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…