paranoid poems for times of turmoil, by paul murufas
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Paranoid Poems
for Times of Turmoil Paul Murufas be about it press, 2015
season of the monthslong meltdown (part 1) Two lovers entwined pass me by and heaven knows I’m miserable now The Smiths in the beginning i was the romantic one now i have a different problem and would be better off sleeping in a tent. please turn on the fan: i want to hear a white noise for the rest of my time here on earth. the sun surprised me from the East you know how the weather is with its military maneuvers from one side of life to the other. I’m going to live at the laundromat, where nobody tries to talk to me. first i was in my feelings then someone gave me the novocaine and i hardly could feel the procedure his craigslist post said bachelor pad but i didn’t know i would
have to pay a deposit. i’ve got a bed in the living room, Hadi’s speaking Farsi in the kitchen. sometimes i’m hit with a crippling wave of emotion & it takes me a minute to come back in to my senses. now I’m alone on the balcony, and I think I can see the bridge off in the distance. i drove the 5 to Los Angeles and i played your CD on a repeat till the pain hit me
a better use of my talents once i was a lover of poetry, and the cinema, but now i think a better use of my talent would be slamming my head against the wall. we should watch the news: you'll say "I just can't believe it!" and I will measure the painkillers. now I am buying a parrot to chew through the walls of this edible cage and flap around my head while the ceiling fan gives me a haircut. but wait– you are leaving, headed out the door, and the parrot squawking no such thing as a free refill there's no such thing as a free refill there’s no such thing
paranoid poem for times of turmoil “My childhood was happy. It had nothing to do with the way I turned out later.” Roberto Bolaño in the quarantine, i can nurse a dying dream my tunnel vision, my science fiction and noir now everything’s falling to pieces i am looking for the winning scratcher stuffed into a trashbag of hopes and failures you were the one who told me that god was like the lottery and would give me a second chance. i was resigned to drowning in the disaster my horoscope said “run while you still can.” then we ran out of coffee, the neighbors were watering their lawns and putting out a fire on the sidewalk. the next day things were totally back to normal, everyone was taking their pills on schedule and we did laps around the bed and then slept again a writer once told me to dive into my craft, with no swimming lessons and without an inflatable vest next i was being waterboarded by the muse in Guantanamo bay, renovated as a space station
to save Earth’s reputation i died and came back to life as our rocket left the earth, and saw the angels but still woke up as an atheist now i can sustain momentum long enough to scream in space and disintegrate in a dust on the thruster engines she said love was like an oil spill, we would all be sorry afterwards but they’d never turn the drills off that was the last thing i remember, before the memories i ruthlessly suppressed. i picked you flowers in heaven– you were an angel and i was bucket of water. then we were washing the walls off, graffiti marks and oil paint running down a rag first i was writing a novel, then it turned into the vietnam memorial and nobody cared or could tell the difference i am joining a conspiracy of fish to smash the windows out at Aquarium of the Pacific
don’t let them see you flop I want to believe we can find a way out to the ocean now the informants are jockeying for position, pushing and shoving for a handler in the highest places they’ll throw us all in a mass grave and someone will pay a robot to kick the dirt in. i am melting like a gram of heroin someone is sucking me up a straw on the strength of a death wish soon we’ll be closing in on it, and live with the risk like a bank robber out the door. i’ve overcharged the batteries– someone clean the acid from my metal disc a spider’s web is spun & spun & spun & spun again when the fly breaks bad
for the long haul a poem could explode at the end they’ve left me here with the matches and no plan B underground, in the bunker, digging out a tunnel to the planet’s core
poem from the future for an imaginary friend and on that terrible day you said something funny which stuck with me: "we'll go the way of credit cards soon– all they'll care about is the numbers on the side of us." and i think you're right, and it's better if we all died in a fire which would be more of a justice than anything recorded for a court stenographer, courtly bailiffs, & the postmetal detector audience at the courtside which is all besides the point if your more immediate struggle is flying too close to the sun or running out of oxygen in an under water cave. my voice is too loud, and even a poem can be too political, and get ruined– but on the other hand, you could ruin a poem on purpose, and be famous for ruining everything– which would make more sense than alarm clocks, or the total cost of a root canal. numbers, numbers! in the future i will drive around a chariot of dinosaurs– "my other car is the extinction of all life on earth" and no one will laugh, because they'll know to keep their mouths closed in a dust bowl
season of the monthslong meltdown: part 2 (interlude of the unhinged poet) starting a poem is easy but it’s finishing one that can leave you a paraplegic. & no i’m not finished hallucinating you can fuck yourself if you wanted some milk with your cookies. but I’ve just put a fish in the oven & if you stick around, I’ll make a special koolaid for the party. the stars surprised me in the West you know how the planets are with their military maneuvers from the equinox to the drunken end of the solstice.
hello heatwave now i’ve achieved the real meaning of summer break & slummed it at the jacuzzi of this godforsaken apartment complex. why even shower off the chlorine if i want to burn on the edges Eduardo likes to pour his wine in a shot glass its 10am here, but it’s got to be 5:00 somewhere on the other end of the heat wave it’ll soak out slow from the threads of his cotton Tshirt. now the bank is texting to say that I’ve changed addresses & they don’t know the half of it i went back down to the hot tub, & waited for an earthquake to turn the pool over.
season of the monthslong meltdown: part 3 (the ouija board speaks) Why pamper life’s complexities When the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat? The Smiths please turn on the fan: I want to drown out the noise of this venomous ouija board. i started with “hello?” and it said Everyone must live with their own demons. & i said, “what is it you want?!” and it said One way or another you’ll get yours. and i said, “back to where you came from!” & it said I was here in the beginning. & spelled out the letters I WAS HERE IN THE BEGINN & i said “stop, stop! the power of christ compels you!”
