Welcome to the multiverse
it’s on the fritz again, so we only have access
to this one particular reality right now
graveyards duke-ing it out with legitimate obsessions
Would you like to leave a message?
Tell them that their televised will be revolution
Tell them that those hours of over-sharing
on social media will be remembered by the future
like a baby’s 71st shit
Tell them that time is an abandoned Winnebago
and that in the end it’s always over
because the wind eats
its own kite
Does anybody want some fruit?!
I think there’s still hummus
in the radiator
Flush my insides out again
No matter how much I’d like to say
I’d watched the original Planet of the Apes
in the theater during its initial run
that’s never gonna happen
because I wasn’t born yet
Blame the abandoned Winebego, Helen
because I don’t blame you
Note to self:
buy more cinnamon candles
I mean, a lot more
stock up on those fuckers
like you stock up on anti-heartbreak serum
and Moleskin notebooks
stock up on them
like Adam, clumsily mispronouncing
Eves name after the first time they
had garden sex
Remember the garden sex, Helen
Of course you do,
damn it,
We never had a garden
Love is a rusted bear trap
This is worth the damage
I’m back
I’ve recently decided to claw my way back
out of the bunker
and give it all another go
Carl Kolchak is my co-pilot
Leonid Andreyev has been placed in charge
of emergency landings
I fight for the preservation of love
on top of a world where
Anagrams betray their own alphabet
Clowns are like hemorrhoids
nobody writes love songs
about them
Hey, Does anybody out there remember
that one Bionic Woman episode
where she saved everything before it was over
but before that she taught 6th grade
and allowed one of her students
to bring an un-caged lion to class with her
for show and tell?
I love you , Jaime Summers!
But that was inappropriate!
Hot sauce!
Pickles!
Mustard!
And salad dressing!
What the fucks hanging out
alongside your refrigerator doors?!
I had a crush
one time
on a pair of goulashes
even though I didn’t know
how to correctly spell
the name of that thing
I had the crush on
I loved them, regardless, etc.
Do we have to go into all of this again?
Everything ends
Everything promises absolutely nothing
besides oblivion and the loneliness that takes
place in the middle, and curtains
Are you my curtains, Helen?
Are you my curtains?!
I mean, all these years in and I still
have no idea how to move on
Not because you’re unmovable
It’s just that
I’m really bad at this
I miss those fun times
and I want to have fun times again
It’s the again, that drives things
to madness
When you know what you’ve lost
while recognizing the fact
that you’ve got all the years after that
to naw on it
My bones hurt from
William Hurt-ism
(insert favorite quote from The Village here)
“The boy is unaware?!”
Google some Gogel, mother fuckers
The Overcoat short story
is something helpful
for you to read
when it hurts
Last night Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’ just came on
my jukebox tv stereo
and I usually fast forward through it, but this time
like a time traveler suddenly realizing
their super power
I was all
Leave it on, fuckers
Leave it on
because time is a shitfaced Winnebago
Why does it have to be so hurtful
Good question, Helen
Why you gotta be so hurtful?!
You Gilligan’d all over our island
way out in the ocean
substantially
Where the Love Boat became our new
Titanic
and Us Magazine decried
“Tell us, America! Where’s the justice in that?!”
Did you perchance
get my colander?
Would you like to hang out?
The exclamation point is implied
You know what else is implied?
Our mutual love of cinema
I haven’t packed the bowl
in what a salamander would consider months
Note to self: pack the bowl
and also figure out how
salamanders measure time these days
Nirvana’s libido
wore a speedo
while eating Cheetos
and the sound…
Bright semen
so much smarter than
the dick that it came from
Whatever happened to hacky sacks?
Whatever happened to not being alone?
We are nothing but, alone
ground beef
vs sky beef
sky beef almost always wins
I went to the corner Gasamat this morning
and witnessed
The death of the payphone
all over again
I have a complete collection of 44 1976 Bionic Woman
trading cards now
They’re great
“Jaime hears enemy on the mountain above her”
Enemy stops doing enemy stuff long enough
to utter, shit, do you think she can hear us?
Before returning to their enemy stuff
without even waiting
to hear the response
There’s a skull on our desk
and a cinder block wall behind that
so tell me, honestly
how far are we going to get?
“Jaime controls runaway elephant”
Which is a helpful skill to have
because just the other day
all of my elephants
ran away from me
I screamed
and I cried
and I tried coaxing them back
but my elephants
just stood there
staring at me from the far tree line
refusing to wave back
“Jaime drives a nail with her hand”
The nail penetrating
all outer bits that have
been turned to wood
The future of humanity
dissolving into a history
of fence posts and wet blood
Where’s your Michael Jackson now?!
You fifthly swingers, you
Where’s your Michael Jackson now?!
I drove a nail through a fence post once
with my hand
Where’s my 1976 trading card at?!
I once drove a nail through a fencepost with my hand
only it wasn’t a nail
it was everything that I’ve ever loved about you
and it wasn’t a fence post
it was how you never think about me
and it wasn’t my hand
(it was my soul)
“Jaime at the controls of a locomotive”
Reminds me of how you used to drive my train
into that deep tunnel
until even my caboose whistled
Remember the airplanes, Helen?!
Remember how they circled the top
of the Empire State Building
in the 1930’s?
on a Trump-like mission to eliminate
love from this world
in and attempt to bring down Kong
“Jaime attacks airborne enemy”
Gweneth, stop!
If only The Bionic Woman were
alive in 1933 and by chance happened to be in
New York City at the time
maybe then she could have prevented
a Trump presidency
maybe she could’ve saved Kong
maybe she could’ve saved us all
Everyone raise their hand, if they like
salted caramel cheese cake
Really?
