James Brown
Steps
on
stage.

He
is carved from midnight’s marble.
He turns to his right-hand man,
Clyde “Funky Drummer” Stubblefield
and says:

“Kick a little something Clyde!”

Clyde, bursting from his love and joy of all that is rhythm and blues,
beats the drums with such ease.
Like God told him to play,
Like he was God playing the drums.

The sound that came out
was
pure “Cold
Sweat.”

It’s flesh ran naked in that arena:

A classic in the making.

The record
skips,
The record
            skips,
The record skips a few years…

And Hip Hop shows up late; but looks good.
Does not make eye contact with anyone in the room,
afraid someone might notice,
“Umm, excuse me, he isn’t from around these parts.

Hip Hop
was given all the hand-me-downs,
but learned to but swag back in all the stitches.
 
Everything was fine
until someone noticed the similarities of once-was.

Hip Hop, you kicked a little too much dust up off those records,
And even Midas knows the price you got to pay for the touch.

These samples aren’t free!
(I would worry if I was you, Mr. Biz Markie)

In 2004,
Brian Burton
took the Jay-Z’s Black Album and The Beatles White Album
and made The Gray Album.

EMI record company,
pockets all of sudden feeling very…
empty,
decides to sue this nobody
for all that he’s worth.
In fact, this plan backfires and they pull this kid,
this nobody,
this fan,
this lover of pure music into the limelight
to be loved and admired.

The Beatles,
angry by all that has been “taken” from them,
have a song called Revolution 9,
which is 9 minutes of remixed, mastered, and sampled sounds.

Andy Warhol
can paint someone else’s photos,
even took a soup can to stop himself from being a starving artist.

Shakespeare,
took take the frame of an tragic Italian love story
slapped his name on it and made it his own.

Disney had the audacity
to take your beloved fairy tales,
add some color,
re-animate them
and walk their asses to the bank.

Because this generation knows:
The best artists do not copy,
they steal!

And History is nothing more than a 12-year-old boy with bad acne
and a serious s-s-s-s-stuttering problem
who’s been told one too many times to
“Learn from your mistakes.”

It is one thing to pull from your inspiration
It is another thing to be the man’s tracing paper.

As poets,
as writers,
–fuck it–
as people,
we sample all that time.

Sample like
ribcage,
advice your grandmother once told you,
or the weight of atlas.

Nothing is holy,
Nothing is scared,
Nothing should be owned.

However,
it should be recognized,
respected
and thanked.

This evening, Clyde Flunky Drummer is doing me the honor of playing my outro,
a sample of all my favorite Kanye West—
pardon me, I mean “Frankenstein”—tunes.”

Clyde,
who’s own original sound has been copied on over 100 different songs,
has yet to see a penny.

But for the record,
he wants nothing in return but a simple
“Thank You”

I know that I am saying things
I will regret. There are slices
of my eyelids I’m regretting already.
Molding shapes of greenlit smoke –
pigeon with peach wounds, feathers
facing the wrong direction
in scabs. Nothing is what it says, I lied.
Green backlit father. Green backlit confessional.
How much I know I’ve untruthed
daily. I am a lion.
I am a skipping lion with a mane of cashmere eyelashes.

I want to wear
your voice in my heart, string your
words into jasmine garlands,
your perfume, lingering
in my hair, immortal.

I want to swallow
your secrets, a daring
sword swallower, hold in the
pinpoint sharpness in the pit of
my belly, their twists and turns keeping
my inner masochist alive.

I want to surrender
my soul in shreds, while you
play king and choose
which of me to keep, and which
to annihilate.

If only you knew, lover, how you
make me writhe with longing and rage,
how you gorge me whole and spit me out,
how you are my pleasure and my
pain, my ultimate
sublime.

is attached to the man
who tells us about the black jawed
snapping turtles in the lake.
Don’t touch the bottom,
they’ve taken toes and worse—
we know what worse
is—but in imagining
I jump first, come up
whole but sputtering as you
burn on the dock, watching
the man with the pole
cast and catch a goose
full in the mouth, her tongue
a mess of blood and line that I
am swimming toward, half
blind to the bird’s
wild beak and wings
as the man cuts
the slacked line, already halfway
to his idling truck while the flock
breaks the glassy surface, one
bird twisting her great neck,
the sheer line dragging
in her wake as she takes off.
Her blood is heavy enough
that I can’t see it, that we
don’t talk about it,
and as you jump in
I realize there never were
turtles, that the sound
I am hearing is the truck
clearing the gravelly hill, poles
rattling in its bed.

