~Absent Halos
There was a time
when you could tell who was a deity
simply by whether or not
they had a halo.
From shimmering aureole
to just a hint of glowing nimbus,
there was simply no mistaking
you were in the presence
of divinity.

Ah but which particular divinity
sort of depended on what page
from what book you were using to
anchor your current metaphysical
alter-reality.
As halo haberdashery goes,
the deity on the far side of the room
might just be Ra or possibly Horus.
Could also be Apollo or better yet, Helios.
Any assortment of baby faced putti or
sword welding cherubim.
Might just be Louis the Fourteenth,
but in his case that was less divinity
and more narcissistic Sun King
what with all celestial bodies
rotating in mass about his egotistic ass.

From worship of Sun to pantheon of
Sun signified shimmering bonnets,
you knew you were in the presence
of somebody oh so special.

And yet it must be noted that
over the past one thousand odd years,
reports of neon noggin sightings
have significantly dropped.

What was once sacred
slides into mythology.
Greek… mythology.
Roman… mythology.
Norse… mythology.
Egyptian… mythology.
Tele-Tubbie… mythology.

Nowadays, if you see someone
walking down the street with
a halo atop their head,
there is almost always a wire involved.
Whoa but it would appear that
true halos have sadly gone obsolete.
And if such is admittedly the case,
what suitable signifier of divinity
supplants our current visual requirement
for designating that most worthy of veneration?

I submit for your approval
the common white lab coat.
Ah yes… well…
I imagine you are in less than full agreement.
That that which denotes science,
from general practice doctor
to genetic engineer,
holds no symbolic power
worthy of devout reverence.
Perhaps you’ve come to the conviction
that white lab coats hold no sway
in your embrace of spirituality.
In that case,
retain the halo,
ignore the wire
and let your faith prevail.

But if you’re a lowly rat or
laboratory mouse
bred for experimentation,
what is the man in white
if not absolute godhead?

Yesterday
I read that a lab biologist
had taken a group of mice
and made them all alcoholics.
Why?
Because he could.
And then,
he would pluck a random
inebriated mouse
out of the mass of its
stupor soaked brethren and
force it to go cold turkey.
Why?
Because he could.

And the mouse goes into withdrawal.
The mouse gets a tad depressed.
And here the man in the sacred white coat
performs a “man in white coat” experiment.
Upon placing that alcohol deprived mouse
into a tall beaker of water,
he soon observes that it makes
no attempt to swim.
That the mouse would rather sink.

The report said nothing of whether he’d
therewith reach into the beaker
and save the drowning mouse.
Nothing of whether he
returned it to its cage and
gave it back its booze soaked life.

Did he?
Well, we want to believe so,
for that is the way we’d like to perceive our gods.
That everyone whose head
dips below the water’s surface
is saved.
Saved whether they desired it
or not.

Some
would call this
compassion.

But the mice…
These mice
beg
to differ.

©08 Jack Hubbell

~About a Book
The application of baby oil to skin
can be a wondrous thing.
As good for the giver
as the givee.
Yes, there’s a certain tactile delight
as one individual’s skin
comes in contact
with another.
No matter how young or old,
you will take pleasure.

And so, I find myself dwelling on this
as I stand before a dark display case
in Bury Saint Edmunds, England.
There beneath finger smudged glass
lies a book bound in
human skin.

And how do they keep that skin so supple?
Enquiring women
across the nation
really want to know.

I suppose that in this case,
baby oil is simply out of the question.
It may just be they’re using
Oil of Olay,
though that’s just a guess on my part.

Okay.
Although distracting, how ‘bout
a little aside information?
That is,
assuming you all want to know
how this museum got its hands on
a skin bound book.

It would seem
a few centuries back
this guy had a mistress,
and since she was of the troublesome
“make me an honest woman” sort,
he murdered and buried her in the Red Barn.


The Red Barn?
Oh yes, there is so much more
to this sordid story but
let’s just cut to the quick.
They found the body.
They found the killer.
And what with all them locals
being such a temperamental lot,
they hung him, and drawn and
quartered his misogynistic butt.
Took him apart.
Dismantled him as it were.

And
“Hey! You want souvenirs?
Got yer souvenirs right here.
You want thigh bones?
We got thigh bones.
You want big toes for your key chain?
We got manicured and non-manicured.
With bunion and without.
Wanna bind a book in human skin?
Today’s your lucky day.
We can do that at competitive cost.”

And so…
someone did.
And gosh golly gee willikers if you can’t
just walk right into a museum
and see it there on display.

Yup. Sitting just there next to
this fella’s skull cap.
And I mean real skull cap.
Grisly right ear and scalp.
But hey!
That’s macabre
and I don’t want to be accused of
dwelling on that too much
so let’s get back to the book.

