One Poem
PREHEAT TO TASTE
do you smell gas?
is the oven on?
what’s the over under
on yr commitment to the bit?
i’m just popping my head in
trying to make sense of the weather report
happy friday everyone
can you smoke in here?
got a match?
let’s live outside the strike zone
far from perfect meatballs down the plate
plenty gripe about the entire game
hinged upon one umpire’s eye
but there’s another saying in the big show
the ball doesn’t lie
*
i’m talking the walk of intention
i’ll try anything at once once
a little r and r at the leper colony
moonlighting as a bootlicker
my dreams fill w capital
yr tax dollars hard at work
but i want my tax dollars to have fun live a little
i want them to love what they do so they don’t have to work a day in their lives
the only job i want to give em
is putting a hit on the 2,781 billionaires
wHaT’s ThE dEaL with the rich and famous killing this beautiful circus ring we live on
yr telling me you don’t have 2,781 bullets to spare?
it’s all in yr delivery
everyone! run!
there’s trouble in paradise
it’s all about that one-day primal
*
a bullet a zinger a belly laugh
the slant rhyme of knife
you have to leave slay the angels
stay classy war
kitchen’s closed spay the eels
you can’t cook with us
you don’t have what it takes
not a single onion on yr person
me i got 3 sometimes 4 and at least 2
are up in the air do you smell gas?
no fair i wanna promise something big
and deliver the impossible
electrical fires happen all the time
number one cause of incidentally
burning the house down
*
the joke whizzes by
flits thru yr guts
it’s hot in here
take off all yr clothes
get me that syringe
get me 4 ccs of that email chain
wait wait wait i’m not a doctoral candidate
i’m not on a radical sabbatical i’m not the president elect
yr on fire rn
stop drop the hole
hop down into it
ta-da
pop the bottle cut the ribbon
yr greatest work
*
i want to be an effective secret agent of change in the world
you bring the baking soda i’ll bring the coke
what do we got?
a 3rd grade youtube video a schedule II substance
i painted a tunnel onto a giant rock
a train tunnel just wide enough for the train
one of the bullet ones
you wait here
i’m gonna go check it out
ok i’m back
we’ve really gotta go
it’s coming
full-steam ahead
ahoy!
where are we?
did we just wet-willy the landlubber?
did we just snap back blackbeard’s eyepatch?
did we just brunch on bottomless parrot tongues?
did some people in this room think we were gonna die tonight?
*
do you want to dance?
i can’t
help i’ve fallen and i can’t get up
oh sorry but yr shoes untied
oh sorry i was scooping up the field mice
oh sorry i caught you on fire
i really thought you were the ground green wire
***oh that’s a mirrorrrrrrr***
here bop my button pop my cherry blaze my prairie
emergency services will be here soon wee-ooh-wee-ooh
*krrk* shots fired down on broadway *krrk*
sounds like an automatic weapon
everybody hit the floor this is a
hold up are you thinking what i’m thinking?
let’s boogie
how do you say drugstore in french?
let’s take this city on a pill to-go
*
go throw a road rager
ope red light.
the florida plates next to me are blasting their fantasy audio book in a bad british accent
“the birds line up against the sea wall”
i woke up this morning
obviously
green light!
my first thought was i wanna die
red light!
but the weird thing is the next one was
i never felt more alive
like clockwork i’m depressed for playtime
my mind all dolled up
messed to the times
you moved you’re out
roll the stop sign
smoke it
*
all the highway lines roll right into my pockets
i’d adhere to the speed limit of it all
if it weren’t so durn blurry
there’s a massive tanker of gas
do you smell gas?
going 80 down the interstate
i roll down my window
try to get its driver’s attn
“OUR JOBS HAVE A LOT IN COMMON YOU AND ME”
i don’t think he can see me
“OUR—JOBS—HAVE—A—LOT—IN”
i don’t think he can see me though
was kind of thinking he was gonna
run me off the road
kind of had a hunch
he was gonna murder me
oh this that’s just my antenna
been crackling tons lately
who do you call when that happens?
would you mind sharing their number?
