Everything Must Lapse (A Celebration)
Dwelling in this cat litter clump
I’ve gotten to know the internet
with all its guilt
while a friend texts a photo
of a formal invitation
to a one (1) y/o’s birthday party.
That’s right, fuckers!
Baby Mike’s busting up into Florida!
Drinks all round!
RSVP by noon the day you get this!
Baby Mike’s starting real early this lifetime,
as we all should.
My illness tells me
this world’s collapsing.
Our overlords claim there’s no $$$
for clean air, clean oceans,
transportation
or healthcare.
There’s no $$$
to salvage what little’s left
of what could easily drown.
How could there be?
Larry Ellison needs more islands!
The insults are coming from within.
A throughline dissolves on the tongue.
Inner Child Hypnotherapy T-Bone
I told my parents the movie was hilarious if one could laugh at suicide jokes.
It was a dumb way of saying what I meant but also correct.
Truth is, I weep every time the fake bullets make their fake contact.
Only Dr. Annie can do the math on how many colors are in the flecks of my downfall.
Every goal on my refrigerator has multiple deadlines crossed out.
As a panicked boy I was super into any story involving hell.
My mom’s stepdad asked I couldn’t just like regular comic books –
ones without any pedo clowns or satanic cults.
I couldn’t answer him with the language available at the time, so I wailed inside Waldenbooks.
He felt baseball was the only route to a pension & all thing righteous.
I drew dicks & tits in the outfield dirt, mandalas of perversion,
until an adult got wind of my perfidy.
He only wanted me to love the same America whose rivers were poisoning us –
an expectation so farfetched I dissolved.
I just wanted to feel justified in my quivering.
I guess I was fortifying my brain against the threats being made by a 2000 y/o wicked institution.
I guess this drain sings my invite daily.
Joseph Goosey lives in North Carolina. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Peach Mag, Annulet Poetics Journal, The Glacier, and Banshee. He is the author of a chapbook, STUPID ACHE (Greybook Press) and one full length collection, Parade Of Malfeasance (EMP Books).
