Ride On

I saw a man riding around on a Rascal

he weighed 450 pounds and had a t-shirt on

on the back of this shirt was a hazard sign
with the words "Toxic Fumes Below"

Below that sign was an arrow pointing down to his butt-crack

He was like two bears fighting in a snow globe

beautiful and stupid

there was no way to capture it

so I gave up

and thought sexual thoughts

hating my body for lacking focus

while he gorged on Italian beef and Breyers ice cream

pumping quarters into a Majestic Star slot machine

The greatest poems

are the ones that can't be written

I guess that's why poets are compulsive masturbators

and poems are dead of diabetes at 34

I guess a lot of beautiful and stupid things

© 2009 Lee Kitzis

Poem Written After Smoking a Strong Italian Cigar Too Fast

i took a rocket to the moon
and ended up in gary, indiana

while the homicides homicided

and the poets poeted

bill kurtis read bedtime stories to the president

while jesus snuck out the backdoor

hauled ass to canada
to get his ulcer checked out

i took a rocket to the moon
and ended up tossing ice into a denny’s urinal
at 2:03 a.m.
thankful for work

i took a rocket to the moon

and ended up on the moon

and it was nice

there were no poets

or homicides

just jesus

hiding behind a rock

“that guy scares the shit out of me” he said

“plus it’s a little cold”

i agreed

then the earth blew up
in the name of god

and i poeted this poem about it

© 2008 Lee Kitzis

Wednesday ramble

mind-meltingly bored. burnt myself out on internet poker. only so many times i can have a fat nerd or zit-faced 18-year-old suck out against me to a beach scene back-drop before i look for something else to do. have a staker but the casinos are so damn far away and the weather is shit. don't know how i'm gonna pay rent. don't care. don't feel like writing poetry right now. almost never feel like reading it. the magazines are filled with guys named raymond. poets are obsessed with changing the world with introspective bullshit. everyone's trying to keep their bank account from being overdrawn. verse about your feelings on water with a french symbolist quote in the beginning just isn't gonna do it guys. sorry. one of the main problems with poetry is the reliance on metaphor. just say it assholes. most poets just fart out a metaphor here and a metaphor there. it should be used sparingly. it's like meeting someone for the first time. they start telling you a story. a good story's a good story. it'll engross you as is. if it's some guy throwing metaphors at you you're just gonna mace him in the face and be on your merry way. it happens every day in new york, london, chicago. he falls to the ground. he rubs his eyes. his conclusion: "they didn't get it." sorry. that's a metaphor.

My Roommate/My Muse

There’s something beautiful and mysterious
about the whole thing

when you leave your period stains
on the toilet seat

or try to convince me
why I need to pay most of the gas bill

there’s a poem in there
somewhere

when you leave rice
on the floor for three weeks

or I come home
to the sound of Pink Floyd
and fat people sex

there’s something beautiful and mysterious
about the whole thing

When you tell my friends to get out
even though the lease
is in both of our names

or leave crusted rice
all over my good scotch glass

or drink my tonic water

or drink my beer

or accuse me
of going through your things
when I ask for a piece of dental floss

there’s a beautiful and mysterious poem in there somewhere

like Walt Whitman

or John Donne

or the mysterious haiku poets
of ancient Japan

that inscribed their poems on mountain tops

and were inspired by the clouds

there’s a poem in there somewhere

just for you

when I find your hair
in the bathtub drain

or the sink

or the couch

or my clothes

or you show me
those beautiful drawings you do

which consist of zigzags
and squiggly lines
and crumpled up pieces of toilet paper

I want to go to the mountaintops

and shout your name

like the ancient haiku poets
of Japan

I want to shout a beautiful and mysterious poem

that I just haven’t found yet

just for you

my roommate

my muse

© 2008 Lee Kitzis

How to Write a Poem

When the homeless become dull

and spirituality becomes an asshole that owes you money

When “The Antiques Roadshow” becomes the highlight of your day

and you’ve forgotten the touch of a woman

When you realize every poet and writer that came before you was a moron that failed

and “Everybody Loves Raymond” just isn’t that funny

When the bar becomes a bar

and the weight of the world is no longer your concern

When your gut’s getting bigger

and the president is still an idiot

When you have no money in your bank account

and the Spanish girls don’t notice you crying in the grocery aisle

When you’re more concerned about the gnomish 44-year-old virgin
drinking Riesling alone in his mother’s kitchen
than starving children in Africa

and 5-man pitching rotations are more important than God
because “God” is just something made up by poets to get laid
and “poets” is just something made up by God to fill hell

When you think you will never find love

and when love finds you it gets knocked up by a Lutheran from Kansas City

write it down

and make it sound pretty

© 2008 Lee Kitzis

Constipated in Gobles, Michigan

I was constipated for more than a week
and I figured if anything was going to cure it
it would be Gobles, Michigan

so I took the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry to my parents’ country washroom

and read pretentious beats
dull surrealists
and whiney NY punks

hoping that would get my bowels going

still nothing

so I looked out the window
at the flowers
and the dragonflies
and the trees
and tried
some sort of know-nothing
Zen will
on the Hot Pocket
from last Sunday

just farts and “outlaw” poetry

finally giving up and accepting my fate

to be one of many poets to have died filled with his own shit

I dog-eared Corso

and called it a day

© 2008 Lee Kitzis

In Defense of Bob Howry

Bob Howry got roughed up again last night

4 earned runs
no outs

and they booed him mercilessly

they cracked their peanuts and drank their beer
and booed him

and he hung his head and took that long walk to the dugout

that cliché 5.50 e.r.a. in mid-September walk to the dugout
that’s better than all the poets’ faux-empathy for the dead in East-Timor

I didn’t boo

Bob Howry is a placement pitcher

he has one good pitch
a fastball

when he’s on
he’s painting the corners at 95

when he’s off
it’s 91 over the middle

Bob Howry knew this

and 4 people out of 38,000 knew this

and they didn’t boo

I call these people poets

and the other 37,996 are just people that write

that’s baseball

that’s poetry

I prefer Bob Howry

© 2008 Lee Kitzis