A Hollywood Fuck-Up

Aren't you the guy who cast hamsters as
sex-crazed cannibals in your all-hamster
remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Nobody even knows what sex they are!
They could be anything!

Untitled

Were you one of the torturers?

Were you one of the torturers
or more like a troll or voyeur or a

tormented blunderer in the
temple of souls?

Were you one of the torturers?

Elves

I stole a guitar from the cannibals!
You smooched the witch of moolah!

We lived like elves in the leafy canopy!
You could probably fly!

Now all our swans are
dying dying dying

and we don't even cry!

Breakfast

They can hear you snoring in the house next door!
You mooned the planet Neptune!

You look like a
cross between an

eel and a cue-ball and
no,

you can't wear your
prom dress to breakfast!

FYI

Wiggle into your water-wings, Wanda!
It's time to fly away!

You live on a reef!
You'll probably drown next week!
My sockeye sees a big storm coming!
He sees it in a cheesy fresco!
He saw it in raw meat!

My sockeye sees you go under!

Meerkat

I own the Great State of Oklahoma!
I'm a meerkat tycoon!

Meerkats choke the Niebelungen!
They call it triage!

Choke the Rhine!
Choke the Rhone!
Choke the Rhine!
Choke the Rhone!

It's a meerkat enigma!
My phone won't ring!

I own Ohio and Wyoming!
I'm a meerkat tycoon!

Cartoon Pink

My grandma was a burgler!
My mommy burns glue in the sink!

We drink all day and at night we turn
cartoon pink!

Vita Propria

It bit my uncle!
It swallowed a thermos!

What mother wouldn't want to hear those words?

But we came to the end and remembered everything,
and then we didn't.

High School

You go back to high school.
You wish you were dead.
You blush.

You blush like the Red Mists of Aldebaran!

All the mimics and
sickos dissolve in a

cosmic

kiss!

Long Island Railroad

They all eat the same oyster!
They all ride the same horse!

Oyster-horse on a house-boat in Mecox Bay!

Arty oysters from Montauk!
Bratty oysters from Quogue!

Blur

Were you ever a blur?

Were you ever a word that turned into thistles?
Were you ever a word that turned into fur?

Were you ever a blur?

Mexico

Why does every message I get from
Mexico look like a
sex-text from a swat team?

Get naked!
Walk out the front door!

It's always bad advice!

Yuba River

Every summer someone is
swept away from a

pool in a bend of the
Yuba River above the Bridegeport Bridge,

where the river grinds stone into sand
and the sand can

suddenly slip away.

Eventually the EMT's from Yuba City
haul away the corpse in their

all-purpose

hearse and ambulance
and there are worse

ways to die than drowning in the
Yuba River above the Bridgeport Bridge,

where the river runs fast and cold and clear.

Café Ebola

Do you sing as you swing through the jungle?
Did you ever escape from a zoo?
Do they wash you in ozone or ouzo?

Is that your mouth on my menu?

Are you more like an eel or an oboe?
Are you more like a bomb or bamboo?
Are you more like a nub or a zebu?

Is that your mouth on my menu?

First Date

Are you my brick?
Am I your pecan?

I got a pancake in my brain-pan!

Forest Lawn

What I need is a teacher to teach me to
speak in trochees and I need to be

buried in the same
grave and coffin as Greta Garbo!

What I got is a row of rented
weepers and a

B-list bouquet from MGM.

Ghost to Ghost

Aboriginal man, aboriginal TV repairman,
I worked most of my life in Melbourne and Sydney,
telecine to kinescope, film into TV in the Menzies Hotel,
ghost to ghost from American studios,
but now I don't die into ghost TV,
I don't die into kinescope neither,
I die into fire and stars and whispers.

Teach

I coulda been a made man!
I coulda teached to teach!

I coulda traded my socks for
cosmic moxie!

I coulda ate a bomb!
I coulda teached to teach!

True As Snow

Flounce around in your
doleful opulence if you want to!
We still live in a bubble!

We live in a mumble-a-bumble!
We live in a bai-bai-bai-bai!
We live in a wobble-a-bobble!

We live in a bubble in Mumbai.

Late Date at Wal-Face

You toyed with a
boy who was
obviously annoyed with
himself.

