FREAK POWER:
LOVE POEMS
BY CAZ WALLACE
This is the real point: that we are not really freaks at all – not in the literal sense – but the twisted realities of the world we are trying to live in have somehow combined to make us feel like freaks. We argue, we protest, we petition – but nothing changes.
-HUNTER S THOMPSON
1.
I used to be so cocky
It was so unreal
I used to be so horny
Now I prefer to drool
On my pillow’s dirty case
Or your cock’s sweet embrace
I used to feel so found
When I was really lost
When yesterday’s religion
Saved a breath’s soul
This dog has got to pant
And undress in front of long windows
—
2.
Cameo-flagged progenitors of sounds
Called noise race up and down stairs
Raving stark crazy and huffing
With caked black lungs about who haws
And diddle bits that sync your last drop
Of individuality into to a phallic technocratic God.
Make it louder
Make it harder
Make the drama plateau so there is no
Emotional restraint
Only the pure catastrophe
Of cyborg lust in praise of capital.
—
3.
Woof
Let me just say this
Some are predisposed to be lovers
Some find that cinching pain to be
Pleasurable
Some find the erratic feelings
The ups and downs and schisms
And silences to be furtive ground to
“Find oneself”
Supposed advances as fluorescent
Warnings
That the goods have been sensed
And that the night is ending
And that there is nobody in the bed
Accept your body
Semi-cold
Semi-decent
Wholly-willing
And partially-acquiescent
And you shrug your shoulders
And you’re still young
And walking home
Is still an option
—
4.
Penmanship as profane as the words
Whether its tarot or poker,
The cards are in your favor
—
5.
Possible love #1
And that particular kind of sting
When you realize that you got wound up
In someone else’s love story
You’re not the lead, more like the foil
Less significant that the left overs
He reheated for dinner
That night he realized
It wasn’t you
It was her
Who forced him through sleepless nights
And unsatisfactory lays
Wrapped up in someone else’s story line
Your happiness not conclusive nor consequential
Just your emotions abused
For the inner drama
Of someone else
Justice isn’t romantic
it’s also not guaranteed
Impossible love #1
—
6.
Childhood is not a transparent being
There is an intrinsic brutal deceit
Once I remember putting ice in my sister milk
Cold milk is good but watery milk is not
You have to find that sweet spot in time
Manipulate the algebra
Finding the memories that jut and intersect
To make up the adult
Who reminisces
About their childhood.
—
7.
The eeriest part of being treated to
Moments of absurd and maddening passion
Is how quickly everything goes back to the same
I will reluctantly clean the mascara, blood and salsa off my sheets
And carry the impish collection of empty
Pacifico bottles down the stairs
Hoping for no trails of warm
Foamy ferment
And I will sweep the breadcrumbs too…
I will slowly lose the sense that my
Bedroom is weeping
And the source of my manic emptiness will
Start to soften and fade
‘Till I can’t make out the outline
Attributing that unsettling feeling to a
Placement in the stars
Salt, candles and sage
New lust finds a way
To like the loneliness
And twist rapture around-
Wrap it up like a present
Or stuff it down with a shot
And even though everything will go back to the same
There is an enduring something different
—
8.
All I am is lips for you.
—
9.
My desk is drunk with
Photobooth pictures of sweaty non-
Remembered nights
And business cards for some lilting concept,
Its congested and always a slut
Yearning for certain organization
Spontaneity circumscribes the beauties
Pencils and receipts grow like rose bushes
While thorn defiantly purr and pose for my skin
Any vessel that spills onto the grain
Is met with appreciation of force
In the same way the boxes of a calendar
make up the days
—
10.
I attempted murder with heroin and pointed sex
But the die was already thrown
With veracity I licked
Track marks up and down the arms
Of strangers
And felt the rot of my bowels
Once my sweat had no salt
And my kisses no anger
Elasticity enacts impression
And the rat that I am
Tore through some ungodly opening
Unabashed birth
Unapologetic will
And now I talk about about angels
And people listen
And then I ask ‘cash or card’
And then I wish a death again
I feel the howl but I haven’t heard it yet
Pitted nights of remembrances
Of hollow figures
Dis-figures
Obsolescence convalescing
Panting without reprieve
But once I witnessed a psychotic
Give 20 dollars to a homeless woman
Walking the streets of the far north side of Chicago
And he shook his head and said
‘I can’t believe I did that’
And it’s starting to make sense
Every intersection I drive through
I think about a T-bone
And most sips I take
I can already feel the hangover
I eat until my stomach hurts
And my lips sting
And I swell into a great expansiveness
That is my lust
And my undying hatred
And it’s starting to make sense
—
11.
