The Bug Wrangler

(taken from M.Doughty's book of poems called Slanky. Doughty was the singer of now ex-band Soul Coughing. i miss them. not a huge follower of poetry but i love his word play and this one reminds me of Burrough's 'Naked Lunch'. go buy Doughty's solo albums, they're awesome!)

He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn't answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used the blowdryer to force the spiders to move, up the arm of the stuntwoman, across the floor. He was known to thee industry as a professional, that he could coax wrenching performances from the crankiest bugs. He was a man famed for producing bug performances that would make people weep in the theaters.

They knew what they were jumping into, he thought, I always split the money square, am I wrong? You take some roach out of a miserable life and put it in pictures. Tame the wildest insects with a flashlight and a little blowdryer technology. Go to the beasts and teach them respect. Take them into your home and live with them. They betray you to the police for giving them this.

At a press conference, he sat at the microphone with a loyal spider whom he tried to coax a positive character statement out of. but he couldn't use the blowdryer in front of the media, and the spider stood there and said nothing while he sweated and the videotape rolled on forward. - M.Doughty

(this next one is just so much like his Soul Coughing lyrics.)

I'll Be Your Baby Doll, I'll Be Your Seven Day Fool

Tonight the train is a curveball
sloping towards portions of
Darkest Brooklyn; some house unlit,
like a blank face, where I assume
you sit unsatisfied in a cubical room. - M.Doughty

(and while i'm at it, a Soul Coughing track.)

Soundtrack to Mary

Easy places to get away to.
Easy limbs languid all around you.
All my time is
Dirt on your hands.
Fingers drifting
Down my spine now.

Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall.

Soundtrack to Mary

Many minds wandering from room to room.
Many trees slain just to write it to you.
Many rays blinding,
Almost drowning,
Keep this whole shine,
Locked in my room.

Throw back the noise, get another one.
Pour out the rum, I've been drunk enough.
I know the sound that you made and I
Can't seem to unremind myself.

I hope you feel better
later on.

- Soul Coughing