Marty Shambles
Marty Shambles
80s poem
by Marty Shambles
“a rubiks cube is suspended / above a glass of Tab…”
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.”
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.”
a series of scenes concerning vibes (act iv, part i)
by Marty Shambles
“she would jog all year round, even in san antonio summer when every year a news crew would show you could fry an egg on the pavement.”
a series of scenes concerning vibes (act iii)
by Marty Shambles
“The grace of a starlet splashes on my lens. You are blonde magick, electric silk; resplendent.”
a series of scenes concerning vibes (act ii)
by Marty Shambles
“The great economy of darness is at my back / When you die you go to a city / made of all the trash you ever discarded.”