I scattered my change
all over the
check-out lane!

I scattered my change
all over the
check-out lane!

Is this

your place or my place?
Is this

your place or my place?

I can't even
see my face

myself.

Invisible Friend

I live in the
darkest shadow in every room.

I am close.

Are you listening?
I am

closer than your breath.

Hinge

Are you a dainty eater?
Are we bonding with bodies or antibodies?

Do you own a home-made bomb?
Are you wearing a beak?
Is your woowoo a widget?

Hey Grandma!

Did you hear the big hinge squeak?

Mermaid

When you land on Mars,
all the

Martians rush out of their
hidey-holes and ask you...

"What's it like to be a mermaid?"

It's like dancing a jig on the
wings of a wig!

It's the way you would feel in your
ideal chemise!

Scream

Kill them all!
Kill the sequel!

Kill them all!
Kill the franchise!

Kill them all!
Kill them all!
Kill them all!

Kill every human being,
except a few slutty teenage girls.

Romance

"I love you like a lunatic!"
This is very romantic.

"I eat like a lunatic!"
This begins to be creepy.

"I practice medicine like a lunatic!"
What?

"I fuck like a lunatic!"
And here we go again!

Dirge

In 1992 I won a life-time
supply of Fig Newtons which
Nabisco would only deliver to my "actual residence,"
and even after I explained that my
"actual residence" is the endless cycle of eternity,
Nabisco nevertheless refused to deliver my
life-time supply to a lake-side
ashram in Minnesota,
where Flora and I once recited
a dirge for Derwood Robinson.

Every monk in that ashram was
crazy about Fig Newtons!

Malibu

We rented this house on the beach to write lyrics
and most of the time we were happy, I guess.

Then we moved to Seal Beach, then New York,
then the far-away stars and the dark behind the dark.

Surprise!

This was the season when we
learned to play the nocturnes...


Big

           slow

                       balloons

                                 bouncing

                                         around

                                              an

                                         empty

                                 ballroom.

This was the season of oysters and curtseys!
Tenors singing on sentry duty!

Your mom hired a druid to read the runes!

Your mom hired a druid to read the runes,
and all of them were curses!

Maggot

Maggot walks into an
art museum and says...

"Show me the meat!"

It's a fast-moving maggot!
Maggot bigger than a hog!

Then it gobbles up the guard and
charges into a mob of tourists!

Maggot bigger than a Buick!
Maggot faster than a Maserati!

You can't get away!

You defaulted on your mortgage!
You don't even own a car!

All you want to do is vegetate!

Meanwhile the maggot eats Beirut!
Maggot eats Greenwich Village!

You can't kill it with hate-mail!

Maggot brighter than a thousand suns!
Maggot bigger than New York!

Bad Guess

Is this book about cannibals?
Yes.
Is there more than one cannibal in it?
Yes.
Did you marry a cannibal?
Yes and no.

I saw thousands of cannibals on a beach in Malibu
and all of them died of old age or drowning.

Promo

I bought you a tacky watch!
I attached a catchy tag-line to your wacky cat-walk!

Woman, what do you want from me?

I gave you everything I had!
I can't give you any more!

I Own Your Eggs

Ether on your tongue!
Typhus in your hoohoo!

Bitch, this isn't a typo!

I own your eggs!

School Lunch

You need magnesium in your diet?
Chew my watch!

Iron deficiency anemia?
Shove a fork up your ass!

We count gangrene as a veggie!
Gangrene!

It's a veggie!
Gangrene!

Spork

"I am God, the all-purpose utensil!"

(God looks like a spork, and a blob of
spaghetti is stuck to the back of his head.)

"I am God, the all-purpose utensil!"

"For the lucky few, I'm a humongous
Swiss Army knife, with a corkscrew-disgorger-reamer!
For the others, I'm a spork."

Fum

Fee fi fo fum!
Are we having fun yet?

Hack the fax!
Gag the hag!
Smack the cracker!

My cake aches for you!

Fee fi fo fum!
Are we having fun yet?

Mommy June

We're not really a band.
The only instrument we own is a pitch-pipe.

Honk!

Did we sleep through the blooper reel?

Honk!

We invented the feelies!

Honk!

