Guest Ranter Miss Giblets with 'Is this ignorance?'

We have a guest ranter for this installment of Memphis Dry Rub. Check out her blog at http://peanutbuttervodka.tumblr.com/ for even more of her special brand of informed ignorance.

I am really sick of gay rights activism. Of course, I’m not really for any kind of activism— and I realize this has more to do with misanthropy than politics. I’m for gay marriage for the usual reasons i.e. legislation of Judeo-Christian morality is the turd ingredient in the turd salad that I eat every time I venture into the Current Events section of a newspaper. The other ingredients are menstrual blood, raisins and sports. Raisins are okay, but they’re nothing to open a newspaper over. I’d like to say to hell with it and be done, but I live in a college town in Northern California so I don’t get to.

Anyways, the gay rights thing is still going on pretty hard and my point here is that it wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t for the lesbians. They make up the majority of the protesters/paraders. And why is this?
Well, I sat down and thought about it for seven seconds and realized that the lesbians are double trouble when it comes to being burnt about the state of the world. First they’re women, second they’re gay. Women just started coming into activism in the grand scheme of things, and while some may argue there is nothing more to be said on the matter, there are still very real problems with glass ceilings and other clever metaphors for inequality.

You usually don’t hear about a woman getting beaten to death because she’s a woman though. That’s the gay battle, and I understand the severity of that too. The inequality against the gaze isn’t a glass ceiling either— it’s made up of cinder blocks and broken nails. It’s covered in gay blood and has a mechanism that plays “You’re going to hell, faggot” and “You’re going to hell, fucking faggot” whenever some poor gay fails to rise above it.

Yea, it’s bullshit.

But how is some rainbow parade going to change anyone’s mind?? Does everyone need to be aware of you? Is that the logic? Maybe they’re working on the generations to come by annoying everyone into submission. That makes sense, but you’re pushing me away. I’ll still vote for your right to get married, because as far as I’m concerned the day can’t come soon enough. I’m afraid that until you are treated the same as regular minorities, your group will continue to be make itself known in the most annoying possible way.

I’m sorry ladies, but I gotta give you the award for most annoying. Perhaps you are compensating for your subjugated femininity by being…potent. And perhaps this manifests itself in things like your short hair cuts and lip rings and rainbow stud belts. But these things make me relate your individuality to a stereotype that SUCKS. And I’m sorry, but I’m judging you. I’m assuming you are annoying. I’m assuming that you are going to talk about the hardships of your lifestyle choice in otherwise ordinary conversations. When I see the lesbianess you’ve carefully constructed, I refer it back to the large scale lesbianess that gets portrayed in your demonstrations. Your demonstrations that demonstrate lesbianess…

Hmm, so then this isn’t my circular logic. You guys are doing all the shitty circular logic for us. Perhaps the missing ingredient is critical thinking, but are you expecting it from us? Don’t be daft, this is America.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate America. I just have to feel disdain when people are retarded in a language I can understand. And that applies to Americans AND lesbians.

Hick Poetry Classic: 'Two Fours'

1.
each step rattles with bottle caps
bent into quarter moons
or half smiles
of gold teeth
cameroon currency
in burlap bags
hemp tied about my canvas drawers
it’ll be a helluva night
tonight
i tell you what
these caps here
these caps’ll buy me
two beers and
and
a pickled egg.
you’ll see.

2.
a thousand souls are drifting
from manholes
in front of that ramshackle
chinese laundry
i told you about
y’see some people
dont like them orientals y’know
but i like em fine
that’s what them japs like to be called
right?
and them souls
well they’re getting caught
in the bony fingers
of them dead trees
them barren trees
scratching the back of an indifferent sky
i heard that
the best thing a soul could become
is a cloud.
i heard that once
i think my gramma told me.

3.
i heard that when god spoke
I heard
It was like…………
BLAM!
the earth come together
like that!
jus like that!
like a sperm
N
an egg
and that
ever time
he speaks
god that is
ever time he speaks
another world is created
spinning out in space
dancing a black waltz
tangled in his beard
i heard this from a scientist once
i think

4.
y'know, sometimes
i crack an egg in my beer
and i watch it float down
like a sunset
in a sky full of smoke
and i think
i sure wish
my mama
would stop saying
i just wish
she’d stop telling me
that
i was a product
of rape.

4.
hey look
they’re lightin them lanterns
and meltin them candles down
in the little town
of Needles tonight
turnin it into a freckle
of stars
stamped across the dirt
smack in the middle
of this bare-assed land
y’know
that the babble says
excuse me
the holy babble says
that it's better to live
in a bare-assed land
than with
a thousand
quarrelsome whores
not in those words though
me
i’d have to try it out first
before i bet on it.


5.
i been dictating
to this bottle
of turpentine
gin
with sugar
on the rim
all damn night
but its hard to drown
out
mexicali trumpets
when they’re so damn
loud
cant even hear myself talk
don’t worry a man tells me
don’t worry he says
yaint missin much

6.
it’s nights like these
that my shadows
come in threes.
　

