Cosmic Latte cover

Cosmic Latte

Jerimee Bloemeke

Copyright © 2013 Jerimee Bloemeke. All rights reserved.

and I saw my devil, and I saw my deep blue sea

__Gram Parsons
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Harm's Way

(quiet with music)

Cicadas purr behind foliage.
The same things keep happening.
Tonight I’ve stolen a silver car
I am really good at driving
drinking clear West Indies rum,
clear music tropical moiré
surfacing the windshield
like a pattern untoward
trying to get out of me
platinum massacres of sorts.
Revving it, as if I hadn’t
already said I had, some
passenger says, with the
strange cadence of a prayer,
I thought you stole this car.
Ferns in the rear views jump
pylons and we receive
undeserved glares in drive-thrus
and looks from innocence
at bus stop shelters where handles
of grocery bags get grasped
by hands and the nothing
I could do to do nothing
anymore ridicules me,
but by the looks
of the car’s speedometer,
one can put their money in the bank
that these numbers mean something,
something is being done.
Delicate flame-scarred neck skin
shiny as a pin is reflected in the gimcrack
console plastic, a derby lap
accident too obvious put down
by a nepenthe and the current
nervousness met head on
by popular antacid without effect.
To see where I stand, my passenger
emerges from an open window
like a damned butterfly to walk the earth
prematurely, deformed by rushing,
then more grub than finished.
This should not be happening,
but I don’t know why.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Promethazine Prometheus

(five-sided trains, the pentatrains)

People hate and do
lovable lines of coke
minutes prior to when
they do another line
of movie shoot fake coke.
  
Poem section
  
In the car, vapor trails and hats,
you are a benevolent king,
you put your fingers out
the sunroof, scraping the sky,
you are a benevolent violet,
which sounds like benzedrine
violence, but instead
you are a benzedrine lord,
“xylophone music” (from the radio)
and “these cons” trying to con you
somehow like metanoia
or tripartite intercourse are
defining moments.
  
Poem section
  
You say that capicola,
the traditional Italian cold cut
made from whole-pork shoulder or neck,
makes you a tolerant
and understandable leader,
the stewardship, with honesty,
you place the meat upon a street seed bagel,
a “everything” bagel,
saying give me one with everything
you say make me one with everything
and hahaha-ha-ha fuck
(unwanted small talk),
the dreaded double tap.
  
Poem section
  
A bumper sticker reads
No One is Perfect,
a short but powerful quote
from an unknown author.
Put in perspective,
insight only matters if it’s salable,
if it’s alcohol soluble poison
or a solvable crime.
In other words: waterproof jackets
versus water resistant coats.
In other words, talking over
Italian lounge music
(amore or erotica),
there’s salt.
  
Poem section
  
Stars are tonight, it is legal to fire
white males under forty
because they’re unprotected,
they seek peaceful environments
where they can replay the messages
by pressing ‘1,’ where morale increases
with the sound of a Bic’s spark wheel
as it turns, and the little gas flame
burns as the bowl is smoked,
coughing on the other line.
On the other hand, packed bowls
smile leafy green smiles.
Words seem to be happy, too.
  
Poem section
  
In a tent amongst cypress
we lick melted candy coating
of Advil off our fingers; we do so much
with our fingers as humans, move the fingers
healthy and conscious, then look at them
pick up the red, discarded head of the tulip,
viewing Earth through actress lenses,
over our shoulders, stooped, considering
if we are correct in saying
that one who expresses displeasure
at receiving an unexpected gift
is not ungrateful.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

2c-e

(the universe slows since day one)

for Shulgin

No compassion enough to include
what are familiar details contained
unsatisfactorily (object irrelevancy),
for those who possess more
than they can love or hold
dear recognize the preface.
Bent knees and supine bodies
ground blot out the sky.
  
Poem section
  
Bothered alive, not yet dawn,
energized eyes see warm
drinks (warmed) coat bones
and the throats driven into coral
with regional design traffic lines
at the cabin’s chosen rooms,
memory eaten with ease.
  
