Brian Celio Poetry Extravaganza

I met Brian Celio on Facebook and was intrigued by his religious affiliations. He calls it 'christian anarchist.' Cool, who doesn't love Jesus? And religion is not for me... So now he's my friend. JK - that had nothing to do with it. I do love supporting other artists. His links are at the bottom if you'd like to check them out. He has a forthcoming book called Catapult Soul. I wish he had recorded this, it seems like it would translate well into a performance piece.



An anti-ode to bukowski, GINSBERG, AND the smoking jogger


If you don’t have a sense of humor
And always take yourself so seriously—
If you don’t have a sense of common
And always act so annoyingly—
I seriously don’t wanna know you
So stay the fuck away from me.
Now don’t take this as broached elitism
Or fundamentalism for the pretty witty;
It’s just that you abnegated your raison d’être,
And yet you raise on raisin’ on?!
How about I lay your ass down, or out,
Then piss right in your mouth,
Mmhmm,
Vigorously imbibing one of my humors—
Wait, nobody’s sense of humor is that phenolphthaleinic
Nor did anybody get the pedantic puns.
It’s cool; I’ll just piss on everybody’s anti-bush
Since every jocular jungle needs a briney brook:
Helps flowers shackle with better scents.
(Take a big wiff…) Ahhhhh!
New life! new direction! new promise!—
Renewed unconsciousness!—
For the glib-lipped slaves of today!
Plus it would be so much fun to piss on you
Since I hate anybody who doesn’t like to be pissed on—
And seriously loathe girls who completely shave.

Why do some people assume I like Bukowski?
I’m not gonna beat around the bush:
The dude was such a popping penile pseudo,
A wordy wordy waste of wisdom.
Can you taste the synthetic dissidence?
Some swallow it whole
And stomach it with a grand smile,
This brand of dissidence so easy to partake in,
Hence why so many punks and pukes like him.
It’s sad how musical lifestylers have lost their way,
Not to exclude the sorrow
Buried beneath the more-traveled path,
(The plush green one),
Taken by today’s literary writers and poets.
I think they think they’re thinking.
But they’re only sitting and shitting
On all the shit they supposedly shun.
Jeez, I fucking hate people who write poetry like this
And tout it as “creative!” “modern!” and worst of all, “profound!”

(Dear Dead Ginsberg,
Whenever you dressed like a bombed skit,
Smelling like putrid shit,
Jotting down your anti-establishment sentiment
In the manner of an anti-literate delegate,
Did you ever expect non-hippies to buy into it?)
Really, any half-wit could execute this shit.
Perhaps not as ingeniously as I.
I mean, what the fuck has poetry come to?
A lazy reflection of what we have become aggregately?—
For sure, R.I.P. I.A.G.

(Wow! I just BEAT the shit outta my motherfucking mirrors!)
[Sounded like the motherfucking bombs of motherfucking Vietnam!]
{Thunks fur muking me buk my mutherfucking mirrurs, Charlie!}

Oh Buk, why words so gruesome and gaudy
Like the acne vulgaris on your face and back?
Did your father ever knock one of those things off?
I kinda wish my father woulda beat me more
But he died, then my new father only had time
To rap me on the holidays.
Still I never let disfigurements or abandonment
Twist my words into a stark reality of shit
For though a few will relate and be soothed
It will fail to become eternal—
And that’s kinda what I’m shooting for.
But in light of what you had to work with,
I suppose you made it profoundly blunt and cool.
Hey, not to digress
But I’m guessing you made friends up in San Fran?
Well if I ever get unlucky and find myself there
I’m gonna wrap my dick up in a burqa—
To keep their sexual thoughts repressed—
Then drown ‘em all in a sea of piss.
Then steal their stupid drugs
Sell ‘em to brain-dead merchants in Holland,
Then use the money to buy high-quality books
For Californians who want to read high-quality books for free.
Hey, ya know what? Know what I say? I say:
Death to infidel ravers! and death to infidel hippies!
Yesss! Dead is Ginsberg and yesss! dead is Bukowski!
So hang the blessed DJ for my MOZ!
And give the airwaves back to Eternal Joey!
Now that’s what I call anti-establishment, G.G.!

Anyway, I saw this guy jogging downtown today.
(Note: this is where I prove how random and obscure I can be
But with the ability to draw back to a point alluded to earlier.)
Anyway, anyway—
(Haha, motherfuckin’ Holden C, my young O.G.!)—
Anyway, anyway,
This jogger was wearing a one-piece spandex suit
As black as an Iranian bomb, whatever the fuck that means.
He was very old, very tall, and grotesquely skinny
With a transparent water bottle in one hand
And a lit cigarette in the other,
Skiing both arms like a man in need of his crazy pills,
Charging forward like a frontline soldier gone mad,
Leaving a plume of smoke in his dust.
For the fifteen seconds he was in my vision
I didn’t see the half-wit take one fucking hit!
But I’m sure he was making a statement
As profound, clever, and indicative
As Bukowski and Ginsberg—
And of course me.


Brian Celio, © 2009


Through Rich Ness and Wealth

At home you feel like a tourist:
Food, clothes, furniture swaddled in numeric bars,
Which become everyone's lucky lottery picks,
Food, clothes, furniture packaged in polished surnames,
Who happen to be everyone's distant cousins.
Tonight at seven there will be a worldwide draw:
Take your millionth of a penny and go reinvest it.
This summer come to The Family's scattered ball:
Bring a side dish then go eat it by yourself.
Oh, in your home you feel like a tourist:
Objets d'art could be your wife's sullen smile,
Or your children's silly inquisitions,
But nothing else here, nothing that's tangible,
Or sellable on the market.
In your home everything's for rent:
Six months and everything will be junk.
Like walls made of TV guides full of cancelled programs,
There will be nothing worth seeing,
Yet the cost for everything was everything,
Oh, that disconnected drudgery.
Wait, you poor fool—get up—no, listen up:
There won't even be a sentimental smudge on your lapis lazuli vase!
For whose hands fashioned the glass, from the bottom up to the tip?
Not yours, nor your wife's, nor your children's,
Oh, that absent-minded alienation.
Oh, what brutal-hearted damnation.
Rich Ness: that's what they call you, and the million others just like you.
Rich Ness: that's what they call it when you're a tourist in your own home.


Brian Celio, © 2009



DISSIDENCE


They grabbed my hand—slammed it down—fashioning my name…
…At last my vote had been cast twice on behalf of the polar cause.
I screamed, "That's fine!—go ahead!—yes! it's all the same!
For I can see in the Heart of the Beast remain the Holders' laws!"

They grabbed my arms—snatch me up—leading me away…
…Dragging me to a cell where an old man sat with his head hung low.
I said, "Tell me—my sad friend—how long must you stay?"
And he replied, "Until death arrives, for I'll never sell my soul."

They walked away—hit the lights—leaving for the day…
…To shirk the prison air I wallowed on the ground, burning with fear.
He said, "Tell me—my sad friend—why you act that way,
When you should be thankful since you have become much freer in here."

He grabbed my hand—held it tight—showing me the way…
…Gradually the light spread across the ground…then outward…then aloft.
I screamed, "I see!—(up above?)—yes! we're all the same!"
And he replied, "Welcome to Dissidence where souls are never lost."

Brian Celio, © 2009

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