THE FIFTH GOSPEL

I believe in lying in bed with my boots on.
I believe in airplanes and turbulence and
Hornets nests and neurotic old women,

I believe in making to-do lists
And then
Not
Doing anything on
The list

Or:
If I really want to feel productive
I make a list
filled with things
That I have already done.

Example of a to-do list
by Justin Grimbol:
Sleep in
Wake up
Jerk off
Fight with woman
Eat breakfast
Check email
Take piss
Write poem

I like poems.
They’re short.

most poetry isn’t very good though—
you got guys like Ginsberg talking about
how holy their assholes are.

I like ass. I love ass.
I got
A cramp
in my neck
from staring at
So
Much
Ass.
But
That
Doesn’t mean
There needs to be something holy about it
Ass is good enough as it is.

Sure
Some are better than others.
Some

Are impossible to not get a little religious about.
Some stay in your heart
Like a stun gun
Like a blizzard
Only it’s warm
It’s the inventor, the mad scientist
of all warm things.

I believe in warm things
I believe in sweating
I believe
That people only smell good when they smell bad,
I believe in lukewarm pizza

I always believe it’s going to be a warm winter
Until the first snow fall,
Then I hide in my room
Terrified.
I put my hands under my woman’s breasts and pretend they’re mittens.
the weather channel says we should be expecting 16 inches of snow.
It’s going to be a long winter.

When I was a kid
I felt warm in the snow.
Hell,
I felt a lot of thing back then
That I don’t feel now.
When I was a kid
I actually believed that if you beat a video game
That you’d be rewarded with money
That it would come pouring out of the Nintendo
like it was a slot machine.
Why else would they make the games so difficult?
Why would people play these ridiculous games
Unless there was some kind of reward at the end?

I believe in that kind of passion
I believe in how your thumbs hurt
when you played Nintendo for too long.
This poem was written with those same thumbs
I believe in thumbs and chaffed legs
And stretch marks and pregnancy scares
And running out of gas
And all the scratch off tickets that are buried
Under the front seat of my car.
I believe in all those things that make you ask
Was it worth it? And then you shrug your shoulders
Because even if it’s not worth anything
You’re going to keep at it anyway.
You just can’t help yourself.

Justin Grimbol, lives in astoria oregon. His novel DRINKING UNTIL MORNING, will be coming out this summer, via BLACK COFFEE PRESS. Check out his poems at jgrimbol.xanga.com

all the saints and philosophers

 

all the saints and philosophers
are no wiser
then the
willy caterpillar
my daughter brings to me
in
her gentle hands

Scott C. Rogers, American poet, writer and publisher. His current novel Love Like a Molotov Cocktail to the Chest can be found worldwide. www.blackcoffeepress.net

The Light the Dead See

There are many people who come back

After the doctor has smoothed the sheet

Around their body

And left the room to make his call.

They die but they live.

They are called the dead who lived through their deaths,

And among my people

They are considered wise and honest.

They float out of their bodies

And light on the ceiling like a moth,

Watching the efforts of everyone around them.

The voices and the images of the living

Fade away.

A roar sucks them under

The wheels of a darkness without pain.

Off in the distance

There is someone

Like a signalman swinging a lantern.

The light grows, a white flower.

It becomes very intense, like music.

They see the faces of those they loved,

The truly dead who speak kindly.

They see their father sitting in a field.

The harvest is over and his cane chair is mended.

There is a towel around his neck,

The odor of bay rum.

Then they see their mother

Standing behind him with a pair of shears.

The wind is blowing.

She is cutting his hair.

The dead have told these stories

To the living.

Frank Stanford, “The Light the Dead See” from The Light the Dead See: Selected Poems of Frank Stanford. Copyright © 1991 by Frank Stanford.