KNUCKLE DUSTER JONAH ORT
Knuckleduster. A book of poetry by Jonah Ort. Knuckleduster. A book of poetry by Jonah Ort. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. KnuckeldusterA . bookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. KnuckeldusterA . bookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster.AbookofpoetrybyJonahOrt. Knuckleduster. A book of poetry by Jonah Ort. Knuckleduster. A book of poetry by Jonah Ort.
Dedicated to my mother, father, brother. Madison Smith. Steve Roggenbuck. Donkey Coffee. Facebook and Tumblr. To all the family and friends that have shown me support: you are the reason I write. Thank you.
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Introduction Introduction Introduction I want to write the blues of our anxious generation. I want to write poetry for our manic pixie dream girl collective consciousness. I want you to quote this poem on Facebook and I hope it gets you 30 likes. I want to write poetry that’s the knuckleduster digging into your stomach. I want to write poetry that makes you lay back and smoke a cigarette. I want to write poetry that’ll pull you out of a depression and dunk you back in again. I want to write poetry that destroys the walls of a cetaminophen lining lit majors’ stomachs. I want to write poetry so strong it’ll rub off the sharpie-marker X’s on the tops of your hands. I want my poetry to hurt you. I want my poetry to help you. I want to write poetry that’s the knuckleduster digging into your stomach.
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State of the Union There are twelve naked pictures of you on my cell phone since I backed up and restored it last week and the government is closed today. I walked to class and saw someone writing in chalk: “IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU ARE WITHIN THE 5% MOST WEALTHY IN THE WORLD. WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?” and I saw a ghost writing under it “Spend money and die, just like you.” When I was little I saw a bird carrying a cigarette butt in its beak and made it part of its nest in the fern hanging in my porch and I pray that’s what always happens when birds pick up cigarette butts and that’s a lie. I stepped into the classroom building and I picked a scab in my nostril and it bled for an hour and the professor crossed his arms and asked “What do you want to do when you grow up?” and the phrase repeated: spend money and die just like you.
My Record Player Is Broken This is life looking down the barrel of a knuckle-duster. It’s a saturday night and my neighbor just called his girlfriend a whore and I am busy coping with the fact that there are homeless people sleeping on concrete and I’m here feeling anxious with a warm bed and a full belly. This is life looking down the barrel of a knuckle-duster, this is sleeping on the floor hoping it’ll do something, anything, like how finishing your plate will save the starving kids in Africa, and my neighbor is screaming now, and he is wondering who those guys were, what was his girlfriend doing drinking with those guys, the door slammed and that’s the last thing I heard before falling asleep. I want to learn alchemy so that I can transmute my bullshit into charitable donations and I’m not saying I’m above it all, I am saying I am so far below it I’ve hit rock bottom and all I can do is look up from here-and this is life looking down the barrel of a knuckle-duster and this is life looking up at your ceiling for an answer and this is life giving you everything and nothing all at once, always.
Allcaps Before I left my grandparent’s house last Sunday a Viagra commercial played and said “Make sure your heart is healthy enough to have sex” and that’s the best advice I’ve heard all week. The man in the commercial ran his muscular fingers through his well-combed, touch-of-gray, salt-and-pepper hair in the same way I pushed my hair back on the drive home. Every-so-often you’d see a barn on the edge of the highway with big yellow text that read “CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO” and for a second I considered it. At the gas station a motorcycle backfired and it startled me and I told myself to man up but I have manned up enough times, I think. I slapped a kid in summer camp and made him cry and I thought of the Army Strong ad campaign and back then I knew for sure that I could kill someone if my country needed me to. In this country of direct commands and all-capital lettering there is a highway where the sun is always setting in your eyes no matter what direction you are going, where the men adjust their stiff flannel collars and pat your shoulder with fatherly authority and, with cracked bottom lip full of tobacco, spit malevolently, and tell you to man up, get your dick hard, and make sure your heart is healthy enough to have sex.
