Marty Shambles
Marty Shambles
the gutter dance
by Marty Shambles
“it’s a hungry time of night, / when the stomach sucks juice / from the ribs.”
there’s always more stuff to buy
by Marty Shambles
“walmarts look like churches. / churches look like walmarts. / prosperity gospel in the parking lot.”
untitled
by Marty Shambles
“…a plume of smoke pours / from my lips dangerous precedents are set every day.”
the big show
by Marty Shambles
“the adoration is truncated as they shuffle you / offstage to make room for the new players / who will be loved more than all your gestures combined.”
words are inert
by Marty Shambles
“the words illuminate a holy picture show… / then to again be inert symbols / scrawling the walls of this prison.”
how to regret a sentence
by Marty Shambles
“O-F-F-E-N… / you see the reactions of / your audience—faces washed / with disgust—-and you know / you’ve stepped in it…”
skeleton poem
by Marty Shambles
“everyone / vies for my attention, but i just / drive with my bones, waiting for a / metaphor that never comes.”
skeleton story
by Marty Shambles
“I do not miss the toil of it; the ingestion of medicines, the scramble for more days.”
the luddites
by Marty Shambles
“There comes a time for every employee these days when robots come for your jobs. For you that time is now.”
johnnie meatshoes
by Marty Shambles
“Born John Merchant III, heir to the great Merchant fortune, Johnnie Meatshoes, (a name self-ascribed), squished out to the clamor of reporters, and the lightning of bulbs.”
american mysticism
by Marty Shambles
“There's a comfort with the return of the towers. It means Americans can go on not caring about the world again, as the great, lumbering hell beast of American empire stomps the arena of the Global South, with the kayfabe of democracy.”
everything is airport
by Marty Shambles
“My episode of the Samurai Show is playing on the television. That's where people are paid to have body parts chopped off by a samurai. Game shows are the major driver of the economy. The VIP lounges are populated with people who are missing limbs, digits, noses, ears, tits, dicks, you name it.”
never live with your dealer
by Marty Shambles
“Never live with a cocaine dealer, and if you must live with one, never discuss your favorite presidents.”
delusions of granulated sweetness
by Marty Shambles
“…i went home with you and did what was expected of me and then some. i don't want to seem flippant about the importance
of keeping the talent satisfied.”
mother is gone
by Marty Shambles
“People were losing their minds to AI. Cults sprung up where jobs used to be. The whole Western Neoliberal experiment was choking on its own tail…”
the pitch
Poetry by Marty Shambles
“step right up folks / step right up! / come see the amazing analog poet / watch this human anachronism / use an organic computer made of skull goo / to formulate sentences never before / uttered by man or machine.”
after me comes the flood
by Marty Shambles
“Every weekday I would go to work and say business words at people and then come home as if I’d done something.”
kayfabe
by Marty Shambles
“The mansion and the cars were now probably in the hands of some rapper doing fat rails off Harry's countertops and fornicating in his hot tub, spunking up the filters.”
poker night
by Marty Shambles
“I looked my mother dead in the eye and asked her if we were going to be okay, and she said yes…She was then sucked up into the sky, but I was fine.”
a series of scenes concerning vibes (act iv, part ii)
by Marty Shambles
“when you're a stegner fellow an assistant follows you around and bottles all of your farts for posteriarity.”