Now what I want to know is,
is it a good read?
Did it say,
make the Opray Winfrey book list?

Did it get a plain ol’
Opray Book Club sticker
or did they splurge and
go all out for a tattoo?

And since we can assume that
this book’s been around,
does it have a little pocket in the back
for the library card?
And if so,
can you still check it out and take it home?
I mean,
what with a book of such high provenance
and overall lack of
epidermal blemish or unsightly scarring,
there’s got to be some substantial prose inside.

You just don’t go bind a book in human skin
and then fill it full of say…
you know…
the poetry of your current flavor to savor writer.
No.
You want something good
in a book of this quality binding.

Otherwise, there you are,
sitting down at the local coffee shop
when some stranger asks,
“Hey. What you reading?”
And there you’re
forced to respond,
“Oh, not much.
How ‘bout you?”

I mean,
this wouldn’t happen
with a book full of
my delightful verbosity, but
if you wanna fill a book full of
flavor savor poo-poo poems,
go right ahead.

No skin off my back.

©06 Jack Hubbell

~‘World of Men’
My childhood was a virtual cornucopia
of sexually deviant acts. Well,
that’s what you’d like to think.
How else to explain your perception of my
inherent depravity?
But naw…
It was all Opie and Andy Griffith.
All Huck Finn and Mark Twain.
All Haley Mills and Pollyanna.
That is except for haircuts.

Getting a haircut was perverse in the
worst possible way.
Not the actual act of getting a haircut per se,
though it goes without saying that
there was a brutal indoctrination involved when
those shears passed over your head.
Yea, your style options equated to
crew-cut, crew-cut, or on the rare occasion,
crew-cut.
‘Cause there weren’t no F’in way that
my dad’s son was gonna be no goll dang
long haired hippy and… um… sorry.
That was scarred Freudian psyche issue number two.
Let’s stay with the psycho trauma hiding behind
door number one, shall we?
Erotomania of the reprobate sort.

But now listen:
none of this soiled sanity occurred in the barber’s chair.
No. Though you fell beneath his blade of
follicular annihilation,
there was sanctuary to be found
in the swank leather upholstery
of that chromed pneumatic highchair.

Quite the opposite of
what was to be encountered
while awaiting your cranium buzz.
This was no beauty parlor.
This was a barber shop.
A mid Sixties barbershop.
Testosterone haven from all things estrogen.
And there while you awaited your
total world domination haircut,
there was an assortment of magazines to be perused.

Mainly mammary festooned
misogynous lust of bust
manly masturbatory
pulp pumping literature.
Just the sort of stuff an eight year old boy
needs to get his mind right
when it comes to acquiring an appreciation of
the delicate sex.

Considering men were incessantly motivated
to visit the barber shop whether their
noggins needed it or not,
it’s no wonder their hair remained so short.
Now I imagine you’ve got visions of stacks
of Playboys, Penthouse and Hustler,
you know, gynecological study material, but no.
Something altogether different here.

There at the barber shop
you encountered magazines such as
‘Stag’, ‘Inside Detective’ and
‘World of Men’.
And these… um… wait. Here.
Let me throw out a tether and
pull you into my mind.
Oh, not the red-light salacious cesspool
that’s there right now but rather,
the mind I possessed when I was all of eight years.

There we sit at the end of a bench.
There we glance down at the heap of magazines.
There at the top, a copy of ‘World of Men’.
There on its cover… ***

I am not making this up.
This is not fiction.
This is a particular boy’s memory
of one graphically painted illustration.

There is a swimming pool with diving board.
There are girls with skimpy bikinis.
Wait… there’s more. Much more.
There are Bikers.
Bikers with swastikas.
Swastikas on their sleeves.
Swastikas on their Nazi Biker helmets.
Swastikas tattooed upon their bared chests.
And there at the edge of the pool, you find
one maniacal Biker ripping open
bag after bag after bag of lye
and pouring it into the water.
Water which is now pure acid.
There on the diving board
yet another crazed Biker has carried
a screaming girl to its end, and
there she hangs mid-air…
mid-scream… mid… impending.

And you are eight years old.
And you like Walt Disney cartoons.
You’re particularly fond of Goofy
and the antics of his dog Pluto.
They… They were funny.
Slapstick funny. Painfully funny.
Semi-nude girls
being thrown into acid
by Nazi Bikers.

The barber could have left a gun
there on that end table.
A syringe full of heroin or crank.
A stack of rusty razorblades.
But…
But no…
It was just the latest copy of
‘World of Men’.
There it remains in my brain,
and now in yours as well.

©08 Jack Hubbell

~Small Talk
Okay, so it may come down to the fact
I was never very good at conversation.
Sure. I’ll grant you that.
But now listen:
I was all of nineteen years old and
being Midwest bred and raised,
I was pretty far from worldly.

