oral rob III (record covers, foam board, glue, acrylic paint on plywood)

pete townsend*

when you kill it

the song's egg hatches

in their hearts

(*)

when you kill it

the wolf passes you by

on the dark road

(*)

when you kill it

jesus picks you up and takes you out

for a romantic dinner

(*)

when you kill it

amy grant drops the charges

and you're free to go

(*)

*something bad will happen soon

tennessee ernie ford (mixed media collage on wood board)

where i live now

the end came

(not unexpectedly)

we'd seen it coming for years

the dark circles under her eyes

her insistence on drinking only

wine coolers

the pig veins

folding out of her eyes

babies falling down the well

of her head

bruising the gasoline into her

skin

i lived in the fanciest

part of town then

glass airplanes would fly so low

you could see everything

the endless 

bottomlessness

glass apes 

would feed on her brokenness

their crystal skin

revealing monkey bones

covered in candles

like diamond stores

your plans of leaving 

without me never materialized

these lost things

idle threats

i was trapped in the car

with everyone

the drive 

to restoration hardware

seemed endless

we made so much money 

that year

we all bought slaves

why in gods name 

is this still 

happening 

to me

please. for god's sake

make it stop

superhero (rapidograph on illustration board)

reasons for rules

1. your mom won't die when you're thirteen

2. the sky will fill with blue feathers. they will fall on your shoulders and lift you into heaven where bruce lee will speak perfect english, because it'll be thought language and you will never have to shit your pants again.

3. your white jeans (you bleached them white and now they are without hope) won't rip away at the party so that you have to walk around all night explaining what happened getting drunker and drunker and finally going home with the black girl and fucking her in your roommates bed while he's at the bar and then having him check you up against the wall the next day, screaming into your face, "did you fuck ____ in my bed?" and you lying, saying, "no, we just made out"

4. because moths, sans self-love, seek the light outside themselves and are consumed by it

5. the dead body behind your mouth will suddenly come back to life.

6. you won't remember a thing, but the little that you do remember will be awful

7. the house will finally get repainted

8.. your fingernails on the bathroom floor will be covered in blood, but at least it will be someone else's

9. the small wax statue of the bhuda will fly past your head and through the yellow light of the alley behind the baxter building

10. you won't be there lying in the bushes. the sound of ten feet running by and then stopping in the middle of the street. you won't be lying in the grass, trying not to breathe. your friend there in the darkness with you. you won't hear someone ask, "where did those motherfuckers go", or the sound of their sneakered feet dying off in the distance while you lay there for at least 20 minutes not moving and not saying a word and finally creeping back to your friends house praying to god you don't run into those sociopaths again that night but then seeing them at school and nobody saying a word and acting like the whole thing never happened.

11. your wife won't gamble away your nest egg and then refinance the house one week when you're away and then also lose that money over the course of two months. falling down into the darkness. crying and asking for your forgiveness as you realize everything is gone and there's no way you're going to get it back and you walk out and feel as free as you've felt in years.

12. the earth won't be destroyed by a meteor

13. the earth will be destroyed by a meteor but only after you escape in a gigantic space ship that is way nicer than the earth, but even lonelier

14. then everyone, lacking faith, will be banished to hell to be consumed by fire and suffer for all eternity, because in the few milliseconds that they were alive, here, without a clue, without hope, they didn't quite get it right. and it makes perfect sense that god is a judgmental psychopath with balls that smells like the ocean and tits bigger than ferris wheels

15. then the oil and fat will fall through you and out and into the bowl and float on the water like a dream. an orange dream. the orange dream of being skinny again.

16. then everything will be OK