Jacob Jacques Martin

They Suck Live

The band, named Intercourse With Miners just for tonight
with pinwheel bass drum and half-sprocket amps in tow,
persecuted for the fragrance of straightedge punk:
all piss and foghorns,
saw fit to start the second set of the show.

The monotonous growth of my ovoid tumor, lukewarm and pulsating,
ordained me to extol penicillin and greenhouse gases to the frightened onlookers.
Accoutred in Doc Martens and thunder, I held a spent match
to the stereophonic tinder of Wal-Mart profiteering,

The band started to slur tone-deaf epitaphs and epithets,
riffling through a thick list of Merriam-Webster's erections.
My ear bled thick quartz orbs of obliquity
as if glowworms trundled down my wrinkles with laughter.
The band hissed a machinist gale and fumbled through a phenomenon
left hush in solitude that simmered in the back of my basket.

The lead-mourner's push-up antlers sagged atop his gilded crown
as the thorned mallet came down via the courtisane in front
furtively praying the energy could secrete his leukemia
wedged in the plugged quagmire of a storage shed he uses for lyrics.

A beggar in back thrashed out, scoffing

"The joint-overdose encounters of
you middle-class dreck will come back
and bite us in the black's economy!"

That malignant lump with his cockatiel hair choked back an idol of molten bread
and squawked out for pity
when a PVC scalper, all sleek and fascist,
let amiably settle his wadded fist quick to the pauper's nuggets.

The band clapped out a chord that paused the rustling
of the scenester foliage, shedding in the background.
The Godhead, in wisdom and mercy and jealousy, snapped asteroidal belt,
buckling under dimensions stemming back to ancient core.
Dwarf stars like gemstones ignited into second Genesis;
the substrate of their work formed loamy residue below my hair
and caramelized my viscera with ladybugs fluttering
just as the cops busted in.

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