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Fitting Parts by Kenneth Pobo Read the poems below or click here to download the PDF.  This book contains adult content. I would like to thank the editors of the following magazines for publishing work from this collection: “First” King Log “Clap” Origami Condom “Child Molester” UVU “Come Unto Me” Juice “Leather Jesus” Church-Wellesley Review “I Don’t Like Thinking” Melting Trees Review “Going Upstairs” Spire Press “Unprinted Obituary” Orbis “Break It Break It Break It” Maverick Press “Lock Me Away” Fluent Ascension “Suit-Burning” Coffee House “They Laugh” Foliate Oak “He Says His Best Days” Fluent Ascension “Hustler” Slipstream “Warren The Poet” The Poetry Warrior “Bad Parachute” Barbaric Yawp “Response to “Changes IV”” Muse’s Literary Guild “Fitting Parts” Lucid Moon “Fizzling Out” Bottom of the World “Curiouser and Curiouser” Wicked Alice “Communication Breakdown” Inscribed “That Cock Again” Brouhaha “Matched Set” VS. “Many Told Me Don’t” The Battered Suitcase “Summer of Danke” Blood Pudding Press “Portrait Of” Origami Condom “Rumor” Bay Windows
Contents First Clap Child Molester Come Unto Me Leather Jesus I Don’t Like Thinking Going Upstairs Unprinted Obituary Break It Break It Break It Lock Me Away Suit-Burning They Laugh He Says His Best Days Hustler Warren The Poet Bad Parachute Response to “Changes IV” Fitting Parts Fizzling Out Curiouser and Curiouser Communication Breakdown That Cock Again Matched Set Many Told Me Summer of Danke Portrait Of Rumor
All poems © Kenneth Pobo 2010 Cover art by JC Eckles Published by Philistine Press
First define me the rest comes easily and quickly.
Those who are open get shut up, shut down for the good of the family, put under surveillance or put under ground. Handing out
Bibles at the stonings, they read passages, sing. We're examples, things: easy
to kill a thing, easier still to forget you did it.
Clap A poet reads about his wife and he having sex. Applause. A singing former chiropractor strums. “Oh, I’ve always thought highly of Jesus/ He really changed the world.” And “Oh, my sweet grandmother/
from screaming. Loud applause.
Child Molester
Many parents strap down their kid’s brain, make the kid do whatever they say,
so the kid grows up to be like them, flat, hateful-- anxious
to make children they too will molest.
Come Unto Me
Leather Jesus
In a Milwaukee gay bar, a man asks me to dance, pulls me close, kisses me for the first time, not knowing he's first. Jesus, in black leather, stark between strobes. The corner church expects him to give a lecture, but he stays to see this kiss. So many saviors present tonight! Heaven, closets with doors blown open, light pouring out, warm and wrapping us the way skin wraps bones.
I Don’t Like Thinking
I don't like thinking I'm better than a bee, a muskrat, an antelope, or even a stony cliff. At least sleek between lily pads. As for antelopes, how wonderful to truly be cliffs grab the best skyscapes. So why get proud because I'm part of
Unprinted Obituary
As Steve grew he learned how to hide so well that by the time he was sixteen, nobody could find him. He knew he was what he denied but found ways to fake it because truth created torture. In gym, he laughed at jokes they told about kids like him. Hatred didn't doubt,
relishing a moving target. Steve turned himself into a lie to satisfy them, hoped to die, hoping his death could stop the threat of violence. He hid so well, but felt that everyone could tell.
Break It Break It Break It
Melanie's neat, singing "Silence Is King Around Here." It sure is, unless you're speaking up for churches
and family values (nobody knows what they are, but the term costs me my rights).
Sharpshooter Congressmen raise hollyhocks and shoot Repub heroin. Then
would I be moral enough? Would I have values? Nope. Faggots by definition have no value. Admit us to cemeteries, not barbeques, unless of course, we're the main course.
Silence is king, but many queens are speaking out.
Lock Me Away
Maybe I’d rather be to be locked away in a room with two cats,
a Howard Tate CD, and a key to unlock the door to let Stan in
love while leaders make mixed drinks of piss and iodine.
Suit-Burning Leaders look sad and warped in power ties and cuff links. Each word a lie. I wonder about their spouses and lovers. Suit off, does the lie stay in place? Does it lodge in the crotch? Our minister thundered in a black suit, had his crossword-puzzle God figured out and written with ink. We nodded, said “Amen!” So, let’s burn suits. If the suited dead can’t take it, strip them! Make them walk naked-- even for a minute, a cold truthful wind snapping their behinds.
They Laugh In the locker room Jack bellows--for him, a game, especially football, is a song to a guitar. He memorizes plays, quotes coaches, used to be in the NFL, received passes and blow jobs, now weighs over 400 pounds. Seeing him on the scale, one man yells “Put some clothes on!” They laugh. Death clings to many folds of flesh. Jack jokes in his own end zone, benches empty.
He Says his Best Days Were in New Orleans
Not sexually compatible, Harry and Jim last a month. Jim’s into rimming. Harry’s into long con versations about the meaning of relation ships.
Jim says his best days were in New Orleans. Harry doesn’t ask why,
goes in to take a shower and when Harry comes out, Jim’s gone.