James Baldwin wrote about dogs
Who screamed in silence
Because some laboratory
Tore out their throats
They weren’t really dogs you see
More like tests
And their screams would have
Disturbed the science
—
12.
LA
with palms and spoils of thirst
—
13.
Joy is a curse that lurks
In the optimists mind
That everything could be and will
Each moment is heavy in its totality
Potentiality scorned
And every place I am I want to be
This curse is not of confusion
But rather a knowing aloneness
That every place I love- in every time
A separation is looming
Not everything is a breast you can suck
—
14.
The action of wombs
We play warmly, inviting embrace
And then the cold question of insecurity
Paralyzes my coquettish nature
So that I remain foreign in form
To myself I feel rough with words
And bulky thoughts
Make my maneuvers grow consciousness
Disinterested in seduction
So that I am raw and young again
And rendered helpless with my heart
—
15.
Burning me like your sage
Not for exchange
But as purification
My tongue can wash
Away the grit
Grifters tax
We can never know
—
16.
Salted brows, furrowed and hexed with anticipation
Cool summer nights dreaming in
Forested wormholes
Under stars
And waking up wet with
Bitchy morning dew
Aloe is a substance that soothes
Rough and burnt and jigsawed edges
And aloe is a surface upon which touching takes place
Molding soft trickles
It harnesses and it harasses the most
Incorrigible fires of man
—
17.
Can you bury a puddle?
Can you pick it up and dust it off and shout
TAKE FORM!
You’re not a cloud
You’re not allowed
To avoid definite boundaries
And the responsibilities of solids
—
18.
While walking home from buying a bottle of Stoli and a pack of smokes I passed a few women with yoga mats under their toned and desperate arms. One of them was bitching about a telemarketer and as I tore a smoke from my pack I decided that today I’m ok with being on this side of things.
—
19.
Unsatiated tenderness leads to
hugging walls and stroking countertops
And longing strolls through dark
corridors without care
Rape threats reign on flaccid intercoms
And still waters threaten the deepest
Not thinking about each asshole
Who constructed a false utopia
Not thumbing a constraint
Missing that pothole
I’ll walk with fervor
And by myself
For I prefer the right
To my type of fear
—
20.
You’re my absolute baby
An impossible number
If you want to hold something
There’s got to be a point
Neutralized by instinct
Making my insides known
Love is like math
Or math is like love
This nonexistent infinity
To feel every form
And make people fear
—
21.
Eat your heart out
All my demons
In one place
Flirting and braiding hairs
We ask:
Are you going to the show?
Just because.
Just because
Why refuse a handrail?
And an easy night?
Why refuse the cosmos of stubborn cells?
And stuck up liars?
Because we die at spontaneous rates
Stiff and thick decisiveness rules most of our rights
Sip hard
Sleep tight
Don’t let the scabies bite
Sleep because the next night
Has no doctrine
To be less cruel.
Bird baths hold no one
—
22.
Ill particularly like you when I’m dead
When my body is caked in moldy leaves
And the rest of me is combustion
When there are no more memories
Just time
And all of our soft touches and words
Fill the vast canal of being
Or having been
And all of our silly follies can live as
The greatest tragedies known to man
And if our weather collapses our earth
And there is no more him or her
Then I’ll like you as a particle of stardust
Unfixed and broken in two
And I’ll like you as a refrain
I’ll like you
I’ll like you
—
23.
he said it with quiet relief and a sturdy disposition. telling her where she was at that moment. sitting in atlanta. on the phone in her apartment. she will remember and forget again.
the eggs that were scrambled earlier are now being scrubbed away with a plastic sponge that resembled a hair ball.
she heard a series of 3 beeps, 2 times, not knowing where were they came from.
and she was waiting for the water to boil.
a few minutes later she noticed that the water had been boiling for a while, but the kettle never whistled. and this is the state of tea. you must steep.
—
24.
In you I find my death
And my death finds me in you
TOTAL LIBERATION POWER
A place of infinite romanticism
The one to all we fall
No matter how we resist
You seduce and enthrall
—
25.
Epilogue:
It’s all shame puppy from here…