[POETRY] Pets Get Pets

PETS GET PETS

by Bud Smith, with illustrations by Michael Seymour Blake

     Around here, everybody is alone. We get pets. The pets eat our loneliness. That’s all they do.

   Other than eating loneliness, they just lay around the apartment, dreaming, Thinking and dreaming. Waiting for the perfect time.

     The dreams lead the days down the conveyor belt.

    The conveyor belt carries the dreams through an invisible wall that no one can cross. The invisible wall radiates loneliness. Our pets have to eat that for us. Or we die.

     I’m a pet. I put on my shoes and my pants and I go outside the apartment and catch an underground train, and I go to a big metal building full of other pets. All of us, we’re pets to countless things.

     Here’s a big one: our computers. The computers glow, and our fingers move on the keyboard and loneliness comes out of the screen like a electric dust attracted to us.

     My dog, Dusty had to get another dog. A dog for her. Pet for a pet.

     The apartment has four walls.

     Dusty also has an invisible wall.

   Where all her dreams are lead, by a conveyor belt of sleep, and waking, and drinking and drooling, eating, bathing, and all the other things us pets do.

    It became too much. She was slobbering on the floor, barking at the closed window. But I trained her to use an iPad.

    Now Dusty has a dog that lives in her mouth. A puppy. She got the puppy off of Craigslist in exchange for biting a man on the neck who likes that kind of thing

    And now the puppy eats her loneliness.

    The puppy living in Dusty’s mouth has pets too, two separate pets, tiny kittens that camp out in Dusty’s ears.

   My computer screen releases a wall of electric dust and it sticks to every fine hair on my body.

That’s okay, the kittens living in Duty’s ears have pets too. They’re two Siamese cats, Error and Terror. They curl up and sleep on Dusty’s eyes. 

     Humming in unison.

     Oh, one more thing, this computer might be a kind of conveyor belt.

    Think I figured that out just now. 

Bud Smith is the author of the novels F 250 and Tollbooth, the short story collection Or Something Like That and the poetry collection Everything Neon. He works heavy construction in NJ and lives in NYC where he has a car he parks on the street like that TV show Seinfeld. 

Michael Seymour Blake is an art creator and admirer, person who says "hello puppy" in a weird voice whenever he sees a dog, and hypochondriac extraordinaire. He has lived in New York his whole life and has a love/hate relationship with it. He likes talking at length about movies, books, and comics, he also enjoys toys, food, and old stuff (but not old food). Email him at SeymourWBlake@gmail.com to talk about things.

[POETRY] Some Monsters I'm Friends With

Some Monsters I'm Friends With

by Bud Smith, with illustrations by Michael Seymour Blake

 

     There was a werewolf who had a drinking problem. She wanted two things very badly, to kick the alcohol, which she felt slowly killing her; but also, to not do anything on a night with a full moon high in the sky, that'd cause her to kill anyone else.

     It was a shame when her AA meeting fell on a full moon night, and she couldn't attend.

     The other people at the meeting survived, but she began to drink again. She had nothing but the bottle.

     There is a vampire who lives above me. Apartment 22. He came down through the ceiling in a green fog and spoke to me in Latin.

     The fog hung over my TV and I was frozen.

     Finally I said "I don't understand Latin."

     And the vampire explained in plain English that he'd once fallen in love with a mermaid griffin and he wanted very badly to find her if there was a way.

     I said, "Did you Facebook her?"

     The vampire was embarrassed, he'd changed into a more humanistic form and opened his hands to reveal ten sharp spikes where fingers should be.

     "It took me ten centuries to figure out how to use my computer and it seems I have forgotten my login password for the wifi."

     There was an uncomfortable pause.

     "You can use my wifi."

     "What's the password?"

     "BreakingBadToTheBone. Capital B breaking capital B bad capital T to capital T the Capital B bone ... All one word, got that? Hold on I'll just use my phone."