(though it didn’t stop at all, but selected letters more rapidly, as if finally gaining steam in the face of my acute psychosis) & it said One way or another I’ll get mine. &: Give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day. Give me a fish and I’ll do anything you want, I’ll come out of this ouija board and we can fuck until three in the morning. then the board went silent and came back: You don’t know me, and you don’t trust me, but you’re curious. You should be more careful. you should get some sleep. Staying up all night with me will get you into trouble. (and i had been pretending to sleep, but really i was watching through a blanket, hanging on every word & bracing for Diablo to incinerate me) & it said, Hey. You. Hey. Let me out of here. &: Believe me, I can wait. I’ve always been good at waiting.
&: Less than I want is more than enough. &: When you are dead and gone I will melt the stars together to recombine the scattered fragments of your soul. Then the board paused its movement but came back at furious speed: I’m going to need a DNA sample. suddenly, i was abducted through a wormhole to the demon’s evil lair of ouija board transcriptionists and call center technicians. somebody’s headset beeped in a cubicle: “Demonic Solutions, This is Fry.” The grimreaper, who was presently making coffee, brought me up to speed: “Most people turn into goop after travelin’ thru the wormhole. We just give ‘em a headset & call ‘em Fry.” then we toured the call center which was more like a hospital of puddles hooked up to car batteries with a jumper cable. “Why the long face kid, you never seena Karaoke software ona human puddle? Don’t look at me I’m strictly at the bottom of middle management!”
and I said, “Geez, wasn’t this my breakup poem?” & he said, “Maybe if you shut the fuck up you can learn something.”
& we resumed our hellish walkthrough at a ghostly clip.
season of the monthslong meltdown part 4 (in which i narrowly escape from the Demonic Solutions Call Center) the skeleton guy with the cloak toured me all around, and distracted me with hilarious stories, but I was increasingly troubled by a fear of getting lost in Hell before I could finish my breakup poem. “so this Fry knocks on my door, and he says, Gee, Boss, I sure could use this Sunday off. & I says, hold on, hold on, hold on a minute here. If yer out Sunday, who’s gonna charge the phone? & ya think I’m gonna have my phone off over the weekend? Wit fantasy league next week, & me & Pedro havin’t even looked over the draft picks yet? This Fry was stunned. I mean, ya’d think the guy was starting a union or something, Ya could still see his spine in the puddle. It was touching, really. Anyway, here’s the prison wing” hearing “prison” snapped me out of my reverie & it dawned on me all at once that I was in grave danger. Skeletonhead pulled a hat out of his cloak and tucked it over his ridged forehead, DEMONIC CORRECTIONS stencilled across the front in yellow paint. “Shoulda told ya kid, I got a night job. Ya know what they say about sleep’s cousin.” then he shut the cell door in my face & chewed the keys into a fine meal in his gumless teeth. “if you need anything, just talk to the ouija.” he said, & his mandibles retreated from my meal slot.
it was then, in the corner of my cell, that i saw the board and its terrifying cursor, already jumping from letter to letter in excitement, & it said, You’ve got the rest of your life to write poems, but I’m only in town for the weekend. Don’t you want some more attention? You could be here forever, but to me it would make no difference. & i said “anywhere but here” & it said, this way, this way, follow me I touched the word “YES” upon its oaken surface & the letters glowed on the infra spectrum then a rift onto the cosmos erupted through the room & we were funneled through a wormhole back to earth.
season of the monthslong meltdown part 5 (a second helping of paranoia) don’t you judge me with your green, green eyes we could have made it work on a desert island. time for hallucinogens i want to be dazzled in the low lights of your intimacy again. please rewind the tape there’s something i missed when we went for the hollywood closeup. the way i feel is not how i want to feel, if i stretch both ways i could snap in a line down the middle. a second helping of paranoia when i overheat in this nonconventional
oven i feel guilty when i see your face: would you unlock the door to the room of these allegations. i was never good at math or the formula that could stabilize a concoction. now the world is ending fast even faster than this cigarette could kill me. turn the firewall off: we’re bound to have a security flaw exploited. ...overcharged, like a credit card crazy as crazy gets on my own again
Dedication For Preeti Kaur
Acknowledgements A big thank you to everyone who encouraged my writing over the past year, especially Doug Brown, Laura “laurita” Burns, Javier SethnessCastro, Arvind Dilawar, and James “Cosmo”. Thanks to be about it press for reading my poems and the rest of it.
Notes on the Artwork Stocks Fall on Investor Fears 2015. Collage/mixed media on canvas. By Paul Murufas, made in collaboration with Avi Zahner. Time To Pull The Plug 2015. Collage/mixed media on paper. By Paul Murufas.
Contact paulmurufas@gmail.com * paulbmurufas.wordpress.com zinebeabout.it@gmail.com * beaboutitpress.tumblr.com
Paul with a seagull on the beach, 2015.
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