The Battle of the Hysterical Brain...letters from the war torn

Post War

When morning's palpitations lament
He exits a drowsily constructed tent
a clown tired of the juggling maze
rather be inhabiting a Hendrixian haze
erase conciousness from his temple's altar
inevitably, the brains soft shell cracks and falters.

Words parachute like skydivers delcared heaven spent
He's asked by his "friends the media" what's his bent?
Do child prodigy conformist rebels go through phases?
get taken in by the latest fads or fashion crazes
or every five seconds dream of women wearing halters
Will you smile like the fish who reeled in his potential captors?...

Micah Zevin 2007

Through The Cracked Looking Glass...

Department Store Mannequin Returns From the Front

I jumped from behind the display glass
With my automatic rifle and my righteous words
Yet behind the vortex,act crass, smoke lawns grass
Presently, I'm rolling in foreign dirts turds
Ravished at the images of your sacramental curds

What if electrical currents ignited deadened fingers
Would the moment justify burning law to the ground?
Somehow, I can't let more fascists infidels linger
Without a bodies young comforts, you're lost not found
Open these security gates danger, release the fiery hounds

I say burn all the pornography with bomb blasts
Save me the audio, I like to study the perverse sounds
I am at the ship's wheels directing my animal spawn
How to live in harmony with the savage man
Who must improve others, no plan, not so fast, will it ever last?

They sent my mannequin to the desert unequipped
He wrote me letters about he'd been so gippped
His helmet was made of plastic, his shield of play-doh
He said he was issued the same gun as cartoon G.I. Joes
I wailed when he said he'd lost his big toe

I wrote lucky you're a mannequin, you don't feel a thing
The next morning, in my ears, there was a constant ring
I smashed all the alarms with my bare fist, my girlfriend said
I told her, last night I dreamed her head exploded,
and while I tried in vain to stop it, my cracking bones imploded

When my mannequin returned from the front
He was alive barely likea fake plastic man flesh beaten yo-yo
Shocked! He could feel his fingers, even his phantom toes
What was it they said, he had felt like a sitting duck on frozen pond
Except for flashes of schrapnel that made breathing like a stunt

He remembered being a child mannequin window runt
People exploded bombs ignited by oh so pious tongues
And his troop labelled all of them inhumane evil ones
Stepping over the quite dead and their living ghosts, loves
on invisible rungs
You'd be captivated by the hoax, sheltered from the blunt

Why was he trapped in this fragile mass?
It was better in a mannequins silent morass
Then to burn in the nightmares of your high school class
He was so smart, so brave, he was the leader in the musical cast

Maybe, it was time to go inside glass and beyond
Become a new tadpole morphing into his new pond
Until flesh no longer bleeds he's a man missing appendages
Now, I'll take off these invisible man bandages
Until they pack my parts away in boxes, like careful sausages

Micah Zevin 2007

All department store mannequins write me a letter about your life battles?
When will you return from your war front?

When Exiting a Dream State

Tell Nightmares

In this nether,
In the blanket high
Of brown declarations
Fake sugar sized holes
Hide behind the flash of
Many flashing monitors
Flashing the daily schedule
Of drama in your tennisCourt
of collapse.

These morning seditions drill
Oil rigs into waking states
Transport rain showers
Court ordered murder
Terror delirious and understated,
Calmed by maple syrup laced
Oatmeal.

Turbulence decompresses
Blankets silencing alarms
Needle stuck music on repeat,
Spinning backwards into
the Supposed deliverance
of Subliminal letters.

All that they cherish is burning
Coal fuels warts eroding what
Is left by the Sand-weaver
Whirling restlessness,

Conducting surgery on R.E.M. delirium
Drooping until mixed cereal consumed.
You are no longer upright bat, until juices
Ignite irises distorted, cracked pupils,
Followed footsteps creaking through iridescent serenity.

Not the kind of reverie for which you
Were stitched together—the purpose of
Soul repair,
Or tampering

Micah Zevin 2007.

Tell me your Nightmares, morning or otherwise...
send them before you fall asleep heh! heh! heh!

Stupid is as Stupid does....

Just Idiots Not Savants

Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber sure know how to punch
Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumber are really out to lunch
Tweedle-dumb thinks he's everyones boss man
Tweedle dumber will curse him when he can

Tweedle-dumb was born on the day of the beast
Tweedle-dumber's parents let the crows have a brain feast
Tweedle-dumb knew all about prying eyes
Tweedle-dumb thought football jerseys was a unique disguise

Tweedle-dumb always gave unnecessary advice
Tweedle-dumber's brain was the size of mice
Tweedle-dumb treated Tweedle-dumber like an angry child
Tweedle-dumb did not care if Tweedle dumber became reviled

Tweedle-dumb liked to spend lots of money he did not have
Tweedle-dumber's wife turned him into her personal money slave
treated like a wild animal forced to live in a cave...
Tweedle-dumb came to work as sick as a foaming mouth dog
Tweedle-dumber played video games all day and ate lunch like a hog...

