OSIRIS JONES

Wired Weird

for Ed Roberson

If hairs be wires,
it does not follow.

Then Q: like a bird
on a wire is what?

Ornette Coleman's solo
on Lonely Woman

high-wire act without
the net of tonality

shapes and shadows
of free jazz to come, futurity

new ways of being
where Lonely is a sad

and beautiful song
only, a sweet mystery

like chains. It's weird.

Tubthumping: An Ode Afeard for the Future

(To Be Sung by a Quintet in the Voices of Boff Whalley, George Thorogood, Ian Curtis, Michael Jackson, and Black Francis)

Y'all best get the hell up outta here.
Remember the metrosexuals? Where
O where have they gone? Remember
Chumbawamba? Where have they gone?
Remember that fleeting rabbit
in that Milosz poem? The magic
mop scene in The Sword in the Stone?
That shit was bad to the bone.
Remember "Bad to the Bone"?
B-b-b-b-bad to be so fucking low
while so fucking high, ya know?
B-b-b-b-bad to want to fuck anymo.
The spirit of the age is farce, not tragic.
The Spirit of the Age is at Costco—nab it.

I meant this poem to be about police brutality
but the police beat it out of me.
B-b-b-b-bad. To the bone, I meant
this poem to include some starlight
& deep thoughts but I can't see the stars
through the Chicago smog & I got bars
& so iT thinks for me. B-b-b-b-bad.
My dad made robots for the gov to move
enriched uraniam around. Los Alamos
1993. My dad's unhitched cranium might
be underground, I dunno. Remembers
being underground? Remembers that
sludgy 90s grunge sound? Where have
they gone, the Doc Martins, the Jncos?

Where is da bud, where is da bud?
My heart fell w/ a bloody thud
into the gutter. I went back into Cole's
and ordered another. So many souls
_ in Lampedusa. He drinks the Whiskey
drink & tries to think. He meant this B-
poem to be sad and beautiful like Milosz,
like Baudelaire's femme passa. But he's gauche.
Here are the young men, the weight's on their shoulders.
Nero stops to piss while Rome smoulders.
He stops to piss & tries not to think. The synth
is syncopated. The bloke next to him winks.
Whiz-bang whizard of whimsy! Cottager
of my fancy! So much of piss this stall sthinks.

Back at The Owl, now, reading Howl with a scowl.
Workers of the world, you gotta put that 9-to-5
up on the shelf and just enjoy yoself.
Sarah Palin was the world's hottest milf
till I lost my Appetite for Destruction.
Axel Rose lost his fucking compass!
Did the alt right really Trump us?
Let's burn down every house of correction,
workers of the world. Remember W?
Workers of the world, don't let it trouble you.
It is a consummation devoutly to be wished—
O weary workers of the world!—that you cease to piss
on this unextinguished hearth. Mind alive
in the musk of dive bar PBR pisshole The Owl.

The white working class has gas. Who's got the match?
If the Donald comes can Pence be far behind?
How long must we wait for the death of "Orrin Hatch"?
Remember The Pixies's "Where is My Mind?"
I meant this poem to be a revolution.
I meant to sing the workers mighty union.
Remember the Theses on Feuerbach?
I think the last was "Less talk, more rock."
Remember Doc Holiday? I meant this poem
to have fucking spurs, but I keep fucking up. Ummm,
I meant to sing the songs that remind us of the good times,
but all songs remind us of these bad times.
B-b-b-b-bad times. You're never gonna keep me down,
with my feet in the air and my head on the ground.

Rondo

for Sean Bonney

Poetry makes nothing fuck
the police happen to be
or not to be that is the fuck
the police question, what is to be
eat the rich done gone fuck
the police with the wind to be
if winter comes can spring fuck
the police be far behind to be
eat the rich socialism or fuck
the police barbarism to be
death is the mother of fuck
the police beauty is to be
eat the rich truth, truth fuck
the police beauty that is to be
all ye know on earth, and fuck
the police all ye need to be
eat the rich to know fuck
the police thyself I is to be
an other we must love each fuck
the police other or die to be
fuck the police eat the rich

Osiris Jones is a poet, socialist labor organizer, and clinging utopian. Their work has been rejected by Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Nation, among other distinguished outlets. They are writing an epic poem, called Epic!, in anti-heroic couplets on Twitter.