[Poem] Katzenjammer, 10.23.04
Katzenjammer
Katzenjammer, you’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
Katzenjammer, the uninvited bedfellow straight thru late afternoon.
The titanium pillow I am under is a wild thunderstorm.
A desert stinging in my veins:
razor needles without a cactus,
vultures’ beaks without mercy.
Katzenjammer, the poltergeist who petrifies my body,
who gorges on muscle tissue and hemoglobin,
whose terrible jackhammer shatters
my angelic tranquility.
Katzenjammer, the reason for Sunday religion.
I’ve traversed the boundaries of madness as passenger to your pilot.
I’ve upskirted the seamstress of the jewel box emporium
with you as wingman.
My midnight endeavors are the white whale in a sea of fisherman,
networking up the nerve,
pinching me out of the dream,
goosing the bottomfeeders until
even golden eggheads get laid.
Katzenjammer, you escort me home,
unhatched and scrambleheaded.
Katzenjammer, your treachery goes unavenged,
your battle plans go on unthwarted.
I lick my wounds with a cottonmouthed tongue.
My slow recovery is a ratchet nurse on a rusty mechanical bull.
Katzenjammer, you crowd me with discomfort,
now I’m lonesome for your departure.
Every drop of daylight is acidic with vampirish aversion.
Every breath hacks up smelter smokestack exhaustion.
Katzenjammer, the helicopter swarm of a thousand tyrannical armies.
Katzenjammer, the simultaneous detonation of the multinational H-bomb arsenal.
Katzenjammer, the brutal cartoon vise of the mind.
I am present-intense and discounted for.
I am rough-edged and resentful.
My bodily abuses are intemperate atrocities at a self-imposed trial
by a hindsight tribunal.
The guilt is mine but you get off on technicalities.
Katzenjammer, you get off on the misery of the unavoidable tomorrow.
Katzenjammer, the mother of all afterthought fuck-ups.
I selected you for amnesia to make excess accessible
only to curse you for my voluntary purgatory.
Woe, the unjust consequences for recreation.
Woe, the retched affliction of your sick games.
Katzenjammer, when will your seething nightmares relinquish me?
when will your poisonous talons retract?
when will your asphyxiating pythons uncoil my spinal cord?
when will you find a new host to leach from?
when will you withdraw your barbarous occupation?
Katzenjammer, I need liberation from you,
I need biological autonomy.
Katzenjammer, you are the demon scourge of my imaginary exorcism.
I am patient.
I am penitent.
I am praying for sobriety’s salvation.