You’ve got to understand that
on this particular topic,
I had no worthy opinions;
absolutely nothing of importance to say.
Perhaps… Perhaps I just looked knowledgeable.
What with the fact of my wearing a uniform,
it may have appeared
I’d automatically have some insight
into all things military.

If a manual exists on the fine art of conversation,
I figure there’s got to be a passage
about initiating discourse with
some element of small talk.
You know… Something mutually inclusive.
Common ground.
Common experience.
Small talk.
Yea. But this was not…
small talk.

And so…
I share a room with a man
who had entered only five minutes ago,
and there in that short span of silence,
I’ve certainly noticed his long hair;
his civilian attire;
the fact he’s a good ten years my senior.
And then…
And then he decides to engage in small talk.
He turns to face me
and from his mouth come the words:
“Have you ever killed anyone?”

You know. Small talk.
Being as I still qualified as teenager,
it was relatively easy to do a
body count in my head and
come up with a summation of none.
But of course I refrained from
answering too quickly.
As an expression of machismo,
it’s important to give
the appearance I’m pondering the
trail of bodies left in my lethal wake.

“Hmm? No.
Let’s see. That one guy?
I believe he managed to crawl away.
Um… And I’m certain she’s still quite alive.
Pretty sure that one bus load of kids
made it to the hospital in time.”

How fucking ridiculous!
But… with a somber face,
I simply returned his awaiting gaze and said,
“Umm… No.”
And no sooner did I reply
but did he quickly come back with,
“Well, I have. Yea. Numerous times.”

“Now aren’t you the over-achiever.”
Well…
That’s what I should have replied, but no.
I was nineteen years old, and
it’s rather difficult to dive into a conversation
about serial killing or mass murder
when you have no point of reference.

“I was in Viet Nam,” he continues. “Were you?”
“Were you in Viet Nam?”
This was 1979.
I… a young man, fresh out of high school.
This conversation was going to be a bit one sided.

“No,” I said. And to this he chimes back with,
“Well, I was.
Shot some gook in the face with a shotgun.
You ever shoot someone in the face with a shotgun?”

Pretty sure my response to that one
matched all the other answers I’d given so far.
And for the next thirty minutes,
this man I did not know,
proceeded to regurgitate
every violent homicidal act
he’d ever been involved in.

Why? … Why?
Why was I deemed worthy of his
sole soul repository?
Something to do with the fact
the cloth against my skin was olive drab?
That he’d spent the last five, six, seven years
with this orgasmic power point presentation
locked and looped there in his head and now,
seeing that cloth…
Seeing a certain insignia upon my sleeve,
there in his mind,
a door unlocks in some dark cranial corridor
and the bloody viscera splattered foliage
of some distant jungle
comes spilling forth at my feet.
The popping sound of rotor blades;
the buzz of an M60;
the thump of a mortar round;
the smell of white phosphorus
as it burns its way through human flesh.
All of this dying to get out of his head.
All of this dying,
a perpetual loop of validation
that he was most certainly alive.
Dying to be alive.
Dying to be alive.


And anything…
Anything less than the jungles
and hills and grasslands of Viet Nam
was a lesser form of life
and greater form of death.

Somewhere in between these two extremes
a man seeks affirmation,
and all he asked of me was small talk.
A faint nod of the head.
A hushed whisper of “I hear you.”

And here now, so many years later,
some post traumatic grandpa
shares the couch with his post traumatic grandson.
One of the two with his foot still buried
deep in a distant fetid swamp.
The other with his boot in scorched sand.

And were you to walk into that room,
all you’d see
would be two men
sharing a couch.
Just two men sharing a couch.
But there in between lie severed legs.
Severed arms. Severed lives.
Whilst severed dreams
lie buried and forgotten
in far distant lands.

Here are two men locked
in that moment of loss.
Both quite alive
and both quite dead,
whilst there in their heads:
small talk.

©07 Jack Hubbell

~My Physique
There comes a time
when you know you’ve attained your
perceived pinnacle of athletic achievement.
For me, the moment is at hand,
and I must seize it.
I will become a professional bowler.

Now I suppose I could have
taken up bowling
a year ago, but no.
I was different then.
I was toned.
I was ripped.
I was svelte.
I had just completed a season
touring with the
Chippendales.

I’m sure many of you are asking, “Hey!
Why the career change?”
Well let me tell you:
it’s hard work being a Chippendale.
Loads of physical and mental stress.
Listen: You wouldn’t know.
You haven’t done this.

For one,
it’s a sex trade.
Really.
No getting around it.
You can talk up the art side of it all you want
but those women could care less
whether you’ve just executed the
most perfect triple cabriole.
Deep down,
what they really want is
perpetual pelvic thrust.

