I clicked on a Buzzfeed link

I clicked on a Buzzfeed link. It felt so bizarre that I felt compelled to write a poem about it. This is in its initial form, so lucky you! You get to see it before I mangle it! (Or, more likely, forget about it for a while, then resurrect it in an almost completely unrecognizable form.)

I clicked on a Buzzfeed link.

It wouldn’t be fair to call it an article. 
Articles have    depth
                         research
         fucking paragraphs.

This was a list, of sorts,
only it wasn’t
made up of words.

It had videos
behaving like looping .GIF files
but with sound.

Each video headlined
with what looked like words
but had no inherent meaning
to me and my English degree.

This was a list of things
ruined by white people,
yet the genocide of the American Indians
is ranked five spots below
Cigarillos.

Vigilantazmo

The door crumbles into a pile of dust, shards, and slivers waiting to implant into the next fool who dares walk through this studio apartment barefooted.

“Oh shit,” Roger—a hired goon tasked with guarding the teenaged ransom victim tied-up and passed out on the sofa bed—says as he spots the crimson-caped wonder—Vigilantazmo. He sets his piece down on the ground and holds up his empty hands. “Look, Mr. Vigilantazmo, I don’t want any trouble here! I’m just a grunt! I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt me.” He closes his eyes and braces for pain.

Vigilantazmo lets out a deep belly laugh as he paces toward the Ikea nightstand. “Anything, huh? Then tell me, does this place belong to you?” the super hero asks, stroking the piece of furniture.
Roger opens his eyes and answers, “Ye-ye-yessir.”

“So that means that you own all this furniture,” Vigilantazmo lifts the nightstand up to his eye level and reads the bottom, “including Hemnes here?”

“Look, j-ju-just take the girl! Just don’t hurt me!” Roger pleads, tears mixing with sweat to form a nice face broth.

“I’m not interested in the girl, scum.” Vigilantazmo takes a few practice swings with the nightstand, as if he was next at-bat. “You appear to have been gentle to this child. If only you had been this kind to Mr. Larry Stevens over on Third Avenue.”

Roger scratches his head, soaking up little bits of blood into his finger nails. “I-I-I think y-you have the wrong guy. I don’t know a Larry Stevens.”

“HA! Of course you don’t, slime!” Vigilantazmo walks over to Roger and holds the Hemnes up to his face. A yellow stain forms on the carpet beneath Roger. “He runs, rather, he ran a furniture shop. He did pretty well until greedy pieces of human garbage like yourself started buying your furniture from foreign INVADERS like Ikea.”

“It’s the best I could afford.”

“Don’t try to justify yourself to me. You know, when I discovered that I was all-powerful, capable of doing most anything while possessing but one weakness, you know what I swore an oath to do?” Vigilantazmo pauses, looking up at the ceiling waiting for Roger to shake his head no. “I swore on my adoptive mother’s grave that I will never refrigerate my tomatoes, and to stop FILTH like you from littering the streets again!” He wrenches the nightstand back and strikes Roger across the face, breaking off one of the table legs in the process. He quips, “That’s why you always buy American,” before kicking Roger in the stomach a few times. “Now stay put. I’m not done with you yet.”

Vigilantazmo walks back to where the door once stood and picks up one of the shards of oak. “It’s time to drain that pathetic throat of yours of all its blood. There will be justice for Larry Stevens!”

Roger blindly reaches around the ground until he feels that familiar coldness of his handgun. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Roger croaks from his broken jaw.

“USA!” Vigilantazmo screams as he runs toward Roger, carrying the wood shard like a primitive spear.

Roger aimed the gun toward Vigilantazmo and squeezed the trigger. Boom. Headshot. The hero fell straight to the ground as his brains spilled onto the carpet, ruining any chance Roger had at getting his deposit back.

“OH MY GOD!” the ransom victim attempts to scream through her gagged mouth.


“I guess his only weakness,” Roger smirks his swollen face, “was a bullet to the head.”

