R/B Mertz - Two Poems

The Life

At the reading Travis said, “We’ve got to ban together
against the Non-Fiction people. They hate us. They’re always watching us,
writing everything down in their little notebooks.”

Poets are fucked up because they want to publish
their dirtiest little secrets in such fucked up

Language that you have to fuck a poem with
your brain before you have any idea what’s happening.

In the email, Dawn said, “You can’t steal Conrad’s essence.”
And I said, “UUUUUUUUM
i can do whatever I want
WITH LANGUAGE”

And I could tell that either irritated the shit out of her
or was one of those things that I say that relieves her of thinking
that I’m an idiot.

But seriously, I found a Form where we can be gay married
and smoke pot and be rich and famous if we want
And nobody gives a shit.

Seriously.





Ballad of the Poors

Someday (again) (soon) (I hope) the POORS
will delete our invisible shackles.

The POORS will stop filling our mouths
with cocks and peppermints and high fructose

corn syrup, and our brain cells will be light
again, like hummingbirds.

Someday the POORS, the ninety-nine percent, someday
we’ll all make breakfast for each other on a

Tuesday afternoon. The Christian POORS will love
the Gay POORS and all the colors of POORS

Will make Dyonisian love with each other until
there is no more whiteness anywhere but

Olive oil or Sandpaper or whatever and whatever
until color is just another adjective we barely

Even use. Someday the POORS will realize
that coffee tastes better to us, and toilet paper

Feels better to us, and movies are more
magical to us, and fucking feels ten times better

When you’re hungry and exhausted and afraid
of who might come in. Someday when Jesus is back

The Christians will all repent and be saved
and the Angels will spread their rainbow wings

Over even the most shameful Republican tapping
his foot in the dirtiest public restroom stall.

Someday when the POORS stop believing in money
they’ll recognize Jesus again in the language

itself/in the language of their children instead
of the language of their Oppressor.

Someday when the POORS stop believing in money
they’ll recognize again the voices of the Prophets

In spite of the hate-speech of the slack-jawed monkey
puppets sleeping the skyscrapers and sleeping in the cubicles!

Someday each POOR will reach out her fingers
and lead the Oppressors by their ties into the barbeque-

scented dusk of anti-ownership, and we’ll all get high
along the pure brown sandy beaches of Vieques
and Pittsburgh and everywhere and wherever.



Little is known about R/B Mertz.