Sunday, July 7, 2013

One of the most influential poems of my writing "career"

I'm bringing back the blog, it never really left. I just left. Nothing to be too concerned with, just a temporary complete loss of my mind.... read this poem, do it
(Still have a book due out on Interior Noise Press...genius takes time)



Lineage

Jeffrey McDaniel

When I was little, I thought the word loin
and the word lion were the same thing.
I thought celibate was a kind of fish.
My parents wanted me to be well-rounded
so they threw dinner plates at each other
until I curled up into a little ball.
I've had the wind knocked out of me
but never the hurricane.
I've seen two hundred and sixty-three rats
in the past year, but never more than one at a time.
It could be the same rat, with a very high profile.
I know what it's like to wear my liver on my sleeve.
I go into department stores, looking suspicious,
approach the security guard and say
what, what, I didnĂ­t take anything.
Go ahead.  Frisk me, big boy!
I go to the funerals of absolute strangers
and tell the grieving family: the soul of the deceased
is trapped inside my rib cage
and trying to reach you.
Once I thought I found love, but then I realized
I was just out of cigarettes.
Some people are boring because their parents
had boring sex the night they were conceived.
In the year thirteen hundred and thirteen,
a little boy died, who had the exact same scars as me.






          

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