And then, of course all those
late nights fading to dawn
as you sit there counting and stacking
thousand upon thousand of
single dollar bills.
It’s an ugly taxing business.

So I quit.
Just let myself go.
Traded my six-pack abs in for
a six-pack belly.
Hung up my G-string.
Gave all that baby oil to my best buddy _______.
Parked my butter butt in a barcalounger
for one whole year
with nothin’ but a TV remote in one hand
and a can of PBR in the other.

And yes, right about now
I feel I’m at my physical prime to
dive into the grueling arena of professional bowling.

But let me be honest here.
I’ve got a bit of a hidden agenda.
You see, unbeknownst to many,
professional bowling has its sordid side.
Indeed, professional bowling
is overrun with groupies.

Yup.
It’s all about sex,
and that my friends explains
why I look the way
I do today.

©06 Jack Hubbell

~Gorge Buoyant
I once ate a fly by accident.
Again…
I want to be very clear on this.
It was by accident.
I would in no way do this with malicious intent.
This is not to say I feel any form of
affection towards flies
for I do not.
In fact, I despise the little buggers.
But let’s come to an understanding.
I am an overwhelmingly loving and
entirely lovable person,
and though I loathe flies,
I absolutely would not
consume one in any vindictive manner.

Yes, it is quite understandable
that flies have nutritional value,
but at this specifically stated
moment of ingestion,
I was not particularly malnourished.
I could easily have made it ‘til nightfall
without the sacrifice of his
protein sustenance.
Without a doubt, I
would have survived.

Being as I am overflowing
with raging hormonal butchiness,
it should be of no surprise that I once experienced
a wilderness survival school.
Yes indeed, by bug breathed brethren…
John Rambo and Yours Truly.
Mano-a-Mano with nary a vending machine
within a fifty mile radius.
Would I slit Stallone’s throat for the
last stale twinkie?
Does Boy George own a pair of pink panties?
You damn straight!
I am not to be trifled with
when it comes to cup-cakes.
Especially with them there sprinkles on top.

Ahem… Anywho…
This guy was throwing up.

Wait!
I just prematurely climaxed my poem.
Let’s back on out and
reinsert from another direction.

Today’s Survival 101 objective is to catch a trout.
Catch him, cook him, eat him.
And though them there fishy things
be a bit of a rarity,
all us men have easy access to worms.
Just dig on down into Mother Earthy’s womb
and they’re slippin’ n’ slidin’ a slimy squirm fantastic.

And this guy was throwing up.
Yes, well… okay.
Let’s just move on to the post poetic
oh so climaxadelicious cigarette shall we?

Not too many fish in the creek but
a whole lotta worms in the mud.
And a worm being high in protein goodness,
the instructor goads our designated vomitee
into swallowing one whole.
Swallow him live.
Swallow him down and be done with it.

Okay, let’s just jump to the
After-the-fact vomit vile-tastic.

He what did the puking tells me
that it wasn’t the aspect of
eating a worm that made him hurl.
No. Seems that one of the side affects
of swallowing a worm whole and alive
is that whole and alive worms
don’t like to be swallowed.
That they resist the urge to go down.
This worm…
This worm wanted out.

And I sorta figure this is the moment of truth
where the worm gets religion.
That he’s in there sayin’ “I hear ya Lord and
Imma willin’ to do whatever it takes ta get out.”
And there in the back of this fella’s throat
a disco mirror ball startsta rotating
and the worm startsta wigglin’.
And this guy, who by the way,
has decided he’s not having a
whale of a good time,
brings forth unto the creek’s sacred bank
a somewhat blessed worm.

And yea…
That fly I swallowed all those years ago…
Now that I think about it…

Sucker must have been a
god damn atheist.

©08 Jack Hubbell

Barb’s Beaver
Barbara is hanging by her knees
upside down on the monkey bars.
Oh, and I’d like to point out
she’s wearing a dress.
And here on this vast spinning globe
of which we normally stand upright,
there are magnetic properties
which translate to gravity.
And it is interesting to note what these
said properties
have done to the hem of Barb’s skirt.

Of course she and I and
all the other guys standing there studying
the manifestation of this earth’s affects
upon that at the surface are not
at the moment
contemplating aspects of Newtonian Law.
No. Such terrestrial force permutations have
yet to be covered
up on our classroom chalkboard, but
were the teacher to use what’s transpiring
up on the monkey bars as
applied laboratory,
he would be certain to have an
overly rapt audience.
Indeed, though the concept of gravity
has yet to be covered in our current curriculum,
we are fascinated.
This is precisely the sort of
illustrative science
that keeps boys alert and pumping away
at their normally tedious school studies.

Barb? Barb’s dress looks
kinda funny this way.
This likeness of Barbness is just… well…
unnatural.
Um… disturbing comes to mind.
Yes, we boys were being disturbed.
But… you know…
Not that we could force ourselves to
look away.
Oh yea. And I’d like to point out that
what with Barb’s current bodily orientation,
you could see her underwear
and they were… and…
oh my god!
You’re not going to believe this…
They were white!

Well okay...
Allot of girls wore white underwear back then,
but you see, that
is exactly my point!
Yo! You weren’t supposed to
see a girl’s underwear.
Oh, here now, so many years hence,
with post horny hindsight,
I will acknowledge there was
something of particular interest
underneath all that pristine whiteness
but again, that’s now.
Back then it was just about catching a glimpse of
bleached white cotton.

You see, there was no pudenda.
There was no punanee.
No P-U-S-S- Y.
Oh, this might have been about sex but
most certainly not the act of sex.
Intercourse?
What the fuck was fuck?

Upperclassmen… you know…
Fourth and fifth graders…
They’d informed us that
the correct lexicon for what we were ogling
was properly defined as “Beaver”.
Thusly elucidated and ever so below the hip hip,
we now knew enough to say,
“Wow! Look at that beaver!”
and “Yep.
That’s a pretty nice beaver all right.
Thanks for the heads up.”

Of course, it was a pretty surreal image
trying to somehow make the bizarre connection
between white cotton panties
and a big brown aquatic rodent.
Mighty cerebral stuff but
if our peers said “beaver” then
who were we to argue their eloquence?
“Beaver. Beaver. Beaver.” You know.
Sorta springs from the tip of the tongue
just like it was always meant to be there.

All of this brings to mind that time Barb and I
were out on the playground and
an argument ensued.
There came a moment when Barb’s anger
built to a climax and there
in an effort to demonstrate her disgust at my
inability to comprehend her
impassioned point of view,
she lifted her skirt
and with one hand doing a sort of
faux scratching motion at her um…
whited out area,
exclaimed, “Big Hairy Ape!”

I and all the other boys were dumbfounded.
We were rendered speechless at her
somewhat incoherent connection of
all that glorious white, and
a fur clad simian.
But… and this is an important point…
Barb won the argument.
She had used her crotch to dominate us,
and oh so dominate us she did.

Yes, but back here in the present moment,
Barb is currently hanging upside down
from monkey bars whilst we blithering idiots
stand there jaws agape
like the hairy apes that we are.

Oh, I’d like to think that years from now,
we as grown men will have changed.
That horizontal monkey bars
will not have transformed to
vertical poles on dimly lit stages.
That the act of a scantily clad woman
clinging to a chromed erection
will hold no sway over our manly intellects.

Yes, I’d like to think that.
I want to think that.
But… We are weak,
and that which hangs from poles…
strong.
No. No.
Never underestimate
the mind numbing power
of beaver.

©07 Jack Hubbell

Beating Dead Poets
(for Fun and Profit)

You may not have realized it but the literary rapture has already come and gone. Oh, and by the way, some of you didn’t make the cut. Indeed, you missed that divine A-Train Ascension to deity status. Missed your chance to sit just to the right of He who controls the almighty microphone. Granted, some supplicants make it, but of course there are all those lesser scribes left behind. Left to shamble from shadow to shadow; stage to stage; coffee house to coffee house. And just listen to their lamentations: “Excuse me. Um…excuse me. Could you put my name on the list? Any chance I could read tonight?”
I guess you could say that ‘divinity’ (or lack thereof) might be a metaphor for the performance poetry scene here in Nebraska, but it sure conveys a bitter assessment. And lo, but when you’ve come to accept your lot in life, who’s to say you don’t enjoy your sub-seraphim designation? “Dude! Listen. I didn’t even get on the list! I’m sooo far more ‘beat’ than you will ever be!” And with that, it’s pretty easy to grab your beret, bongos and bottle of sour grape, slink away into a dark corner, and self indulge a mighty fine whine.
Okay. Granted, that was a piss-poor ‘Beat’ analogy. Let’s try again.
Before I step too far into a critique of performance poetry, I feel it is important to acknowledge the existence of poets who have never stood before a microphone, and possess no intent at ever doing so. Poets who are perfectly happy to have their outpour of inner thought exist upon paper without delusion that anyone would ever care to utter it aloud. For instance, some single mother who’s only intended audience is the future eyes of that adult her daughter or son will one day become. Or more sadly, that office clerk who upon his death will have an entire unseen life’s verse tossed into a dumpster. A legacy destined for landfill.
At least those of us who once stood upon stage will have had our voices heard, but please note that, listened to is an entirely different matter. Whether our presence was actually noted by those at assorted tables, shuffling their own stack of poems, is the true gauge of just how truly visible or invisible you are. Am I the only one to note how you can walk away from the stage to a round of courtesy applause and still wonder at whether my words have actually registered?
Slam poetry versus straight open mic. There. I’ve said it. Lines are formed; factions joined. Oh, we stand there smiling at each other, but full well know that everybody in attendance has their pockets full of rocks.
Permit me a further caustic clarification by way of cold war simile.
Slam Poetry? Slam Poetry is like Capitalism, whereas with straight open mic, you’ve got Socialism.
‘Isms’ in poetry? Here. Let me elucidate you. You’ve got your poets. You’ve got your coffeehouse. You’ve got your alpha-poet and coffeehouse owner who in the tradition of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, come to the epiphany of “Hey! Let’s put on a show!” They let their presence be known and like bugs to a porch light, the tables are soon laminated with sheaves of poems all angled and arrayed perpendicular towards mecca. And yes, Mecca in this case is better pronounced ‘microphone’.
Will you get your chance to stand before that mic and face the crowd? Well, your name was put on the list wasn’t it? The Earth rotates and our Sun consistently rises upon distant horizon. You put your name on the list; your horizon at the mic is inevitable. Do you deserve to be up there? Well of course. This is Socialism. We are all the same. There is no good. There is no bad. This is not to say the audience won’t experience some amazing poetry transpiring there at the mic. It will. It will also experience mind numbing banality. It will experience excruciating discomfort. Some of that by way of a well written poem done well. Some of that by a very bad poem done poorly. It will be a manic depressive bi-polar roller coaster ride that pretty much mirrors life, and if you ain’t up for that, then you have to wonder whey you’re involved in poetry at all.
Now in contrast, walk across the street into the Capitalist world of Slam Poetry and everything is Rodeo Drive. Or perhaps Wal-Mart. Pick your analogy. Glitz or bargain bin, these poems have mass market appeal. This is America after all and by God, the customer is always right. At a Slam event, every poet is a commodity and that audience out there is all about assessing value.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! What would you give for this fine set of three minute stone washed jeans?” And there in the front row we have a query. “Um… Is that Kerouc denim or W.H. Auden? Bukowski or e. e. cumming?” And with a mighty huffing from our emcee, “Sir. Madam. If you have to ask, you can’t afford the ridicule. No matter. We must have your hyper-critical/knee-jerk/astute valuation NOW.”
And let’s face it: in the Capitalist world of Slam Poetry, for one poem to achieve value, some other commodity has to be de-valued, right? You won’t find Jesus or Buddha in the world of Slam Poetry. No meek inheriting the earth. No. This is the realm of Charles Darwin. Capitalist survival of the profit test. Wrap your easily digestible rabid revelation in a three minute package and pray that the stage upon which you display it will provide favorable lighting. Three minutes to shine with full knowledge that every second beyond that limit your poem is exposed to such brutal light, it wilts. At three minute plus one second, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg succumb to entropy. Alas, a certain literary DNA spiral breaks down and dissolves, and there in the back of the coffeehouse, someone raises a stopwatch to proclaim, “Yo, dude and dudette! You suck!” And lo but Walt and Allen satchel their weighty tomes and slink away to hide in the shadows.
In their stead, the fruit of the MTV Generation send forth their token crank cased spark plugs of attention deficit overload to mount the aerie stage. Ecstasy-eyed splice hip-hop tongue tied, they deliver a 9.9 poem at two minutes fifty-nine, and somewhere deep underground Edgar Allen Poe cuts the string to his mausoleum’s bell, because he’s pretty damn sure he’s finally dead.
But wait… If I’m gonna name drop Poe, I might as well drop the name dropper of all name droppers: Truman Capote. Wasn’t it he who was not the one to sigh and bluntly lisp, “Um… That ain’t writing. That’s just shouting”?
Well pardon my slam.

©06 Jack Hubbell

The Man From... (Nantucket Part One)
Nantucket.
They have men there
who are incredibly popular.
Well...
one man was,
or so we've been led to believe.
It could be
that he wasn't popular at all,
and that, all this time,
we've been convinced that he was
because we expected this
anatomical aberration of his
to appeal to either sex
who perchance heard of it,
or worse,
encountered it.
Other than his own
auto-gratification
who else would truly benefit?
Isn't it ultimately
a visual scopophilic stimulation
that excites,
with little orifice penetrating benefit
after the initial six inches?
Anything beyond that would often appear
to inflect discomfort as opposed to
some hitherto inexperienced
plateau of pleasure.
The phallic truncheon?
Our icon of the supreme sado-sexual satori?
An ultra-appendage with trauma intent?
Ah...perhaps the misogynist in us all.
The misogynist in man...
The misogynist in woman...
Embrace the blade.
Sheath Nantucket.

©93 Jack Hubbell

Nantucket (Part Two)
Okay. I’m making a ruling.
Enough about this guy from Nantucket.
In my experience,
there’s nothing special about his attributes
or achievements.
Me?
Been doin’ that stuff for years.
Big deal.

Instead, let me tell you about
this man from Uttar Pradesh, India.
Dude was born with two
fully functional penises.
And what does he go and do
but request that one of them
be cut off.

Now I ask you:
Where’s the sense in that?
I mean, where will it all end?
As in getting a tattoo,
it could all get quite addictive.
Get one pecker lanced off,
think to yourself,
“Hey! That was pretty neat.”
And it’s not long before this whole
“cleaning house” aesthetic overtakes you.
“Well, if one less penis is good,
then two less penis’ has got to be great.”

This unique double eunich wannabe
from Uttar Pradesh
really pisses me off in a
non-stereo piss sort of way.
Double chomp chump!
Wanna one wang wanker!

Okay wait…
Let me wax romantic.
And really
this has always been about romance.
Admit it.
You know I was going there.

When you were a frumpy little girl,
didn’t your grandma take you aside
and tell you there would always be that
significant other waiting for your
tender knock on her back door?
But just think of all the female psyches
you will have tromped
on your way to true love?

Indeed, were it you who desired to go
the eunuch route,
why just think of all those girls
lined up around the block with their
pruning shears in hand.
It might just rival the national lottery.

But enough about you.
It’s this wanker times two in Uttar Pradesh
I’m trying to focus on.
Surely there was that moment
when his Gran Mama took him aside
and said,
“Listen Double D”
(as this was the endearing way
she was prone to address him),
“Listen, for every double digit One,
there a double digit Zero.
It’s all mathematics.
You can’t have One without One-not.
And of course you can’t have Two
without Two-not.”
And he slowly nods his head,
though on the inside,
he doesn’t have a clue
what the fuck she’s talking about.

And little does he know but
just at that moment,
there on the far side of the world in, oh,
let’s say someplace obscure like
Omaha, Nebraska,
some girl is born who is special
in a double Zero way.
And she grows to adulthood.
And she’s there waiting for him.
And… And…
Think of the PASSION to be had!
Think of it!
Visualize it!
Oh My God!

But nooooo.
Double Dickhead wants to be a
single dickhead!

And don’t we have enough of those already?

©07 Jack Hubbell

Nantucket Part Three
A phallus sea of cock-dumb nation,
this should live in the anals of history.
Or her story.
Depends on your pointy bit of view or
lack thereof of pointy out bits for viewing.
Confused?
It don’t mean dick!
Here, let me expound on the meat.

In 2006, Chinese surgeons
performed the world’s first penis transplant,
but… now hold on!
Don’t start getting your hopes up for
all those wee willy wankers you hold so endearing.
There were some short comings.

Turns out the patient and his wife
didn’t like this penis and
had it cut back off.
Wait…
Let this settle in for a bit.
Ponder.
Just ponder the heart rending story of…
What the fuck is wrong with these people?!
Don’t you think that if that guy
sitting over there had a choice
between living with what little penis he has
and having no penis at all,
he wouldn’t opt for the ‘with dangle’
as opposed to ‘dangle not’?
And yet… GAH!!!
This couple in China…
They jointly decide “Um… You know…
Were not entirely fond of this particular penis.
Would you mind ever so if you
took it back?”

“Excuse me sir?
You did not like the penis?
You found the penis wanting?”
“Well it’s just that…”
But his wife cuts him off, and
somewhat demurely interjects,
“It’s just that,
we thought there’d be more.”
“More?” queries the surgeon. “How so?”
And to this the unfulfilled wife
rolls her almond eyes and says,
“More. You know.
I was just hoping for…
more.”
And the surgeon thinks to himself,
“Why you ungrateful bitch!
That was a damn, damn, DAMN fine penis!”
[Note that he thinks all this in Chinese.
It’s not at all funny when you hear it in Chinese.
It’s actually kind of sad.]
“Some guy out there…
Some guy gave his all.
I mean, all that’s of importance
that any one guy can give.”

Oh, there’s a chance that someone somewhere
had one penis too many, but
what are the odds of that, huh?
And so… This Chinese couple…
They take that penis for a ride.
Take it around the block as it were.
And for a short time,some other guy
buried in the grave sans pecker
says, “Death is good.
Take my bat and
hit a homer little fella.”