Bathing Suits We were in bathing suits in the jacuzzi-bathtub in what used to be my mother’s and father’s bathroom but now it’s just my father’s. I had to splash water around the tub to drain the dust and rinse the residue from the bottom. You have to wait a while for the water to cover up the jacuzzi jets in order to turn them on. I flipped the switch and the tub filled up with bubbles and you got in first and I came in after. We sat on opposite ends making sure our knees didn’t touch; We didn’t say much. In a short while I got overheated and sleepy and asked if you wanted to take a nap and you said “Sure but I’ll sleep on the couch and you can take the bed” and I said “Of course; that’s what I wanted anyway.” I didn’t sleep but I dreamed about what it’s like to trick yourself into being in love. I didn’t sleep but I heard your dreams loud and clear down the hallway and they sounded uglier than my pruned fingers.
Empty Plot of Land There used to be a mental hospital next to my University. There’s a large cemetery next to the facility. All of the graves are numbered; only numbered. I hiked there three months ago and saw that grave numbered “420� was missing. A cruel laugh, a bit lip, a heavy heart. I died a bit when I noticed it; but I could not have died more than the human being buried underneath that empty plot of land.
Mostly Empty I am in the bathroom pouring mostly-empty cans of Mountain Dew Code Red and slightly-less-empty cans of Arizona Southern Style Sweet Tea down the sink. I drink them mostly and the cans cling to my desk. I have a problem finishing them off. My friend messages me and tells me that I have shit that I need to sort out as I throw the cans into the trash.
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Where Did The Wolf Spiders Go? This is the closet where I used to perform seances when I was a child. One time my great-grandmother reached out to touch my shoulders and said “You’re gonna get hurt one day” then she vanished completely. You were sick on the day we broke up and you called me a faggot once and I wondered what that meant coming from you. I watched Clockwork Orange on my laptop in the loft and you came up and just sat across from me and I didn’t breathe and my friend’s mom was afraid you’d stab me in my sleep that night. Your dad paid me $50 to mow the grass that weekend, he told me to do as much as I could but to take breaks often, it was hot that summer and the wolf spiders would scurry out from where I was stepping and I spent that $50 on Pokemon cards because I wanted to find that child again, I wanted to feel those phantom hands on my shoulders and I wanted to turn around and grab my great-grandmother and ask: “Why didn’t you warn me? How could you let this child suffer? Where did the wolf spiders go?”
Cerulean We used to be kids but now we all like hummus. When you see the flies in your wineglass remember that this is the blood of christ and that is how you’re choosing to get fucked up tonight and I started drinking black coffee after my grandpa died and I wonder if that’s what the kid in me would’ve wanted. I am trying to write a poem about growing up but my thought process is breaking like crayons and I was always afraid to draw with cerulean because if it broke my heart would break with it. Every night my mom would sit with a wineglass in her hand and ask me “what the fuck are you doing?” and it’s taken me five long, horrific years to come up with the answer and the answer is growing up; with alcoholism inside of my fingers, ready to snap them like cerulean crayons and ready to use the broken halves until you just can’t keep drawing anymore.
College Stuff I heard you snorted adderall in college. When I see you we’re still 15, jumping off of swings and landing on our backs. It was worth the laughter even if my back hurt for a week. But I guess we had to grow up eventually, I mean, I’m the one with the job at the factory, paying for my own meals, and when I get home my back hurts too, but it isn’t quite the same.
The Quietest Sound Ever Made Give me the biggest band-aids available in the medicine cabinet and I will stick them to the middle of your chests where your hearts are and I will write “Get well soon!� in Sharpie marker on them. I am writing a poem about how much it sucks when your best friends fall in and out of love. I am deciding whether or not to invite them both to my birthday party. I am wondering whether or not it will hurt when you guys take those bandages off. The quietest sound ever made will be when you pick the adhesive off each other with your dirty fingernails and flick it against the wall.
California/ Hypochondria Every time I take a Xanax I become acutely aware that I now have one less Xanax and it’s beginning to make taking a Xanax not worth it in the first place. I miss Los Angeles and its billboards and I miss the fact that you can plant any type of tree in California and it will grow, and if our love was a tree it would be a thirty-foot Catalina Ironwood growing off an exit to the 405. I’ve had a sinus infection for the past month and a half and CNN told me that if you wake up with headaches there’s a chance it’s brain cancer and that’s why I have one less Xanax and that’s why I slept for 3 hours on Saturday and that’s why I forgot to text you back. CNN also told me that Los Angeles is the 3rd most-polluted city in the United States of America and the wildlife and vegetation are adversely impacted but our Catalina Ironwood, standing up to 15-meters tall, will rise above the smog and the billboards, reaching defiantly and wildly towards Heaven and not even Arnold Schwarzenegger can tear it down.
