Pretty Colors (Smile Your Brians Out)

andrew broder:

dear god please give me the strength

to just totally fuck my brains out

said the amateur icon to the telephone totem pole

and if you squint your eyes just right

you can see the shark fin protrude from all the globes

bobbing up and down in the black sea

and if you sit in one spot and blow and blow and blow

you can blow the walls of your own house down

while massaging with your ring finger

the gun barrel size space behind your chin bone

and so let's have a pizza party with refreshments

and celebrate the capability

of building and fixing and building and fixing

and you and the shirt you tucked in on

but all the veins in between the words

of the flying trapeze instruction manual

require top of volcano vision to scratch and sniff

daydream of panic-seeking missiles

to pinball ricochet inside the dog smile your brains out.

why?:

i keep expecting my grandfather any day now.

peppered eggs: hard white, runny yellow.

creepy wide-eyed youngsters looping

four notes from some tv jingle

the entire afternoon.

the innocence in children's laughter

can be confused with a touch of evil.

at what age can a child detect deception

in a jack-o-lantern's smile

(and its relationship to autumn and the death

of things all in the wild)-

like the anticipation in the face of someone

whose just poisoned your wine,

saying "drink, drink" with their eyes

and making toasts to you.

when do children learn to expect

death when the leaves turn pretty colors?