I’ve never tried it
Maybe I should pick some up
from the store
“Jaime is a teacher when she’s not solving crime”
It’s true
The Bionic Woman teaches 6th grade
where she bashfully flaunts her ability
to write out lesson plans incredibly fast
on the blackboard
because she’s almost always late for class
It’s great
“Jaime ponders her next move”
Maybe the saddest card, really
because every move pondered
is another move away from me and you
because your love for me had to switch genres
from non-fiction to fiction
A fiction I keep alive most nights
while I’m hallucinating big fat spiders
staring down upon everything
from the corner of the bedroom wall
Causing me to leap out of bed, limbs flailing
even though I know: It’s fiction
I love fiction
Who doesn’t love fiction?!
Fiction gave us Cagney and Lacey!
Fiction gave us Dark Shadows and Winnie the Pooh!
Fiction gave us a viable outlet
in which to better understand and survive all this goddamn
non-fiction!
Jaime breaks Six Million Dollars worth of heart because she has amnesia
Jaime breaks his heart with her bionic forgetting that she ever loved him
Jaime forgets where she put the snow shovel, again
Jaime punches a villain at the local diner and gets French fries in her hair
Jaime refutes the rumor that she’s crying
and insists David Lee Roth
made the whole thing up
in his head
Jaime uses her bionic hearing to boycott Van Halen
and listen to her favorite punk band instead
Jaime attends a sad funeral for Oscar’s pants
Jaime knows how to roller skate effectively
and can sing karaoke like a champ!
Jaime walks out of a bar with me
after successfully ordering
spinach dip to go
Jaime used her bionic arm during intercourse
Jaime smiles before tossing a shovenistic
jewel thief into a display case while humming
that one song about tiny hands by Jewel
Jaime kills all the plants because she left me
and I have no idea how to water things
Jaime has no patience with hashtags
#nothingcompares to you
I’ve fallen in love with someone who’s moved to the future
We all live in a prairie dog ghost town
past which a guy goes by driving a school bus
faster than I’ve ever seen a school bus go in real life
and the mountains look like
bottom of the fish tank decorations
aquarium architecture
where the birds
are as large
as Mars
We live in a prairie dog graveyard
where séances are sold on the corner
like bootleg copies of Armageddon and I press on
Helen,
I live within walking distance
to a Petco right now
in an apartment that doesn’t
allow pets
Sometimes I just go in there
and stare at the fish in the fish tanks
and dream
The blood parrot fish
The green Chromis
Fire shrimp
The Scopas Tang
with thin long nose and big trick
of being yellow all the time
Where only the ferrets stare back at me
Caged eyes to caged eyes
How Lowes?!
Mattress Firm!
Bed Bath and Beyond!
The only thing more scary
than a prairie dog graveyard
is a prairie dog graveyard at night
Love is a talk box
Society is an ant farm
stuck atop the dresser drawer
of another ant farm’s ant farm
The longer I’m sober
the more that I feel her
all the way over there
on the other side of the graveyard
Religion is a soup kitchen
in a world without spoons
Helen, I might be too old for that
Hold on there, darlin’
What’s your fleece size?
I mean,
I’ve moved into the new place now
and I’m different
more mature maybe, I mean
I vacuum now
and floss
but I still don’t dust
I don’t know why
Maybe I like the dust
Maybe I ask it stuff
in the middle of the night
like Fante asked us
to do
I’m O.C.D on the tidy side these days
Helen, (!)
How are you?
I hope everything is well
that way
How ya holding up out there
after all those California
pre-dystopian fires
and Trump tweets?
Maybe our love is dead
or maybe it’s only dead
like Spock was dead
at the end of Wrath of Kahn
trapped inside a world of elephant shaped
bong hits and maybes
so maybe
our love is dead like Spock
at the end of Star Trek II
which would leave open the possibility
that our love will find
itself jump started to life again
thanks to the Genesis Program
and forget everything it ever knew
about William Shatner
for a little while after that
but that’s alright
we’d be cool
and while we’re playing maybe
Maybe Trump will wake up tomorrow
and find himself unable
to lie anymore
like Jim Carry in that movie Liar Liar
Holy shit, that’d be a hell of a day
Maybe dogs can’t look up!
Maybe the prairie dogs are just sleeping!
Maybe the Marvel Universe will be the first movie franchise
to fight its way into our universe
to save us all
I’m not an optimistic person
by nature
what does that mean?
So Marvel movies saving humanity
That’s as optimistic as I get
(ergo:)
Why is this movie we’re working through
all of a sudden co-starring Wolf Blittzer
How does something like that happen?
In this world, something else is always happening
while I stand here, missing you
something else is always going on
that’s the catch phrase of the universe
Something else is always going on
This life is absurd
the world, with all its
sandwiches and cutlery
and salmonella
Salmonella is tonight’s safety word
Salmonella is my copilot
it’s your copilot
it shits in the rain
and talks to birds
Salmonella gave life to the multiverse
Salmonella gave life to Multiverse Johnson
Multiverse Johnson gave life
to weekly pamphlets
for a little while
that raged against
the dangers of a Sarah Palin vice presidency
and Salmonella
Salmonella gave birth to middle of all night shopping shows
and humanity, prairie dog graveyards
and a broken romantic’s shoddy sense of time
Get in the bionic transport vehicle, Jaime
The world needs you
Love is a second floor balcony
architecturally absent of staircase
without those bionic legs of yours
we’ll never get up there
Where are you going?
We’re fucked
written for this week’s Punketry show
Multiverse Johnson 