Month: July 2005

Lick My Face

“Mouthwash is what remains when the puppy is housebroken.”
               —Chinese proverb

I know that puppies are very inquisitive,
that cologne is mistaken for mouthwash, not smashmouth,
and the cracked hearts of “inquisitive” robotic puppies, like
balsamic vinegar, can get you drunk with impish eyes
and olive flavored-jubilat flatulence. Puppies
have very stinky farts, and never say excuse me…
so rude.

                              Listen—I’ve seen the lost Bibles, the curling irons that hiss,
the nylons that run. I’ve seen power failures, touchy tempers, and grumpy attitudes.
I’ve seen the puppies grow up to be dogs, the women that breastfeed puppies, and
the uneducated yahoos breeding puppies out of the violet night,
I’ve even seen wind stir the chicken products, fish, French fries
and hush puppies all fried in the same oil, and not halal,
growing like art from the lacing winking raspberry and spidertea,
and that’s not all I’ve seen.

What is terrible, even, rises, rolling in rhesus mouthwash,
rhesus shoeshine, and rhesus oil enemas, a wolvenillusion.
The ruined pot dreams of ignition, stress, thunder phobia,
vet visits, and teething puppies;
each molecule coddles its virtual puppy.

Not only
is life a bitch,
but she’s always having puppies…

Many lonely puppies chase their tails. And all kittens
and puppies in all the blenders turn the creepy blue green
color of mouthwash. Puppies. Funny, cute, pretty puppies.
The funny, cute pretty puppies are silly.

“Oh Birdie, “Mouthwash Man once said, “you’re such a consumer.”
Whoever said you can’t
buy happiness forgot
about puppies.

The words of the sprit wash over us to be a tranquil picture of things that repeat,
of a puppy named Kuku, of sdrawkcab things
like witch hazel, and holiday ear powder.
Some puppies grow out of this druidic roll of the eyelid as they mature
into a kind of olive-flavored funtongue scatterplot mouthwash (gargoyle).

I know we are bound to the earth
with a liter of rambunctious puppies,
flatulent, oblivious to their own fate
growling at desire’s green thread
or the milk snake’s slippery pants.

Mouthwash spits now from its leaf-wing.
My dog dines on the dead.
Maybe dogs want to be like us: curly… racing…
Out of the good doggie’s wreck,
inwardness forms on the inside of the cap

and that mouthwash cannibal tenderly enters
the soul of some mortal cur.

I’m stunned by this comment of Curtis Faville’s in a comment he made on Ron’s blog (re: Alli Warren’s book):

“Lady poets need our encouragement”

Do people still really say things like this? I mean, “lady poets”????

And to what extent, I muse, is it true?

Certainly, I would write without male encouragement. But how would my efforts at externalizing my writing differ? I wonder? I mean, I’m here in Brooklyn typing this as a result of male encouragement. But is it really a necessity? Do women (straight women, anyhow) really have a bottomless need for reassurance, as I recently read in a column about “how to relate to women” in some men’s magazine (was it called Razor? Yes, I think so) at my doctor’s office.

Does women’s need for reassurance differ from men’s? Is it because women are less likely to get it? Are they less likely to get it?

Why would anyone need reassurance from someone like Faville who presents himself as so hopelessly judgmental and pompous?

Other women, haven’t you come across a thousand times in your writing life unsolicited patronizing “advice” from already soi-disant pre-validated men? Is that really something you welcome and that keeps you creative?

I welcome the responses of both male and female peers equally, I am sure, and abhor the condescension of “encouragement.”