thin lines fall
determines the
chemistry of how the
excess fat of the universe
will be digested for
the next trigo-million
years, and the birds|
weave a macarme net
across the sky, finally
doing away with the
need for bridges

4/30/01
Burlington, VT
Red Onion Cafe