But no. No and nadda.
She says, “It just doesn’t feel right.”
Okay.
So maybe I can see her point of view.
For her, there is an understandable desire
for “more” all the way to infinity.
That she might have a capacity for love
that only a NASA booster rocket could fill.
We can forgive her insatiable appetite for the
almighty mega-meat cleaver but… him?
To have and have not?
To be or not to be?
To have been a wheel absent pedestrian
and then gone 0 to 60, nitrous oxide,
parking lot to Autobahn,
pulsating penile piston plunging passion
and then…
“Nah. I don’t really care for that…
What is that?
Is that a Yugo? No.
Didn’t have an itty bitty Austin Mini in mind either
though, dang if it ain’t sporty and all.
Rather like the racing stripe
running down the length of it, but…
It’s just that the stripe sorta ends
before it really has a chance to get going.”

And then she steps forward and whispers,
“Since we’re talking in extreme metaphor here,
might I politely ask,
are there any Cadillacs parked back there in your freezer?
Don’t mind if that suckers got
a couple a hundred miles on the dial.
Don’t need no super charger under the hood.


No, as long as that engines got a bumpy cam shaft
that can provide the proper timing ala
thump a thump thump…
You know, get those tires to turn
one full revolution forward,
then I’ll license that pecker
and drive it home.
Might even drive it home repeatedly.”

Okay. So we know she has needs, but
what about the husband?
He’s no dummy.
He’s got goals.
Though he’s being a bit of a
non-dick about it all,
he’s got some ballsy intentions.
Indeed, we must admire his
Nantucket ear fuckit aspiration.

Me? Now, were I to kick the proverbial
don’t that suckit bucket,
I’d love to be there for him.
Indeed, there to fulfill his
phallic lick fantasy, but hey…

Rumor has it I’ve spent my life
driving nothing but a boring old Volvo.
Nothing too racy there.
But… (and I mean a big “but”)
What was mine was me,
and even in death,
I’d like to think I was
rather attached to it.

©07 Jack Hubbell

Nantucket (Part Four)
Okay. It’s been confirmed.
Via scientific research of some sort,
it was recently reported that lesbians
have more orgasms.

I’m gonna be straight up here.
I’m not happy with this.
In fact, I’m sorta depressed.
There is a hypothesis
floating around out there
that we on the male side of the
homo-sapien equation are
insensitive, self-indulgent assholes.
Yes. Some think that.
But I, Fabio that I am,
stand here before you on the verge of tears.

No… Wait…
There just now I started crying.
Oh, but you can’t see it cause we Cro-Magnon
do it on the inside.
Yes. We do it all the time.
It’s just that you are insensitive to
male muy macho emotive fragility.

Lesbians have more orgasms?
How could you?!
How could you do this to us?
Haven’t we always been there for you?
Is there no feature upon us that you
in any way find desirable? No?

And so there we stand,
fresh out of the shower,
toweling down our pathetic
insignificant extremities.
Blubbering fools
we pause to wipe
a large swath of condensation
from the fogged mirror,
and are startled at the sudden appearance
of that which we use to take such pride in.
And now?
Oh you little, little man.
You sad little vienna sausage.
Why, you do not even cast a shadow.
This… [sob]
This is what entropy does to you.

Listen men.
We’ve got to stand up.
We’ve got to rise to the occasion
for we as a
go daddy go go gonad nation
are on the verge of obsolete.
Our testosteroney lonely ponies
are soon to have no saddles cinched
to their buckin’ bronco backs.
What with the power of the genetic clone,
there will soon be no need for
our monkey bars to
spit spumy spermatozoa.

Pay heed to my somber warning.
Two thousand years hence,
the great mothership
(yea, you heard me… MOTHERship!)…
The mothership will return to this spinning nut
to find mankind gone!
Oh… Womankind yes.
We will have womankind.
And those of the mothership will ask the big question.
“So um… These men we’ve heard of…
Just what were they like?”
And the all important answer?
“Who? Whatzat? Oh…
The men you say. [sigh]
We kept them around for awhile to
change tires on cars,
but once we devised ways of transport
beyond big ol’ throbbing dicks-on-wheels,
we pretty much phased them
knuckle-draggers out of business.”

And yet the mega-mammary matrons of the
immaculate mothership
mull the minus of man mislaid.

“So these men,” they coyly ask.
“You have video?”
“Erased it.”
“You have photographs?”
“Burned.”
“You have sculptures?”
“Smashed them all.”
“Oh, but if you’re curious,
there are fossil remains
scattered here and there.”

And so off they go
to dig up a relict of man.
Pulling it forth from the musty ground,
they lay the skeleton next that of a pristine woman’s.
Much deductive analysis later,
they scratch their lofty heads and ask,
“What’s the diff?”
And the women of the Earth respond,
“Trust us.
There was a Yin and
there was a Yang.
This… This before you…
This was man.
And beyond what you see as
some lesser skeletal form, there
was a lot of meat to man. But…
Let’s just say we came to prefer our meat
that of the boneless variety.”

And this men is what orgasms
(or lack there of) did to us.
Lesbians prefer their fish
without those prickly bones.

©07 Jack Hubbell