Micah Zevin 2007 (to be continued...Maybe?!!)
this poem is in no way shape or form based on anyone in reality(copout!)
it is just a creative riff on an antiquated nursery rhyme for the postmodern era
Tell me your wild and zany accounts and I will surely publish them...Not!(Just Kidding!)

Crazy Neighbors....

The Lady in the Apartment Next Door Lives in Perpetual Fire Hazard

The Landlord hears complaints of smoke rising and infiltrating
this is untenable. The lady says she is a woman of worship,
that this is a an attack on spirituality, her right to light candles
and incense to the Virgin, and have messages travel
in signals of Saintly fire rings and burning flesh erasing humanities
sinful habits. This is the point argue tenants, you can have your
heaven or hell, just purchase some common sense—“We don’t
all desire to voyage the way of the ashen, We do not all
make fetish God’s breath outside doorsteps. Here we pay rent,
returning from fatigue ridden days for body and mind’s renewal,
time together or alone with ourselves, not to perish at frail hands of
repentance, or a kingdom yet formulate its intentions…

Micah Zevin 2007

Write me about your crazy lady or men or transgendered person stinking up your building
in the apartment next door...in nutjobs and eccentrics we will unite! Hi ho!

Abort Mission!

I took out my portable respirator
I said, I'll build my own incubator
I will bare my own little terminators
They will never know my true identity
They will obtain manufactured memories

Blasphemy , blasphemy, I'm waiting for your acrimony
I didn't date anyone, I owe no alimony
The moment ripens to replace old body parts
New blood is required to expand baboon hearts
Suddenly, I feel like climbing a pine tree

My box is inside out and ready to jack
Do not be intimidated by the looming stacks
After another of our contentious fights
I'd erase myself to break away from this years cage
Form wings of honey glazed cynicism, then take flight

I will draw myself into steel plated garbage pails
Inside, I can hide from infants persistent wails
I'll kill your god if you'll kill mine
Who cares if I found a cure for the disintegrating spine
I will pray to oblivion by candlelight without fail

I do not even claim to exist right now
Has your microchip brain shut down howling holy cow!
Give me a vanilla milkshake I will crow
Because I am an invisible man I won't take a bow
I'll just sneak out through your bedroom window...

When will I get to sew on my new digital skin
I've been lost for seconds in email's perpetual trash bin
Why haven't those fatso's on Roosevelt Avenue eaten me yet?
I pointed at one scurrying away with my business card
In the city, its not kosher to blink an eye, cry or fret

You simply curse your comically drastic luck
Also, pretend like you don't give a fuck
You'll go have a cappucino in an Astoria cafe
Waiting for your atoms to travel to your next day's fray
When you wake on Steinway street in a pool of drool
you feel like a schmuck...

One day my essence was absorbed by a paper towel
I lashed out, clawing like a despondent fowl...

Micah Zevin 2007

What missions would you have aborted?
Send me your poems, complaints and diatribes...

Shelf Life: A Poem

Shelf Life: The Poem

Steve and Isaiah pretended to be robots
When they were young and willing to scrape their knees
Long ago, they had outgrown those mediocre Gobots
They’d been force into life and now carried their degrees
On their tight backs like paper produced by smokestacks disease
They wondered what it was like to be machines and push money down slots.

Steve’s curiosity searched for products of a manufactured past.
Isaiah dreamed of questions why do bells propel minds blast.
Both wanted to observe the assembly lines
So again scarring their ancestors weakened spines.
They sail down the East River with a ship and a mast
What would it be like be like to forever fast?

Not on the holiest day of the year, they said.
In a way, if you oiled our digital gears, we’d be fed.
What will we find in all these automated smells?
Not merely fortune cookies and green hair gels,
But electric currents and elasticity
Many lost their fingers…have you heard of reciprocity?

Steve tried to climb on top of Costco’s roof
Isaiah attempted to track down the netherworld’s great proof
Next to the sculpture of dog poop in the grass
Steve thought maybe we should film the release of my gas.
Seriously, they considered acting detached and aloof.
We are making an art film, a philosophical spoof?!!!

Do not attempt to imitate our monotonous routine lives
Our shadows of consumption and production
Are they merely manufacturers of jagged steak knives?
Eating instant meals with strawberry sauce reductions.
Isaiah and Steve wondered who would of sewed their torn sleeves…

Isaiah felt like one gigantic allergic Astoria, Queens sneeze
Until he committed himself to the role of the librarian
Steve said, do you mean another disgruntled Septuagenarian?
No stupid, I meant another anal-retentive librarian.
Let’s go to the sculpture park and hang from the sculptured leaves.

They rummaged through their cerebellum’s unmentionables.
Isaiah felt the words on twisted tongues squirm.
Steve fashioned his silence a comfortable noose
Always digging for controversy peering behind his caboose.
Nothing would ever be untouchable
This life of machines had become their new worm…

by Micah Zevin 2007

"A Confused Librarian Poem" (Is there any other kind? Not!)

i stamp
and collate,
i arrange
and disseminate
discuss and
advise
with my lower half
hidden.
at the top
i feel
dizzy as
a pinwheel
but not half
as bright;
half of me
steadfast
and the other
a whirl in
perpetual
spin.

Allison Escoto 2007