Poem section
  
O to be on drugs
all the time
a little bit.
  
Poem section
  
The wall mirror from the wall,
the Bank of America credit card,
spherical lumps of Wonder bread
tasting like chewed pill medication,
calm and tenderness surrounding
plaid curtains –– interesting –– O stupid glory
in young minds tripping down downslope
runoff giddy up down the path to town
flashing naïf expressions of clear, contained spirituality,
that prescient sluice.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Palm Reading

(little batter stickers)

I, an organic, levelheaded adherent of a prescription,
feel nonexistence overriding my skin like an ant,
spider webbing shoot or a single of my own hair follicles
tickling the neck back, or my shoulder, behind a knee
or at an ankle, I feel like whatever this feeling is
is inexpressible circa twitching quick scratches
of any of the aforementioned parts of me, kind of rubbing my nape
with my left palm and finger padding, I do not feel too
anxious or as a paranoiac, there is no withdrawal
I cannot quell easily enough, and of an undiagnosed epidermal malady
I know nothing, I don’t use topical applications such as Icy Hot,
I don’t have a flatland case of quivers of the anus, that vertigo,
for only at great heights am I afraid enough to play dead
like some opossum in a jumpsuit, in a ’coon’s nest,
parachute placenta hindering the progress,
I eat mac ‘n’ cheese from a box for Christ’s sake,
powder and rockhard pasta, must something be wrong,
some condition or conundrum, I’m turning up somewhere
unsavory, under some overpass, wedged up in the gutter
at the casket clearance space at the top of an incline
to sleep inches below an interstate, feeling semis hauling
colorful rusting containers of consumer goods rumble
to distribution centers in the relative middles of nowhere,
their suggestive Yosemite Sam mud flaps asway
waving narcoleptically as the fluid’s wiped from my nostril.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Getty Images

Even squirrels fuck
and scratch each other
in bushes, even cars
drive by slowly, and I
have that look on my face
and the demeanor unable
to express terrific things
happening on tape
and in photos detonated
online which may
or may not have
anything to do with us.
  
Beater marble-sized
tiny tiny bird
amongst boughs
with red berry clusters,
people react to explosions,
bomb squads investigate
an item along the course
post-the terrifically archaic
Twin Bombs of Boston,
and maybe I’m just sweaty,
but I’m cracking me up. Please
don’t crack down on me.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Blue M&M Mascot

There, a mound of seven or eight
crumpled debit receipts on the futon
within arm’s reach of hairy paunch.
  
Thunder’s heard as rain dies down.
Portions of routines like sad chords.
The paunch blue and shiny, mouth sighs.
  
Eyes like a stoner’s and the thumbs up
(I sware it makes me think) then the rain
matures enough for ponchos. White arms,
  
white cartoon gloves and sneakers,
that kick the box elder bug dead on
its wings, are counterfeit. Ach. Gloves removed
  
to wash hands and mouths with mouthwash
and hand soap, and the angle of the tall bay
window blinds evoke displacement, luxury
  
allowed only the situated. Deep breaths
of Crest peppermint, seeming sadder, employed,
what they will call this century one day.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

cartoon
• • • • • • • • • • • •

The Copious

to know what it would be like
when I did not know better
than knowing what it was like
would be worse than knowing

Turned back to get the cdr I
forgot and recognized the
blue and white fertiliser [pellets]
under my boot tread, and in
the night sky a cloud, its
cloudy [trim] haloed [white] by
the moon shine behind it. No
less the tail lights [spanning]
the back end of a
challenger blocks ahead in
the direction im headin.
Cuban in my pocket, bon
fire of the future awaits
  
Poem section
  
The copious, spider webs to
the exposed skin of face
and wrists, copies imperfect
. Kind of lightly [trailing] like
cells
[one can't remove]
  
Poem section
  
Twelve people here, but fun
  
Poem section
  
Theres a bit more people
here / getting more fun
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Legalize It

(cigar cutter)

Beyond a certain point, movement itself changes…
…aim for the point of no return…

“shangrila”

Walked to the drugstore
to buy sports drinks
(swimming pool blue and red).
  