Another day at Starbucks...

As many of you may know, I started working at Starbucks a month-and-some-change ago. The change in scenery and such doesn't seem to have affected my snark-levels. Anyway, here's something I wrote in regards to annoying customers:

We’re closed

Oh—
  I didn’t realize it was you:
THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN HUMAN HISTORY.

No wonder you drove on past that menu board—
  the one that says in red:
  THE STORE IS NOW CLOSED.

You are clearly too important
  (and too wealthy)
for us to ignore.

What can I get started for you?

All For A Little Money

I woke up too early this morning. 

My right eye too blurry. 

Why do I do this shit? 

For money?

I am an artist! I don't need money!

Oh wait. 

I see Sallie Mae over in the corner with a lead pipe.

Maybe I should just suck it up

 and keep on going for a while. 

Do I Want My MTV?

People bemoan the downfall of MTV, but they fail to notice its inherent problem: 

If MTV was still Music Television and not the Mindless Teen Void, it would still suck ass. 

How much ass? All of the ass. 
And then some. 
It would suck so much ass that the world would owe MTV ass to suck. 

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see more of my favorite bands on TV, but that just isn’t going to happen. Judas Priest won’t educate us on the merits of breaking the law, nor will Iron Maiden run to hills. 

What we will get is corporate bullshit. Coming up, the latest from Nickelback, followed by Green Day’s new hit “Remember When We Were a Punk Band?” But first, here is “Sexploitation” by Jailbait Blond. She didn’t write, hell, she didn’t even really sing it, but fuck it. You’ll buy it!

MTV is dead, and we should be thankful. 

We live in a time where we get to be our own VJs.

Dear Mr. Taco Time,

How can you sleep at night knowing that you deceive your customers on a daily basis? That’s right, I know the secret behind your “Mexi-Fries.” They’re not fries at all, but rather Mexi-LIES—tater tots in disguise! I bet you thought nobody would ever find out, but guess again, bucko! Not only do I know, but everyone who is either Mexican or has Mexican heritage knows. What, did you believe they would actually think that those were French fries, and  not reanimated potato refuse?

Perhaps this is even more sinister than it appears. Perhaps the vaguely racist sentiments expressed are intentional. French fries are sliced from whole potatoes, while tater tots are glued together from the scraps that remain. Are you trying to imply that Mexicans are the scraps not good enough to be a part of French society? HMM? 

But maybe your racism was unintentional. We can fix that. Let’s change the name. I suggest Taco-Tots. It has the “Three-A”s that people crave: alliteration, accuracy, and “allure.” What do I mean by allure? Not sure, really. I put it in there because people like groups of threes and I couldn’t think of a more relevant “A”. Well, it looks like I’m just about out of the 250 word limit that you FASCISTS imposed on me, so I guess I’ll leave you with this question: from what animal are the meat-flavored crispy burritos derived? Is it PEOPLE?!

The Abominable Cthulhu Rises Again

What hammer? What chain?

In what furnace is thy brain?

What anvil? What dread grasps

dare its terrors clasp?

He sleeps this night. He sleeps this dead.

In R’lyeh He sleeps, His non-euclidian bed.

Dare you dream? Dare you rest?

Dread Cthulhu has chosen you as His guest.

In what madness? In what dreams?

When the stars are right, you shall gleam.

There is no way out, no sanity.

This Great Old One is all you need.

He controls your mind. You’re His to own.

With Him at your side, you’re never alone.

What shall I do? What is my task?

You must rise with the others, dawn the masque.

What cult? What coven?

Throw the unbelievers in thy oven.

What swamp? What frightful day

will Cthulhu choose to rise again?

Tender are the Buttons

For a poetry assignment, we were asked to read Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein, and then do an imitation. I'm no Stein, but here is my attempt to capture some of her magic:

BEANS

Beans in a bowl. Faded beans. Faded in a bowl. Super Bowl Rose Bowl bowl of cereal big enough for two.