Mommy June is our meth-angel!

Honk!

We ate her pets!

Wasteland

My tongue is falling asleep.

My tongue is falling falling falling asleep.

Someone slowly draws sails on a blackboard.
Someone talks about talk.

Dreams walk across my brain
like ants walking over jelly.

Sigma Chi

I am ill, Sigma Chi!

King Tut bit me!
Then he hurled!
We had to lick it up!
He made us lurk in the basement until Halloween.
Then we killed him.

Hulks in kilts are still dancing on his chin!
They wedged him a wedgie!
They ate his glands.

Those hicks should chill!
The Gilded Age is over.
Nobody survived!

I am ill, Sigma Chi!
My world is dying, and I don't know why.

AK-47

I'm a clam at your clambake!
Ack ack!

Are your eyeballs retractable?
Ack ack!

Were you born in re-Borneo?
Ack ack!

Are you more like a clam or a crackerjack?
Ack ack!

Coca in my beak!
Coca in my oboe!

Ack ack!

Blue

What do you see?

I see blue sky and stars
behind the blue

and

you

here

now.

Bomb

Is my cow from another planet?
How would I know?
I saw her eating laundry at the laundromat.
She was down on all fours!
Eating laundry at the laundromat!
I wish she would eat a bomb!

Surrender

You may drown in the
darkness of surrender,

or you may drown in a
drop of rain,

and even when you drowned in the
nothing of the nothing,

as soon as you went under,
you saw hundreds of hidden suns.

James Bond

Am I your nursemaid?
I can't drive you around forever!
I wish I had a suicide pill!
All we ever do is drive around and around
and I don't know
how you turned out so wrong!
All your siblings are eagles and peacocks!
Gigantic thoroughbred race horses!
Greta Garbo!
John Wayne!

Your Uncle Freddy is standing on the moon!

Your dad can whistle with his feet!

But all we ever do is drive around and around
and I never wanted to be a Bond Girl anyway!

I get shot all the time!
They made me eat a worm!
I was always naked!

Now my husband and I own a string of laundromats
and all we ever do is drive around.

Are we dead yet?

Are we dead yet?

Are you clever?
Why not?
Are you clever?
Why not?
Are you clever?
Why not?

Are we dead yet?

Rumba

What we need is a fuck-tax,
and if the Duke don't like it,
I got my dumbbell and my ice-ax!

Rumba dumba!

What we need is a fuck-tax,
and if the Duke don't like it,
he can fax us his adieux!

Rumba dumba!

Ants

I was born in an ethical ant-hill.
I was raised by the ethical ants.

Have you seen the ants dancing?
They dance all the time!
Some of them can even tap-dance!

Tap tap tap tappity tappity tap!
Tappity tap tap tap tap tap!

Can you dance with the ethical ants?
Am I dancing?

Am I dancing the ethical ant-dance?

Malta

Before we met,
I was probably a peanut.

I was pickled by the Huns.
Pickled peanuts!

That's all they ate!

Later Sydney Greenstreet bought me at a yard sale.
He glued wings on me and
called me the Maltese Peanut.

Is it time to fly?
Are we already flying?

I already waited for a thousand years!

How Scary Is This Movie?

We screamed so much, they had to gag us!
They glued us to the seats!

A tooth for a tooth, and torture for the toothless!

Get ready to gargle!
Get ready to squeak!

Okra

Don't look at the clock!
We could turn into okra!

Our garage is on fire!
We could turn into okra!

Our souls are barking in marmalade!
We could turn into okra!

Café des Arts

You may be sad,
you may be smart,
or you may be funny,
my friends,
but the only living art
is the art of money.

Calf of God

Am I calving?
Have a look at my vagina!
Can you see a cow in it?
Now look around for the baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus, is you my fetus?
Baby Jesus, is you my friend?
Baby Jesus, is these the end-times?
Yes they is, child, yes they is!

I-80

Manhattan to Chicago to Omaha
Omaha to Wyoming Nevada Utah
Utah of the Arapaho
abandoned farms far away from the mile-wide highway

Coal towns gold towns ghost towns
Elko Laramie Sioux City Hoboken
Hoboken of the Hackensack
Hackensack of the Lenni Lenape

Bang the drum!
Sing the death-trap tantra!