Aurelia Aurita

She wrote a letter to my shadow
I smoked a strand of her black hair
She ran her fingers cross my belly
And fell asleep with her hand there


I saw the patterns on my ceiling
A bloom of jellyfish hung down
The trees were dripping dried up leaves
The wind was sweeping up the ground

When her fingers did their stutter
As she slept across my chest
I saw the moistness on her picket teeth
I saw the pigment in her breath

Jesus once lived underwater
The sea was glowing on the coast
He never did much like the desert
He gave that all up to His ghost

They tried to follow in His footsteps
They tried to dig up all His bones
The tomb was empty and the seas were boiling
In almost all the coastal zones

The polypoids are now in mourning
The anglers all shut off their lights
We walked across a gelatinous sea
Till we were gone far from His sight

When I get killed tomorrow
Write her a letter on the foam
Tell the turtles that I loved them
And that I won't be coming home

Take the kelp from off my bed
Clean the salt out of my room
On certain nights when she looks overhead
I’ll be polishing the moon
　

Hick Poetry Classic: "The Wallpaper Insists"

Flowers
growing out
of
flowers
?
That wallpaper
is a goddamn
liar.
That wallpaper’s
never
seen
how a real garden
works.
The curtains
are pulled
together
and kissing
I imagine
and still
those distant
fireworks
paint
in
Reds
Reds
Reds
across her body
throwing shadows
of
crucifixes.
Pyrotechnics
are so
sanctimonious
these days.
or
perhaps
it could be
The end
End.
END.
of the world
at my
window sill
and still
and still
there’s nothing
on
TV
And she?
She’s
as smooth
as
I don’t know
a pint of
cream
a glass of
buttermilk.
I could
dream
my nights
trying to
write
love letters
to the blood
running through
her vines
and the ancient
civilizations
of bacteria
in the clefts
of her flesh.
I wish
my pen
was a microscope
and a scalpel.
Yes.

“In a sense,”
She once told me
“innocence
is like
being Proud
of not knowing
how to
read.”
How much
of her innocence
has she sold
to my twins
and how much
of herself
indeed
?

The Hot Sauce Bottle Full of Liquid Morphine

1.
The red-haired woman
Was tracing constellations
On the freckles of her arm
Perhaps she should trace
herself
some eyebrows

2.
My daddy used to whisper prophecies
Into wine bottles
About damnation contained
In a toilet bowl
And carve commandments into my back
About the gym rules
At the senior center

It was good information to know

3.
I once got lost in the pumice holes
Of a chicken bone
The porous white bastards
Spread on a mosaic of dry mud
In the desert somewhere
Where the buzzards circle
Over your shoulder
Trying to find out
Your pin number

That was embarrassing

4.
I once fell in love with the sunset
But the sunset changes fast
From minute to minute
I mean
It’ll keep you warm for a while
But it gets cold fast
And pretty soon you’re wandering
Through outer darkness
And all you can think about
Is how pretty the sunset was
But you can’t remember a damn word it said
And you think maybe it didn’t speak at all
And if it did
It wasn’t worth remembering
And besides, how many fools have loved the sunset?
And how many more will?
No one will ever truly get close to the sunset

Also, by sunset I mean a specific woman
That I knew
In case you didn’t understand.
Also, the sunset won’t return my phone calls

5.
Get the coffins ready, boys
I’ve been saving my quarters
I’ve been shaving my knuckles
To the bone
The bastards have hammered their last nails
The bitches will commence their brooming
And I’ve come to make things straight
I’ve come to divide your skulls
With a brick
I’ve come to smoke cherry-flavored
Tobacco through a chicken bone pipe
And watch a dozen or so lines of pink smoke
Drift up like sea grass
And make passes
At foreign girls
Too young to know better
But first, I’ll make a necklace of your teeth
hung on a string of your saliva
And you’ll be spitting cherry blossoms
On to the pavement
Spitting
A whole fucking bouquet

In full bloom

6.
I cut my umbilical cord
with a broken wine bottle once

No matter how hard you try
You can’t prevent stupid things
from happening

The Reedswamp

I once spent a year

Trying to find
A good way
To describe grass
The green hair of God
Where the shadows
of lady bugs
Flutter to make friends
With your childhood
And the worms
Curl and writhe
Like boneless fingers
They find it so hard
to make a decision
And stick to it
I once spent a year
Trying to find
A good way
To describe grass
If it’s tall enough
It feels like
A stranger
Whispering in your ear
If it’s wet enough
Like a thousand tiny tongues
Made of vinyl
I once spent a year
Trying to find
A good way
To describe grass
A sea of emerald mourners
In a constant state of prayer
Over the bones of rabbits
Or the hollow shells
Of grasshoppers
While pagan ants make their way
Across a thousand prostrate towers
I once spent a year
Trying to find
A good way
To describe grass
And my lawn died.

An Old Classic: The First 'Hick Poem'

STRUNK & WHITE

They say ants can get in your mouth
And sting your lungs from the inside
Well Im smokin ants tonight mama
When the sky curdles with clouds
that make fists
Holding up that fuckin moon
Always staring down at me
Trying to catch me off-guard
And in the nude.

And there’s a constellation of eyes
In the bushes and
At my head and
At my feet but
I aint got nothin against nobody
And that’s my problem.
Probably.
I guess you could spend your time
trying to fish the moon out of the lake
If the clouds ever lost their hold.

But they wont.

You Ain’t Ivan Pavlov

Yeah, them maidens are at it again
Synchronizing their periods
So that you could set your watch
To a tampon string
I hate it when they do that
Who knows what they’re planning?
Who knows what they’ll do with that power?
I burned a night
Listening to a girl
Trying to convince me of the appeal
Of bigamy
Is bigamy a treacherous female plot?
God, I don’t know
I don’t even want to think about it
I won’t even take my woman out
In a strong wind
She might drift like a leaf
Under the boot
Of a man-child
With a stupid tattoo
She was so proud
Of being a Chinese riddle
Well, I told her
I said,
“When I find you
Hanging
from your bent knees
With your head
on the floor
Looking like
A question mark
Remember that
Mystery
is only interesting
When there’s something behind it.”