i just drank some fiji water
once i didn’t even know who kyle crawford was
once when me & conor were working the night desk at abel hall, conor got pissed off at me for saying i was going to buy a reese’s w/ the dollar he gave me
conor invented this way to steal gatorade & chocolate milk from the dorm pop machines
the trick was: put yr arm in the machine & grab a gatorade or chocolate mlik
once when i walked into kyle & conor’s room for the first time
kyle said something abt my shirt
i said it was a band & he said he knew the band
then i feebly attempted to explain that my neighbor growing up was in the band
i remember feeling awkward at points during the interaction
that shirt had big sleeves
neither of us were poets
neither of us knew eva
she was still in hs
at the time, kyle was dating this girl, who was also still in hs
once, years later, when we were getting drunk in eva’s enclosed porch
kyle almost called that girl, but didn’t
mike vandenberg said it would be a bad idea
i can’t remember her name
the last time i tried to talk to conor i called him
& he sounded happy to hear me
& asked what i was doing
& i said driving
& he asked if he could call me back later
& i said ya
but i was on my way to mccook
where i’m on roaming & don’t get cell reception
when i left mccook, i drove south to ks
so i could drive through ks
& pick justin up from topeka
& while i was driving i felt alone
so i tweeted my phone # & asked ppl to call me
but nobody called
so i called teal
& left her a voicemail
initially i was only going to leave one
but a little while later she texted me & told me to leave her more
so i did
while i was doing that, i stopped at a gas station & got some coconut water & sunflower seeds
& i consumed them while continuing to call teal & leave her voicemails
i felt like it was less safe to call somoene while drinking coconut water & driving
than it was to just call someone while driving
in an email to debbie i vaguely tried to explain how i feel lonely & unloveable
i want to read this book by kent haruf called the tie that binds & email my dad abt it
neal is listening to rap music
yesterday, i typed the word “popcorn” into my gmail & figured out what kind of popcorn i sent eva a couple years ago then sent her some more
today she told me she liked the kanye west song on the mix i made her
it goes, “i know yr tired of loving w/ nobody to love”
i haven’t spoken to kyle in weeks
w/ some friends i fear i will never hear their voice again
when i was walking out of my house this morning
neal pulled up in a best buy truck
& i stuck my tongue out all rock & roll like

There was once a man named Adam
alas, he is still a man, you see
so that initial past tense was a fallacy
and so was the lead into a limerick
because honestly, it’s weird to write about the living
with the reverence and piety
that comes with that poetry
when the living necessitate reality

this rambling is dedicated to my brother
who is a brother to me like no other

my favorite, in fact,
the greatest, indeed,
yeah there’s another fallacy in my screed

for you see, in this monotonous odyssey,
that relative superlative about my own relative
was really just a decorative expletive
because he’s my only brother from my only mother

but he’s a super cool guy and turning twenty-five
so I had to celebrate the fact that he’s alive
because this is the purpose of birthdays

Four “that” (now there’s five)
there’s poetry
somewhere to put those extra words inside of me

But there are proper ways of stress
and stressful ways to be proper,
So I just hope through silly words and lengthy puns
you feel the heat of these hyperboles like a thousand suns
this appreciation for you I never hide, unlike the bottoms of nuns
None, but Adam laughs at cloistered buns

That is the closest to a palindrome I’ll ever near
Since yours was the first, so I hear:
Madam, I’m Adam

And with that I’ll end,
at the alleged beginning,
on the day of your birth:
Adam named man, at once, was there!

But You Don’t Want Me

Tomorrow will be such a nude morning
I mean nice.

I want to buy an RV,
I want to kiss each time zone.

Did you know
Yellowstone is a giant volcano?

I’m falling over
the age of rocks.

Take Some Beatings

When your heart beats so fast
to keep you alive

how does it have time
to focus on other hearts?

The last time I told the truth
I was nine.

I told my parents
I wanted a nose-job.

She marinates

                    her white radishes with clear, saline vinegar.
                    They share a decadent shortening with the relish. 

Her elderly rectitude,

                    her worn hands, age the small fruits and vegetables.
                    She slices each plant into artifact: ferments each

in sublime

                    sesame to become another everyday staple. Similar
                    to her mango pickle, she says gooseberry is tradition.

Her rite follows—

                    Vegetables do not have to dry or be tender, but preserve—
                    “We make achar for all meals, for all hands.”

The wheels out of tracks
Dream about fast endless rides
Beside the railroad

The smell of paper
Lost in the touch screen pages
Of the last device