Hustler a commercial between my legs I'm seventeen that
Brings MONEY these guys look at me's a REAL trip I kinda like it sometimes
get a tip even if they just jack off when I pull down my jeans then drop me back on clinch street
Warren the Poet
complains about people not getting him: the poem I wrote about the sleeping cat got rejected, the one I did about a boy getting his eyes jabbed out, his legs found washed up on a Lake Michigan shore, got snapped up, now what do you make of that?
Dunno. Maybe you write poorly about cats and well about violence or violence is now what a red rose used to be.
says he wants to be a leaf.
Poor guy, he’s caught. New poems work on him and won’t let him go.
Bad Parachute
when I was falling falling & ground was fast I learned I had been
in the air all my life & for
& enjoyed this downward delight
Response to “Changes IV” by Cat Stevens But Sung by The New Seekers on Their 1972 Circles Album
And we all know it’s better that yesterday’s past? Ha! Yesterday hides
a pistol in his fatigues, looks for only the choicest chests to hit. You say let’s all start living for the one’s that’s going to last. What’s going to last?
Just tonight while walking from my car to my door, some kids yelled, FUCKIN’ FAGGOT! Hate,
a mosquito spray fog, we’re all coughing asthmatics, the ambulance always late.
The army (yes, they defend me, right?) fired seven translators for being gay. Oh. And we all know it’s better that yesterday has passed--
now let’s all start living ooops--killers on skateboards, killers in pulpits, dead
bodies, too many to bury, flesh slipping off bones onto streets.
Fitting Parts
The minister says that God didn’t intend homosexuals because our parts don’t fit. His God, Henry Ford, people are cars off the line. You can get matching parts easily. But some don’t drive, and some think cars exhaust. Me? I’m happy with your parts, boyfriend, like them just as they are. You’re a good fit! And if Henry doesn’t like it, let him go back to his assembly line, let him manufacture steel mice to dart down
Fizzling Out
The television pukes. No one cleans it up. Vomit brims up to the windows, hides the clematis. We go stinks. In the morning, fresh coffee.
It’s still there, the roomful of upchuck.
Bye. Have a good day.
Curiouser and Curiouser
August, humid and smelling of funnel cakes and sausages, we stroll in the Clearfield County Fair. We’ve just seen Andy Kim, Lou Christie, Maxine Nightingale,
and Martha and the Vandellas perform, 4 musical orgasms. Your 94-year-old grandmother’s hand-sewn pillow won a blue ribbon. We visit
the poultry. So many chickens! I won’t say “They’re all alike” ever again. Some look haughty, red-crested, others thin, models after
a long photo shoot. Horses sleep. The sheep sound techy, like why don’t these goomers just let us sleep. Among pigs we see a young man wearing a t-shirt:
I HAVE THE DICK SO I MAKE THE RULES. His laughter and empty eyes. We get snow cones, don’t speak of him till we’re back in our motel room, two men
who love each other. We wonder if he has a girlfriend—maybe she’d think he’s funny. Until he enforces.
Communication Breakdown
A man with too-big glasses and a tie close to his neck asks:
Name.
Aaron Stern.
Parents.
Sappho and Walt Whitman.
Excuse me?
They’re two gay poets.
No, you don’t understand, your real parents.
Sappho and Walt Whitman.
He snarls. That neck vein the tie almost hides bulges. You won’t get any money if you don’t tell us.
But I told you. Without Sappho and Whitman, I’d be dead. My life began when they gave me life.
Next! he says.
Please, I’ll starve. I’m broke. I came here for help.
Next! he says, dismissing me, shaking his head, eyes like brown coffins suddenly open.
That Cock Again the one I’m supposed to put my lips around, the one that’s supposed to drill my ass. No matter where I go, it’s there, waiting, like the kid who stole my milk money in third grade. When I sleep, I dream it’s coming at me, making demands, swinging from a heaven-hung chandelier. Money-making, money-spending, money-saving cock, you never soften, are like a burning house. You want me to play firefighter, to put you out, but you put out only to put out some more. I fall on my knees. No is no option.
Many Told Me Don’t
whistle in a graveyard. Bad luck? Hardly. I whistle and out from
the ground come the dead. To the nasty ones I say be gone and they go. Edna gives me her plum cake recipe. Ralph tells me of playing whiffle ball. Pretty soon we’re all whistling,
the graveyard the happiest place in town.
Summer of Danke Schoen, me, you, and Wayne Newton live in Vegas, you said: Ohhh, isn’t he hot? I said no, let’s go get ice cream. You slept with Wayne while I mulled fuzzberry or chocflute. I’ve slept with three Waynes come to think of it—or were they all Dennis? Everyone’s a Dennis eventually. Danke schoen, darling danke schoen, you think I didn’t hear you crooning to the bathroom mirror? Even the maid told you please pipe down. You were in love, you said, with me, adding a great Bette Davis gesture by the door, but you must try smoking. I tried to be more contemporary, Johnny Depp, sensitive and deep-eyed, but you said I never listen. I’m a stinky actor, that's all, and besides you had Wayne all over you. Those warped 45s from his stint on Capitol, what a bed they made! Danke schoen, separate planes and no more lurching rain. From now on it’s burning formica and razor cupcakes.
Portrait of
Rumor
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