i won’t tell them it was you who gave it to me
*
i know this isn’t networking
but i just got off speakerphone w a priest
i put the priest on speaker
so he could hear the smoke and the horns and the sirens
explained how no we will not be crowning mary this first sunday of may
thanks anyway nice chattin daddy
to think in the past
i was an altarboy larping for the lord
getting geeked on eagle’s wings
the beady-eyed soothsayer the opposite of heads
call it in the air do you smell gas?
at 8 years old
i was somewhat toothless
*
did you know there are bills being passed
so that at a near-future near you
you can donate gasoline to goodwill
simply fill up a can
launch it at the backdoor
and let the sun do its thing
sup with this little light of mine
i have officially commandeered the wheel from jesus
i was getting so sick of listening to bruce springsteen all the time
my lover asked me to tone it down a notch
i frisked myself for dials nothing
it was like i was a piece of cheesecake
and yr asking me to chock the back tire
of a semi-tractor trailer
parked somewhere in the bay area
just doin my job here
i’m hauling the asinine
i’m booping the reset button of the moon
i’m blowing speakers in public
daddy shark doo doo doo doo do do
i really loved yr sound poem last night
the banging of pots and pans
gently fed thru a paper shredder
is noise finally having its moment?
the ocean smells like a go-kart
smells like reverse ain’t on the menu
smells like the long overdue manual shifting of gears
the endtimes sound funner when it’s a plague of grasshoppers
our hunger lowkey locust with the mostest
is the shrill insect of my heart finally tapping into the frequency of fire?
will that sweet dream i’ve been having lately
finally be produced into must-see TV?
the one where i will myself to spontaneously combust
then comb back the flames in my vanity mirror
and remind myself the mantra
“the universe is not very big you agoraphobic moron
you can step on it
see all there is to see
sing all the songs along the way”
but then the leaking suspicion
the overeating engine
the brink of kaput
*
ding all the dongs along the cray
ding ding ding ding ding ding
the check engine light at the back of the brain
ding ding ding ding ding ding
there it is god i love that one
ding ding ding ding ding ding
such a banger
ding ding ding ding ding ding
jalopy? i barely know me
ding ding ding ding ding ding
i don’t know much about motors
ding ding ding ding ding ding
but i know they can explode
ding ding ding ding ding ding
this is of interest to me
ding ding ding ding ding ding
dynamite wick sparkling slow
ding ding ding ding ding ding
xy axis of hammerspace-hammertime
ding ding ding ding ding ding
drawn and quartered by its quadrants
ding ding ding ding ding ding
plot points dying for an encore
ding ding ding ding ding ding
in the red of days late
ding ding ding ding ding ding
what a giddy-up to slip in it
ding ding ding ding ding ding
what a gas suck a sip
ding ding ding ding ding ding
it’s in my ear now i can’t get it out
ding ding ding ding ding ding
it’s in my head ring my bell
ding ding ding ding ding ding
can i workshop my bit about beauty
ding ding ding ding ding ding
before i drop a gear and disappear
ding ding ding ding ding ding
you are one of the most beautiful people i’ve ever
ding ding ding ding ding ding
how’s that fuckface
ding ding ding ding ding ding
doesn’t that lack a certain panache
ding ding ding ding ding ding
slack tact of an adroit doink
ding ding ding ding ding ding
now step and see and sing
ding ding ding ding ding ding
our job is so simple so easy free
ding ding ding ding ding ding
make a monkey laugh make super good time
ding ding ding ding ding ding
take-one dedicate to the organ wheeze grind
ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
∩
Henry Goldkamp (he/they) is an interdisciplinary poet who enjoys clowning boundaries between language, visual art, and sensory performance. He lives in New Orleans, where he co-runs Splice Poetry Series, acts as intermedia editor for Tilted House, and teaches experimental poetics and clown studies at Louisiana State University. Recent art, criticism, and performance appear or are forthcoming in Chicago Review, Annulet, VOLT, Poetry Northwest, Accelerants: An Action Books Poetry Film Series, Triquarterly, NOIR SAUNA, and Sonora Review, among others.