Obit

I once saw a guy juggle seven knives in Brixton!
He emcee'd the Brixton Oscars!
Inked a bee!
Bit a trike!

He unboned a Brixton ostrich!
It wrote the obit.

Here
lies
the
guy
who juggled seven knives in Brixton,
and now nobody knows the same trick.

A Message from the Maharani

You're afraid of the fire,
and you're already burning!

Helmet

I got a mullet and a meth-helmet!
What the hell?

Mulct the whelks?
Milk the whales?
Welch on Willie?

I got a mullet and a meth-helmet!
What the hell?

Ice

Stripper opens her steamer-trunk and a
midget jumps out of it!

Midget howling like a fiend!

I own a magic orange, says the midget.
Give me back my cigar!
Are there narcs in Iran?

Stripper hurls a few
trinkets at the midget and asks herself...

Is this the life I chose?
Midgets shrieking in a sex-club?

Let's go skiing instead, says the midget.
Skis hissing on the snow-pack!

Blue skies!
Blue skies!
Blue skies!

Skis hissing on the ice!

Hollywood Boulevard

I scream salaam at the signal-man!
Salaam!

My granddad got the
glam-malaria from Lana Turner.

Salaam!

He grew hundreds of fins!
Salaam!

He looked more like a peony than a fish!
Salaam!

We buried him under Hollywood Boulevard.
Salaam!

I scream salaam at the signal-man!
Salaam!

Cop

Do I look like the kind of woman who would
eat all the frosting off her daughter's wedding-cake?

Ma'am, you're crawling around on the floor.
You have frosting all over your face,
You're completely naked.
What am I supposed to think?

Tell me!

What am I supposed to think?

Hollywood

Once upon a time the
Society of Fish at
Hollywood High School elected her as the
sluttiest prom date in Hollywood,
and ever since that day she begins every sentence with
"Speaking as a celebrity..."

So now when it's 400 degrees on Sunset Boulevard and the
last trees burst into flames and my
Grandma curses God, she says...

"Speaking as a celebrity, I curse God."

Tiara

I got a pig in my tiara!
Pig like a thousand suns!

Like a thousand suns?
Or like a thousand gerbils?

Are you really even wearing a tiara?
Or are you wearing a donut?

I got a pig in my donut!

Donut like a thousand suns!

Jingle

I'll be the
tango in your mango
if you'll be the
money on my tongue.

Mango as sweet as money!
Mango as sweet as money!

I'll be your
mangled Anglo jingle
if you'll be the
money on my tongue.

Hollywood

I know hundreds of ghosts,
but only one money.

Are we having fun yet?

I have brung my stenographer with me
into the men's room!

Run away!

Run away from the rodents and donuts and
you can quote me!

I can quote myself!

I have brung my stenographer with me
into the men's room!

Vacation

Are you looking for a whale?
I'm your non-fatal case of the flop-sweats!

Are you my date?
I'm the national tap-root!

Is this really the end of vacation?

A Good Beginning

We called him "Ernest," we boys who ran around the
old marina on Key West.

"Hey Mr. Hemingway! Hey Ernest!"

This name enraged him, and while he was flummoxed,
we could sneak up behind him and steal the glasses off his face.

Cats

Most people don't take me seriously,
because I'm a cat.

Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!
Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!

You can't taste water in your mouth!
We never take a bath!

Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!
Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!

Were you ever a were-cat?
Can you hear them laughing?

Laugh like the water in your mouth!

Banana

Monkey-face on the sidewalk
cracks under the leaves
I see you monkey-face

I'm the man from Amalgamated Marmalade!
Life is my banana

Life is my banana banana banana

Are you underwhelmed by my arm-hole?
Are there yodelers in your back yard?
Shall I eat my grandma?

I'm the man from Amalgamated Marmalade!
Life is my banana banana banana

A Wrong-Colored Sky

You wanted a wrong-colored sky,

sky as seen from a peach,
sky as seen from a plum.

"No, you don't want a
wrong-colored sky," they told you,
"Try to look at it our way."

"First close one eye."
"Then poke out the other."

Rainy Nights in Hollywood

I looked up, and
suddenly the stars were
bright enough to light the world premiere of
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN