We’re done being thankful

My ego is barking from a barn
my selfishness is tearing a hole in my eyelids
my veins are splayed lines of bleeding consumers

The turkey’s in my pocket
waiting with the patience of the dead
for the gravy of massive deals

As the first snow drops in silence
and disappears before touching the asphalt
we don’t take notice
our eyes locked on fluorescent

My state of being is only loosely held together
with thin pearly lines of something like hope
something I used to call optimism
before God hit me over the head with his floppy dick

My aortic valve and sigmoid colon came up missing
when I woke up in the slushy claw-footed tub
that is my waking life
___

She’s splayed out over an ocean of Tupperware

I can’t hear a word she’s saying
because the goddamn dishwasher sounds like a freight train

I assume she thinks sometimes about beating the shit out of me
and I have often thought that marriage is the greatest irony of all

I’m attached to her like scar tissue
and therefore I ask her where the green mustard is

she just shrugs
again

How would you feel
if you looked across the bar
and saw yourself, exactly
doing everything you do?

The Body of Christ melts in your mouth
not in your hand.

Jesus would be better served as milk chocolate
laced with expensive shiraz
and dusted with dehydrated lake trout

They sell cheap centimeters of his tunic on Ebay
and people twitter about him sixteen times a minute:

Jesus is with me
Jesus is with them
Jesus is my co-pilot
Jesus is my co-signer

And so on

If Jesus were to die tonight
Fox News would be on it
raising questions about his alleged affair with Mary Magdalene

Mormons would start digging holes into hills
until there were hills no more
just odd Seussian organic monoliths
allegedly in the shape of the late Jesus Christ

Then they would retire to the dairy store for ice cream
conversing like big geese about the infinite potential of Resurrection

Whooshay poses as one of them
replete with white shirt and crisply ironed tie
licking blue moon out of a waffle cone
saying:

If he doesn’t come back in this dimension
surely he will return in one of the others

Elder Johnson writes it all down
wonders what his chances of being an apostle are
and wiggles closer and closer to Whooshay

We need more ice cream
he confides
a halo of industrial smoke rising behind his head
from the chocolate factory the next town over

A moment of enlightenment falls upon all 227 of them
and for once they forget about Jesus
and obsess about delicious ice cream flavors instead

Bacon fish meat
is the stuff of lore in the mountains

I saw the Captain Lou Albano look-alike
savoring one tiny bite after the other
from his corner table outside Beggar’s

His beard dusted with tumeric
eyes googly with intense reflection
on how wonderful it must have tasted

I sat three tables down
asked for what he was having
but the hunched old lady leaned in
and said that he had gotten the only bacon fish of the day

I ordered blackened Tilapia instead
and mused over purple soda as the sun bent into an oval
and dug into the blue hills

If it’s not your heart it’s your guts
he explained all white jacket all narcotic halo
all soft and tolerable

I counted the skyscraper pens in his pocket
remarked he might need a protector someday

He glanced up from his PDA hybrid strangely furrowed
as if I meant bodyguard or Jesus or something
so I adjusted my bed up slow mechanical agony and patience
slurring NO NO for your jacket the ink in your fourteen pens
laughing deep and exasperated and hoping the crotchety Czech nurse
would swoop around the periwinkle/ cobalt curtain with more dope

Smirking he brought me back around to where he seriously needed me:

In order to heal the hole in the gut
the sanctity of the heart must to be monitored and managed
a fine artful balance of anticoagulation and antibiotics

I could only think what’s the difference between acting
with your heart or your gut anyways

There were all of these once unnoticed vericose veins across my stomach and they were bleeding profusely while we exited the house that may or may not have been in Europe so I squeezed out my stomach like a wet gym towel and the sky outside was black with heavy clouds but there was a glistening high-definition purple city off in the distance, bursting through the air, Chicago maybe, and suddenly the pine trees were on fire, and the ground was flooded, and Zoe was gone, no there she was, in a cheap boat docked by the back porch, sleeping.

Where was there to go? I went inside and tried to keep this giant squishy Yoda head in the living room bookshelf from sliding but the thing wouldn’t stay still, and even though I thought the shelf was level this squishy head, which belonged to Mila’s father, wouldn’t sit still. I just shut the glass door and let it be.

They all go from geniuses to freaks
emerging from brilliant white closets
to faces painted white
they all go from geniuses to freaks

They pop out of nowhere like stray bubbles
and linger like steel memories around our heads
always there to hold and caress
when we need to feed, to talk about the others
stray bubbles shot from an imaginary flesh cannon

They recklessly dangle their babies from balconies
and dance on limousines at their own child molestation trials
and under the knife they squeeze themselves tight
allowing their souls to recklessly dangle

They die and drop from the stratosphere
to a thud that shakes the earth
and a huge splash of teardrop
as they drop straight from the stratosphere

There’s a guy leaning up against the streetlamp
smoking a blue cigarette and sporting a brown fedora
looking directly at me as if he knew me from somewhere
some annoyed questions projecting ripples from his aging brow
and I could sense his wavering agitation
like he knew me but his memory was failing him

There’s this panic attack I’m having- I say to him
and he just stares at me skeptically smoking that blue square
do you work for Fat Jimmy? he asks in a lazy drawl

Who the hell is Fat Jimmy- I think
watching his fedora unfold into a small spotted hawk
and the street peel away like a candy wrapper
revealing my fizzling brain underneath the whole block
neighborhood town state country earth universe
infinitely asleep
graciously awake

You know
sometimes you live out your nightmares
and the whole thing seems unreal
because it is very, very real
like the time I had a hole in my head
just below and behind my left ear
and with supernatural ability I peered into the hole
at my juicy, fizzling brain
and with a detached finger I massaged the tunnel of bone
that dipped for a foot until it reached that gelatinous thing
and I was so, so fascinated
and so terribly disgusted
and so damned mystified
by the hole

You know
they really can put holes into you
and I’m shirtless looking down at my abdomen
at a little red flower
glistening under the florescent bulbs in my bathroom
and I’m suddenly remembering the dreams
about the bewildering holes
as if I had them last night
and the worst part of me wonders what it would feel like
to gently insert my finger into the stoma
and feel around a bit
but I just don’t seem to have the will
or sense of in-dream security
to do it

For this is very, very real.