Heartbreak In The Time of The Polar Vortex My electric blanket doesn’t keep me warm anymore. I took a hot shower and every time the toilet flushed I felt the same sting on my back and thought of you. I thought of you because I realized we’ve had the same thing stolen from us and we’ve had our faces frozen and our backs burned. We’ve rolled on our sides in the same way and hoped we could warm up again. But where will we go when we wake up one morning and feel disgusting? It’s too cold to get coffee and all the flights are cancelled. If we go outside there will be questions that will leave our lips frozen shut. We’ll realize that we can never be pure like the snow that kills batteries and freezes pipes. We’re left with a windchill in our stomachs. This is heartbreak in the time of the polar vortex.
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Porch Lights I went outside last night on my porch to try and have an intimate experience with nature but the giant moths that flew around the porch lights made me nervous and I went inside. My bed smells like pornography. There are 15 bottles of homeopathic sleep aids in my nightstand drawer. In 8th grade I tried to overdose on melatonin pills. In Sunday School they would ask us what the best part of our week was. I’d raise my hand and talk about how melatonin pills don’t do shit, and how I wanted to have a spiritual experience, I tried my very best to find this great Earth that God gave to us but I never found it, instead I was too afraid of moths.
Three Mountains Here are my Three Mountains: the Appalachians, The Smokies, the Sierra Nevadas. I have sprained my ankle on all of them. In the shadow of the Appalachians I had a dream you hurt yourself -- and it was true, you drew the Chinese Symbol for Three Mountains on your hand with nail clippers and the mountains trembled. In the foothills of the Smokies I found out I didn’t love you anymore and I shivered in the mountain’s presence and the pine trees bit their lips and sighed along with me. In the valleys of the Sierra Nevada I fell in love in the morning in the light coming through the windowsill and I fell in love on the paths leading to the summits and I fell in love with a girl in zero percent humidity and I sprained my ankle but I didn’t think of you.
Fertilizer I saw them laying hay out in front of my building and roping off the muddy lawn. Late at night I caught them prying bricks from the walkways and putting new ones in their place as if nothing happened. The fountains are busy collecting rainwater and algae and disease, the water sits there and reflects nothing. Last night I saw them, the kids stomped down the ropes and threw their cigarettes into the fountains and walked across the virgin hay-the word “cunt� is etched into the bathroom stall, I read it every day.
Acorns They don’t put up the Goodyear Blimp as much as they used to and when I realized it was just a floating advertisement I cringed when I saw it flying up Interstate 76 (I remember my car pulling to the side a bit, maybe part of it wanted to go home). When the rubber industry died it made the sound of rusty gears, a car with no oil, the Black Keys’ first album. This is where the rust belt starts and it flakes across the Midwest like malt-liquor-flavored galaxies, brown speckles of an egg, or scattered, dead leaves.
Shoot The Rapids I went white-water rafting once on the Chattooga river in North Carolina and I was the only one in the group that fell out of the raft and the tour-guide in the back grabbed me by the lifevest and pulled me out of the freezing water. I scraped my knee on a big, flat rock where a scene from the movie Deliverance was shot. It was bleeding on the raft and I tried to wipe it off best I could. I am now in a kayak going over a fucking waterfall with an instructor behind me telling me to “Brace, brace!” and I am going through backwards and if I died right now it would be absolutely horrifying for everybody involved and if I at least came close to death, when the instructor cracks my ribs and resuscitates me, I can point you out and scream, smiling “I told you I couldn’t do it! This proves it!” Because you already shot through the rapids and came out completely fine even though the water feels like cold painlessness, bitter like death spikes, clearer than the fatality of the sharp rocks on the riverbed. It would be quick, not like drowning. (I didn’t even want to come kayaking, and I’m more interested in how silly everyone looks with their torsos popping out of their boats as if everyone’s a double-amputee paddling away)
Dogs Don`t Smile, They`re Just Panting I Someone on Facebook said that babies can see the ghosts of dead relatives that didn’t get the chance to meet them. I went outside to catch a breath and capture the beauty of the world because I realized that dogs aren’t actually smiling, they’re just panting because they’re hot. I knew that before but it never really hit me. II It was cold but all the chubby frat boys were wearing shorts. The sun was setting and the sky was the color of expensive charcoal pencils and it smelled like Georgia for a second. Gasoline and tobacco and the humidity before a rain. I stood and shuddered just because I could. III Someone on Facebook shared a quiz that discerned how gay you are. I took it and got “Kinda Gay” and I guess it made sense. I walked to the BP to get a pack of cigarettes and the cashier didn’t card me. He had a Black Flag tattoo and I complimented him on it and he just nodded. I walked out, lit a cigarette and began to walk home. IV My stomach hurt and my head rushed and I felt kinda gay. The sky went from HB 03 to HB 05 and the kids started walking to the bars and all the hats were turning backwards and I sneezed only once which I count as a good omen. I walked into my dorm and thought about how dogs don’t smile and how babies see ghosts and I shuddered just because I could.