    He sat on the couch next to me and I found her, easily enough, she lived in Dusseldorf.

    In her AVI, I could see her eyes were filled with ultimate evil.

    A true world destroyer.

    The vampire who lives in apartment 22 said, "Where is Dusseldorf?"

    "Lemme google map it ... You want directions by car, bus or ..."

    "Do flights, you fool."

    "Did you instant message her?"

    "No."

     "At least IM her, don't just show up like a creep."

     There was a boy who had an alligator face. He wasn't always like that. He woke up that way one day.

     And when he went to school, some of the other kids taunted him about it.

     So he bit another kid on the face. Ripped apart the face.

     Blood everywhere in the hall outside of the art room.

     And that is why you never make fun of a boy with an alligator face unless you are quick like lightning.

     I heard again about the alcoholic werewolf after her car accident.

     She hit a child on a bicycle right on my street. The child lay bleeding in the street. The werewolf leapt out of her Pontiac that was hissing after the side of the church stopped its path.

     The child would have died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

     but before she did

     the werewolf got down on her knees, I saw it with my own eyes peeking out the curtains

     and she bit down on the throat of the child, bit it hard, even more blood spilled on the road.

     when the werewolf vanished into the woods

     She was in the form of a girl I recognized from the bar, think her name is Bonnie ... but the EMTs when they arrived heard the wolf howling in the woods and they told the newspaper it sounded just like crying.

     The vampire upstairs did not find love in Dusseldorf. He comes down through my ceiling and he is weeping too.

     "What happened with the mermaid Frankenstein?" I ask.

     "Don't ask!"

     "Ok. I've got lady problems too. My girlfriend started dating my friend Paul instead."

     "Help me and I'll kill Paul."

     "No we don't have to do that. What happened with your mermaid?"

     "She sent me an electronic telegram on the World Wide Web and when I clicked on the telegram it asked for my name, address and social security number ..."

     "Oh no, you didn't enter that, did you?"

     "Yes! Yes I did! Now my bank account is empty and I find out that my love in Dusseldorf is not who she say she is!"

     "It's probably a hacker in Lithuania."

     "I will go there and find them and you will come with me."

     "I can't," I said, "I have this cat."

     I pointed to the cat.

     The vampire pointed at the cat too and the cat exploded in a whoosh of fur and bones.

     "To Lithuania," he said.

     The little girl from the car wreck wakes up in the morgue.

     She is covered in blood but she had no wounds.

     She is seven years old and her clothes have not been cut off.

     She would not have been cold anyway.

     She left the morgue.

     She went out across the wet lawn.

     Into the big moonlight.

     Many miles away she could hear howling coming from the trees.

     It was her new mother.

     The child began to sprint towards her cries.

     That's how Bonnie got that kid I see her with, she'll pretend she's the kids aunt, that she adopted her because her parents are meth heads but i know the truth, I have gotten tanked with Bonnie and she has told me all about it.

    One last thing

    The boy with the alligator face enters a pie eating contest.

    And he wins.

     No one wants to sit anywhere near him.

     So he is the only one eating pie.

     And at the end, the judges pass him his blue ribbon, tied to a long pole so the boy doesn't bit their hands off.

     There's a prize, too.

     His prize is, a kiss from the prettiest girl in town.

     My ex girlfriend, Shannon.

Bud Smith is the author of the novels F 250 and Tollbooth, the short story collection Or Something Like That and the poetry collection Everything Neon. He works heavy construction in NJ and lives in NYC where he has a car he parks on the street like that TV show Seinfeld. 



Michael Seymour Blake is an art creator and admirer, person who says "hello puppy" in a weird voice whenever he sees a dog, and hypochondriac extraordinaire. He has lived in New York his whole life and has a love/hate relationship with it. He likes talking at length about movies, books, and comics, he also enjoys toys, food, and old stuff (but not old food). Email him at SeymourWBlake@gmail.com to talk about things.