MY BANK STATEMENT
When your woman doesn’t seem to remember
All the bad jokes you told the night before,
When you’re not embarrassed to pay for your gas
With a hand full of nickels,
When you overdraw from your bank on purpose
And then you have to borrow money to pay for the fees,
When you’re glad that all your CDs are scratched,
When you try to sleep through the day,
But cant, because your neighbor is mowing his lawn,
When being tired
Is the sweetest way to feel when you are awake,
When you get homesick
But not for home or anywhere else,
Because just barely moving
Makes you feel
Like you’re already there.
- Justin Grimbol
(featured in the poetry forum 03.01.11)
TRYING TO BLEED FROM THE RIGHT WOUND
The hung-over colors of a sunset
The neutered smile I give my boss
my reflection
wants to reach out and slap the shit out of me
and tell me to stop fondling my own man boobs
but I’m tired.
there is so much to do
All those jobs to quit
All those dollar tacos to devour
All those beer cans to be redeemed
Because I’m the type of man who refuses
to do things the way they are supposed to be done
I don’t wait for winter
I make snow angels in cigarette ash, and
In the foam of the ocean, and
In the pubic hair of a crazy woman
in wrinkles of my last dollar.
This is how I live
Look at me!
Look at this manly body!
I’m fat as hell
There's diet soda in my veins
bacon egg and cheese beating in my heart
and my brain is stuck in a 7-11 parking lot
with wet pavement as deep as an ocean and
late night lights blistering and popping and oozing
And the sky looks as soft as cement
And as gentle as a scorpions ass
I stand under it in nothing but my underwear,
cursing at the gods,
saying thank you
for taking me where I did not Want to go
- Justin Grimbol
(featured in the poetry forum 11.01.10)
THE FIFTH GOSPEL
I believe in lying in bed with my boots on.
I believe in airplanes and turbulence and
Humming birds and neurotic old women,
I believe in making to-do lists
And then
Not doing anything on the list
Or:
If I really want to feel productive
I make a list
filled with things
That I have already done.
Example of a to-do list
by Justin Grimbol:
Sleep in
Wake up
Jerk off
Fight with woman
Eat breakfast
Check email
Take piss
Write poem
I like poems.
They’re short.
most poetry isn’t very good though---
you got guys like Ginsberg talking about
how holy their assholes are.
I like ass. I love ass.
I got a cramp
in my neck
from staring at
So
Much
Ass.
But
That doesn’t mean
There needs to be something holy about it
Ass is good enough as it is.
Sure
Some are better than others.
Some
Are impossible to not get a little religious about.
Some stay in your heart
Like a stun gun
Like a blizzard
Only it’s warm
It’s the inventor, the mad scientist
of all warm things.
I believe in warm things
I believe in sweating
I believe
That people only smell good when they smell bad,
I believe in lukewarm pizza
I always believe it’s going to be a warm winter
Until the first snow fall,
Then I hide in my room
Terrified.
I put my hands under my woman’s breasts and pretend they’re mittens.
the weather channel says we should be expecting 16 inches of snow.
It’s going to be a long winter.
When I was a kid
I felt warm in the snow.
Hell,
I felt a lot of things back then
That I don’t feel now.
When I was a kid
I actually believed that if you beat a video game
That you’d be rewarded with money
That it would come pouring out of the Nintendo
like it was a slot machine.
Why else would they make the games so difficult?
Why would people play these ridiculous games
Unless there was some kind of reward at the end?
I believe in that kind of passion
I believe in how your thumbs hurt
when you played Nintendo for too long.
This poem was written with those same thumbs
I believe in thumbs and chaffed legs
And stretch marks and pregnancy scares
And running out of gas
And all the scratch off tickets that are buried
Under the front seat of my car.
I believe in all those things that make you ask
Was it worth it? And then you shrug your shoulders
Because even if it’s not worth anything
You’re going to keep at it anyway.
You just can’t help yourself.
- Justin Grimbol
(featured in the poetry forum 03.26.10)
AN AMERICAN PICNIC
We sat on the porch and watched the storm roll in.
At first it was just a flash in the distance
Then
The wind picked up
It began to rain
The thunder became louder.
And I sat there and I drank my diet Pepsi
And she smoked her joint.
A bolt of lightning lit up the
The front lawn
we both jumped back
we got scared
we wanted to hide
but by the time we had decided
to retreat back into the house
the storm already passed
leaving us with nothing but the softening rain.
From inside the house
we could hear my step mother calling for my father.
She had rheumatoid arthritis
and she had a hard time getting up from the couch.
it didn’t take much to make this woman feel helpless.
She kept calling for my father
Asking him if the car windows were rolled up.
we could almost hear him ignoring her.
if he was actually asleep he would have been snoring.
It was almost like we could hear him
But really all that could be heard was my step mother's yelling
and the fading sound of distant thunder coming from the passing storm
- Justin Grimbol
(featured in the poetry forum 12.12.09) |