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Your Low Balance Alert From Chase It is 5:37 PM and it is already getting dark and it was 60 degrees in November today and I’m drawing ever-closer towards a negative balance in my checking account and I’m drawing ever-closer to a positive balance in my existential worldview and a girl caught me talking to a squirrel today and it froze, and it looked up at me with absolute terror in its eyes, and I told him that he is a beautiful creature of God and that I hope he makes it through the winter and the girl snickers at me but I didn’t say a thing-we learned about Ghandi in my religion studies class and I don’t think he would’ve called her a bitch under his breath and everything is like Ghandi in the sense that everything suffers, and everything gets cold in the winter and every wild animal is more afraid of you than you are of it and that fact gets truer every single day.
Companion Piece It is only November 11th and it’s already fucking snowing in my Animal Crossing town and I want to catch a cold soon so I can stay in bed for a while. I applied for a job yesterday and I won’t get it but I can tell my parents I’m trying at least; sometimes at least is the best you can do and I’m grateful that at least if I run out of money I can start eating my record collection and I can burn my thrift-store t-shirts for warmth and I’m not sad enough to write good poetry this week but I’m not quite happy enough not to try.
Three Comparisons If you were a cheap gas-station cigar you would be a Wine-flavored, wood-tipped Black & Mild and I would buy a 6 pack of you and I wouldn’t inhale but I’d enjoy you slowly, when I come home I would smell of you, if I left you out in the open my room would smell all of you, and if anyone says that Black & Milds smell bad then fuck ‘em. If you were a middle-school lunch you would be Bosco Sticks, pepperoni-filled, cooked to perfection, I’d pat the grease with a napkin and eat it along with the gross mashed potatoes and string cheese and I would drink a paper carton of gen-u-ine TruMoo chocolate milk with the crossword on that back and the first word I’d find is your name. If you were a pair of flip-flops from Dick’s Sporting Goods you would be those black-and-white Adidas flip flops with the pressure points drawn on them and you would be in the clearance aisle and you would be a steal and I would be so excited to have found you that I would buy you, put you on my feet and wear you out of the store.
Another Poem About Green Tea If I’ve had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say “Can we be best friends like we used to?” I’d have one dollar. I want my sweatshirt back. It used to keep me warm. There’s a piece of me in that sweatshirt. My grandmother stitched it up after I ripped it jumping off of the swings when I was 15. God gave me the dollar he owed me after you said that and I spent it on an Arizona Green tea. Before you ask; yes, it tasted heavenly.
Crying in a 7/11 My mother died and I didn’t shit for a week straight. I went into a 7/11 looking for Mountain Dew Game Fuel but they didn’t have it even though there were ads for it out front and I was prepared to buy both flavors, the purple one and the red one, and I almost cried about it. My aunt said that people react to grief in different ways, you will find yourself crying for no real reason, little things will remind you of the ones you’ve lost, like I can’t listen to Dave Matthews Band ever again but that’s okay because they suck anyway.
