The Dogfood Poems

and other things we blame on Dogfood

Dis on Ezra Pound’s Early Shit

Lo! Lo! and Lo!
God, what a lot of trash!
You say you fly with sparrows,
You give a little hop and then you crash.

You could make a bugbite
Out of Fuji’s pencil peak
With all your dropped names,
Garbled chivalry and untranslated Greek.

The old tales you retell --
Retelleth, pardon me --
Lack friction, fission,
Fire, they lack -- excuse please -- poetry.

What was it, then, that happened to you in 1913
That taught you that you ought to say exactly what you mean?

CyberX

Trancecore; and copcar sirens wail
Just damped by plate glass til they fit the beat
I buy a can of Jolt and eat
Day-old croissants, rock-hard and stale
But cheap. I try to keep my table neat.

Occultists on my right smoke cloves
And talk in solemn tones and low
Of who we mean by us or them,
Tarot cards and Jerusalem,
And when the cafe closes where to go.

Outside, teenagers mill in droves
And shoal like bright nocturnal fish
Denim blue and bleach blond white
And manic-panic pink. I almost wish
I hadn’t come alone tonight --
But this is all I have to talk about.
(Five minutes and they’re going to kick me out.)

Thursday at Ground Zero

Thin young pretty things in black
Surrender to two-dollar beer;
An epileptic fit, a heart attack
Might gain me right of passage here
To twist my treebranch bones until they crack;
A boy in heavy boots and shredded pants
Designed to look his sweetest on his back
Burns my fingers with his serpent dance --
While businessmen in suits, here straight from the Exchange,
Craning for a glimpse of breast, look alien and strange.




Alcohol (Dogfood's brief foray into free verse)

Vodka burns invisibly
Beer smells like a garage
I smell like a garage
And I like it --
Who has a problem with that?
Come on, who wants to start it up?
Pierce me with pins!
Burn me with cigarettes!
Give me five dollars!
Courage on tap --
Mine’s a pint!
Poison of the gods;
To be dizzy, to stumble,
To be tired, to puke:
What bliss!
What the fuck am I doing
Getting this bombed on a weeknight?


Also about alcohol

O beer! O wine! O gin and tonic!
O expensive liquid muse!
You make this garbage sound Byronic!
See how many !!!’s I can use!


Gimpy Girl (with thanks to Leslie, though she may not want to be associated with it)

Gimpy girl got stubby little legs
got stubby little hairs on dem stubby little legs
she got titties like flapjacks made widout eggs
she likes chasin parked cars in the street
she smell like twenny pound of meat
grade D baby works for me

she my gimpy girl
goddamn it she my gimpy girl

got a mustache like Billy Dee
she drink 10D40 on da rox
she got a powerful stank in her sox
she got fiddy-seben teeth that clack when she talks
she got Air Supply on vinyl
and vinyl in her brain
alla her panties got some kind of stain
I can’t stand the bitch and yet she remain

my gimpy girl
shut up man she my gimpy girl
she my varicose vein Lois Lane
she my gimpy girl

she got hot dogs in her clogs
she got 8 years of Newsweek in the backa her closet and they all stuck together
scrambled eggs between her legs
she my R. Crumb Woman
she my gimpy girl

she my wash'n'go Marilyn Monroe
fuck you man she my gimpy girl


Dogfood’s short stories

The Sugar Packets

Once upon a time there were three sugar packets and they lived in a file folder at the dentist’s office. Their names were Leon, Jack, and Katie. They weren’t supposed to live in the file folder. They were squatters. but no one noticed because they were never home anyway.

One time they were out seeing how long they could stay awake while being drunk and they ran out of alcohol, and Leon remembered he had some cough syrup stashed in the file folder so they went home to get it. They found a condom wrapper they didn’t know drinking Leon’s cough syrup. Leon was pissed as hell and wanted to beat up the condom wrapper but Katie calmed him down and said they should just make him replace it.

But the condom wrapper said he wouldn’t give them anything cuz Katie owed him the cough syrup and more besides cuz she drank all his vodka last year at a party in Toronto. Katie told Leon and Jack that she’d never even been to Toronto so the condom wrapper (whose name was Nerf Don) was a damn liar. So she and Leon (but not Jack who was a pacifist) beat up Nerf Don and threw him down the stairs.

The next day Katie remembered that she actually had met Nerf Don in Toronto and drank all his vodka. So Jack was mad but Katie said Nerf Don deserved it cuz she got crabs from his couch, so it was okay.

After that Jack developed a tendency to say ‘Oh, his COUCH, uh-huh’ at regular intervals. Katie started avoiding him, and at some point just stopped coming around. So there were only two sugar packets living in the file folder at the dentist’s office.

Not that anyone noticed, cuz they were never home anyway.


The Nutrasweet Packets

Once there were three packets of Nutrasweet that lived in a different folder in the same file cabinet. They were the reason the sugar packets were never home. You see, every time they saw the sugar packets, the Nutrasweet packets would beat up on them, and sometimes when they were gone the Nutrasweet packets would come over and piss on their furniture just to be mean. This is because Nutrasweet is really bad for you.

And as a sorbet, to cleanse the palate, I include a lovely little haiku that a kind reader sent to me. It's not Dogfood-related in any way, but it seems to belong here.

new baby doom lurks
dank, swaddled in clashing hues
ow, my aching head