The knock-kneed girl stood
on the overpass railing
stepping into the nook of the tree
overhanging the creek,
her face red that shed tears
over some rec center cruelty
(unknown).
  
On the opposite street-corner,
two adults beamed on an infant
sound asleep in a carriage
then gazed into their eyes
silently, still, smiling, the cacophony
of the parking garage,
the street and the cars,
as nonexistent for them as I.
  
The recounted familiarities
so there when passed by
on one’s way, in an OTIS vehicle,
to install an elevator, escalator or moving walkway,
moved; we tilted our helmet.
  
Poem section
  
The jungle crosses the threshold.
We contact our friends.
“Jungle Boogie,” obsolete machetes.
You should choose your place in this
bush adjacent to my screened-in porch,
birds. Because only the strongest gusts
jostle the wind chimes, there.
  
Poem section
  
The last time I was heard
I had coughed,
no one within 100 feet of me
(I was being polite).
  
I blew away a red spider
hanging from an oasis
in the midst of the parrot man
and the parrot man’s enthusiasts.
  
The plumber repaired the jumping water jets
on the stone hill near the masonic lodge
as I lit a Parliament Menthol Light
because that is what I smoked then.
  
I was in a 3000GT
with a decorative spoiler so slick
I was too hot (by which is meant sexy)
to be a terrorist.
  
I was too polite to discard my cigarette filter
into any neighbor’s garden
because I believed litter belonged in the road
and I was alone.
  
Poem section
  
On sleeping pills, paint in the painting moves
when we focus on areas of the painting
the paint moves around
(kinetic periphery).
  
You cannot forget you are falling asleep
with your disagreeable hand on your face,
the fingers smelling of odd creams,
soap, smoke or dough.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Un-to the Sepulcher

(slow of heart)

How did I awake? No boulder needed pushing aside
although it felt that way, tallying eight deaths, a little blue
in the sky (notice the compact size), dressing for mass
downtown where design imprisons, where the spires
quiver tentacular, and the sinners, their futility, trying
to erase the X marks on their hand backs. Mary, Mary,
quiet St. Mary fetishizes ideas of baby, of contracts,
punks put out on her cheeks, diving head first nude
into pool water drank and flicked onto sinners, those
dehydrated Caucasians day drinking and hung over
indoor ponds, water pouring from golden decanters
onto infant crowns, mothers smiling ecstatic and wild,
fathers a blur the congregation cannot see, their tan lines
nothing but lines, but seen, giving the bends to fantasies
of inner tubes in lazy rivers of megamalls in late afternoon
light, waterfalls soothing me to sleep… How did I awake?
In a glass hexagon cell on cushions, glared at, my soul
mate’s nipples perked and I am feeling like I am falling
asleep to a thousand Newton’s cradles clicking, clacking
and sinners neighing holy holy holy holy holy holy holy
* and the scintillas tumble out of my soul mate’s purse
onto onyx tiles, my cirrhotic mania devolving into cackles
ringing off the porcelain toilet where my caca sinks like
macaws of smoke. It is said: It’s not what is done, but what thou call it.
Stunts, stick ups and lust. The outlined creases between her thighs.
The laughter thru her hair is hers, yes, as she takes down her panties,
looking close up at the third world details of my dark sneaker
with her weed eyes. At peace, I said unto her: My god, if only
I could put a little order to it. : Rab-bo’ni, which is to say, Master.
• • • • • • • • • • • •

Jerimee Bloemeke

Jerimee Bloemeke was born in Fort Lauderdale, FL, 1987. His work has been published in the following journals and magazines: Novembre, Artifice, The Claudius App, NOÖ Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, and The Iowa Review (forthcoming, 2014), among others. He is also the author of the recent chapbook, 25¢ CASH (Slim Princess Holdings, 2013). He has a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Iowa City.

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