Layover Nobody told me buses had layovers. It’s eight hours from Atlanta to Columbus. I’m spending three of those hours in a Starbucks in Cincinnati. I’m sitting next to a girl I met on the bus from Macon, Georgia. She told me her hobbies are “Creative writing and smoking hella weed.” She was carrying a rough copy of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”. She had a southern accent. Sitting with us is a big guy, early twenties. Full beard and a kind face. We ask him where he’s headed. He says Marietta, to see his son. His name is Copper and he is three years old and he lives with his mother. The girl says she’s headed to Columbus where her brother lives. “He’s the only family I’ve got.” she says. The guy lends her a dollar-fifty to buy a hot chocolate. She thanks him. As she walks off the guy gets a phone call. He answers and he looks worried and I remember him saying “I don’t want to argue, I just want to talk to my son.” The girl comes back, cup in hand. There’s a short pause and the guy’s face light’s up “Hey buddy!”, he says, “How are you doing? I’m excited to see you!” He talks for a little while and hangs up, smiling just a bit.
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In That Instant Somewhere in Clymer, New York I almost split my leg in two and somewhere in Bath, Ohio I looked at porn on a PSP and somewhere in Marietta, Georgia I cried in a basement and the sky turned navy blue and in that instant I knew that a kid somewhere in Clymer, New York is missing the gap between the jumps in the terrain park and he is swearing that he heard a crack when he landed and in that instant he knew that somewhere in Bath, Ohio there is a kid figuring out what girls look like naked and in that instant he looked toward Marietta, Georgia, rolled over, and fell asleep forever.
Catch Somewhere in an empty drainage pipe I was told I was a bad kisser and I was told I was going too fast and I remember hearing the word “shucks”. It is the sound made when you’re putting on a t-shirt too early in the morning and your hand catches on the ceiling fan. It is the light-headedness after your first cigarette and it is the stomachache afterwards. It echoes through every empty drainage pipe and it catches you like dirty water on the ass of your favorite pair of jeans.
A Little Extra I am afraid of you, Atlanta; you stole my lunch money. I have been in your veins, Atlanta, your subway system (a crackhead borrowed my phone on the red line; she had the kindest smile). Atlanta, I saw a lady get her purse stolen. The guards chased him but I don’t think they caught it; when will you give it back to her, Atlanta? Atlanta, my father sits in traffic for four hours a day. I’d like to think you’ll give him that time back eventually but you learn that Atlanta mostly takes and gives nothing in return. A homeless man with crutches hobbled over to me once and asked for $5, I obliged. As I drove away I saw him laughing, carrying his crutches under his right arm. I couldn’t get angry, Atlanta; the city has taken more from him than I can imagine. The city will get its five dollars back (and a little extra, too).
Summer of No (2011) That summer was a summer of “no”. My grandmother used to be an alcoholic. Now her purse and shoes always match. “No, we will not kiss ever again.” “No, we will not see that movie.” “No, you will not get satisfaction.” I bought twenty-one records and dozens of Peace Teas and I listened all the way through only half of those records and I don’t remember about the Peace Teas. I am deranged, laying on my carpet while a Black Sabbath record spins on the run-out groove, and I realize that this entire month has been one giant run-out groove spinning haphazardly closer and closer to resolution and satisfaction but never quite getting there, never quite getting there, never quite getting there. I am a skip on a record when you dropped and caught it with your uncut fingernails last June.
What Self-Actualization Means Now Some people say that when Macho Man Randy Savage had a massive heart attack while driving, he steered into the trees so that he wouldn’t get anyone hurt or killed as he lost control of his car. At the moment his Jeep Wrangler smashed into the tree, the frontend crumpled, Randy’s body, athletic and rugged, was still no match. The bell had no time to ring thrice, and if it did you wouldn’t hear it. And one may ask what really happened May 20th, 2011, when Macho Man Randy Savage felt the avalanche in his chest, the waves in his vision, and I’d say he ran himself off the road, because he’s hurt people his entire life, and he figured stopping then was as good a time as any.
Every-So-Often Every-so-often my neck will ache in the spot where you used to bite it and I catch myself rolling my neck on instinct; so I’m sitting in class rolling my neck thinking about how good you look in camouflage coats and sun-dresses and how when you’re naked I can count your freckles and create constellations (one constellation is called “Something About True Love and The Sound of Your Breath”). So I’m rolling my neck thinking of rolling around in bed with you and how your hair smells like a very very clean thrift store; (I mean that as a compliment with the utmost sincerity and compassion)
FINISH FINISH FINISH FINISH Thank you so much for reading. Knuckleduster was written over the span of a year. An extra thanks to everyone who gave me support. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Jonah Ort n9volt@gmail.com cryatflowers.tumblr.com