We let ourselves fade away. Fade away. Blend away. Blend to become one. Strive to become one. One in a pot. One in a bowl.

TOMATO

The flesh is soft the flesh is soft the soft is flesh. These pillows are deadly. Deadly pillows is weapons. I like pillow fights. I like pillow fights. I like pillow fights soft. Feel these pillows soft. Money was for convenience convenience is for money.

POTATO

Potato. Potatoe. Poe Tay Toe. Poe is the Raven. The Raven is dead. Like Poe. Poe is dead. In the dirt. In the dirt. In the brown dirt. Like the potato. Potatoes in dirt. Brown potatoes. Russet Potatoes. You can keep the Yukon Gold that falls. The gold that falls. Falls falls to the dirt. The potatoes. Potatoes in dirt.

A Horse, Of Course, Of Course.

You see a small child perched on a young man's shoulders. A toy T-Rex is being held next his face. The child's smile is wide, and his blonde hair hangs down, shaggy. The man below is also smiling, his dark hair swept to the side.

Quentin yelled, "Yee haw!" as he rode on my shoulders. He had just turned two the weekend before, and I was in town to pay my little nephew a visit. His T-Rex--a toy received at the birthday party that the snow prevented me from attending--walks, roars, and serves as a nemesis in the imaginary world of the toddler.

Brrrrrr!

Growing up in Longview, the sight of snow fall was cause for celebration. "Hey guys, it's snowing! It's snowing!"  Us children gathered around the window, our teacher joining us for a moment before instructing us to take our seats.

Snow represented something fun, something exotic. It meant the possibility of school being cancelled or delayed. It meant snowball fights and building civilizations of snow people. It meant coming back inside, ice melt dripping down the backs of our necks, and sipping a big mug of hot cocoa piled high with mini marshmallows—even if the mix had those little dehydrated marshmallows inside.

Now that I'm older and live in a place where snow is as common as the lentil fields, it has lost its magic. Responsibilities have made snow feel like a nuisance. When Siri tells me about the snow falling in her cold, sterile voice as I roll out of bed at 4:30 in the morning, I groan instead of cheer. It means I have to warm up my vehicle, and brush off its exterior. It means having to wear boots instead of being able to just slip on my Vans. It means having to shovel and salt the walkways when I get to work.

Chocolate-flavored Breakfast-style Shavings

Cinnamon Toast
is a real breakfast item.
Therefore,
Cinnamon Toast Crunch
makes sense.

French Toast,
too,
is a real breakfast food.
So French Toast Crunch
made sense.

There is no Chocolate Toast.
This isn't a thing that exists.
Nutella Toast is a thing,
but that's not quite the same.
When you try to sell me
CHOCOLATE TOAST CRUNCH,
I cringe.
My suspension of disbelief
can only go so far
before
I shake my head and walk over
to the Grape Nuts.

Come and see the freaks!

Choosing to be a human

is the

worst

decision one can

ever

make.

We take ourselves

far too seriously.

Delusions

of somehow holding dominion over

anything—

We don’t even hold dominion over

ourselves

Teeth whitening,

Laser freckle removal,

Asshole bleaching.

This desire to conform

to some standard of

acceptability

is just such a drag.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

scuttling across the floors of the sea.

Without a care in the world

and no standard adherence.

Night or day?

Doesn’t matter

I have nowhere to be

but where the ocean

takes me.

Then again,

that would mean I

lose out on

my front row seat to

the freak show.

Rules of the Walkway

Rules of the Walkway

Excuse me,
Charles Bro-kowski,
but we are living in a society
here.

Notice how the
cars
drive

on the right hand side?

Everybody does this
because otherwise
people would run into
each other.
Like you did to me.
Walking
down
these
stairs.

I know how hard it is
to both think and prop
your HGH-enhanced thorax
upon your spindly legs,
so I'll give you a tip:

Look in front of you.
Are people flowing
in the same direction as you?

No?

You're in the wrong lane.
Move to your right.