Grape Jelly

By
John Brown

grape jelly 

i'm through trying to emulate words
that have been coddled and sheltered from the world
by authors with silver egos and slicker tongues.

i want to swallow my pens and
vomit images upon the page;

to spank words
and send them red-bottomed from the room;

to forget the dry syntax,
the politically correct anal froth
that sounds more nazi than reform.

i want to abuse the english language
like finnigan's wake did the irish;
like gutter quebecois did the french

i want words that smell sweet
as a half-naked thirty-something
in the back seat of a buick regal;

words that are wet with fear
smuggled in sweat soaked blue-jeans
torn at the knees after a hard nights thieving 

words that suffocate in their cellophane wrappers
given away free in the candy stores of amerika,
breeding rebellion and

inspiring the masses
of illiterate beggars who march through city streets
looking for scraps of food under padlocked dumpsters;

i want seventy-five dollar pens that write seventeen cent poems,
to be thrown away when the ink has bled dry. 

i want words that offend;
words that rape priests
and send cheers through crowds of frightened children. 

i want words that question;
words that linger in the backs of throats
like half-dissolved aspirin. 

words that will duel anything ever written
at any time,
by anyone
and won’t even break a sweat. 

i want words that run salivating tongues along warm panty lines
in the bedrooms of lovers entangled in wet sheets
strangled in skin and salty sweat; 

that embrace lovers with indecision and guilt
as they make that horrifically long walk to the altar
or that longer stretch back home
to their waiting spouse's tapping foot
and wounded-dog cries 

words that sound like cherry bombs
exploding in a pranksters hand;
like gas shells over hamilton,
i want to be the fallout in my own city,
my country and preferably washington, dc. 

i want words that betray liars
while i lie paralysed on the beaches of france
or the deserts of morocco
crippled by scotch and heroin
cursing the sand
plagued by the piercing pitches of demons i've loosed
upon the eardrums of the world 

i want to be the laugh in the poetics of robbins,
the innocence of lerner's switchblade;
bathe the black indifference of vonnegut jr
with a voice and insolence all my own... 

i want my words to bleed grape jelly.
i want real emotion.