Kenneth Pobo


Myself Starring in a New Version
of a Clockwork Orange

I'm guilty. I've gone around
many towns scaring
the dull rich. I get caught,
get wrapped in their sticky
bandages of change.
Psychologists who hump

the police put me in a room
and turn flower stems into
pins to keep my eyes
open. With each attempted
blink, a new zinnia blooms.
Petal knives slice my face--

I become whatever it is
they have in mind. Whatever
remains of the old me
seeps away into zinnias,
crimson in summer sun,
bee ready.


Sometimes I Get Tired

Sometimes I get tired
of the Romantic poets,
not often, but sometimes
this "I can find God
in a meadow" stuff grates--

I can find God while
buttfucking, but I don't need
a meadow for that,
can find the Goddess
in a meadow but just as
easily in a sweatshop. OK,

I have been in meadows,
gardens and greenhouses
when deities kept popping in
and out of gentians, got
to know many by name.
Nature?

The best genderfuck--
everything blends and swirls,
green leaves, red leaves,
brown, orange, copper,
and we walk among them all.

-both poems previously published at Riding The Meridian


In 1966

Count Five sang “Psychotic Reaction”—
decades later I’m kicking snow
above coffins. I won’t grab
a grave, will be the ex-
ception, a shoe
God keeps looking for


The Ten Commandments

are bored so they watch an I Love Lucy rerun,
then walk up to the 7-11 for ice cream.
A leather-jacketed dude stands against
his jalopy, sees how flirty these five boys
and five girls are. He blams his engine,
takes off. The commandments shrug,
gossip and hope for good prom dates. But
they’re bratty. Ignored, they IM
and call each other, carry guns
they easily sneak through metal detectors.

-both poems previusly published at No Teeth