Notes from the Garage: poetry printed on asbestos

A series of poems inspired by Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

 

Pettibon 84 & 146

We know all roads lead only to the grave
The eternal city
Carcasses lining the way
An ex-wife
Three women
Three aborted children
I ensured they reached their destination before me
Three X’s on a bottle
the outstretched arms of those who drank from it
friends. Lovers. love
On the left: the Hartle-Hawking state
the open wound of Heisenberg’s cut
To the right: the decomposed corpses of Frost’s counterfactual
Gauged like a goy Ginsburg howling:
the way seems so long and we take such little steps

 

Pettibon 85
There were places he took me to – you wouldn’t believe
Jumping into my clothes he took me away:
From ourselves
Leaping into manholes
Crawling through the sewer
Such slight regard
For fraying threads
“Here you go,” he said,
“Just have them dry cleaned”
I can never go home again
Not an inchward

 

Pettibon 86
Sometimes one illustration, well placed, is enough
Though a long parenthesis is what I offer
Its contents passing an inattentive editor
Unduly elongated
Rearranged
Manicured
A product of proofread design
Tree limbs
Detached from the root
It’s Leafs too long
They gather on the ground
Surrounding your abundantly justified no

 

Pettibon 107
Fires start here
I am simply the fan
Oscillating
Industrial
The white noise to your consciousness
Drowning out that shout
That you should not play with matches
I observe the flame

 

Pettibon 111 & 156

My one passion – to me a great passion
Is scratching
Paws of a dog on a wood floor

Sandpaper shorn thin
Pome stones on raw skin
Late night infomercials for the unemployed

It is a fruitless passion:
To moisten dry ink
To rewrite a screenplay already performed