Monday, January 05, 2009




I came across a poet that I find totally awesome today while pretentiously reading The New Yorker online. He is perfectly weird: exquisitely eccentric and intelligently silly. And apparently he happens to teach at Columbia College Chicago. If you like it check out 5 more of his poems.

Alien vs. Predator

by Michael Robbins January 12, 2009 issue of The New Yorker


Praise this world, Rilke says, the jerk.
We’d stay up all night. Every angel’s
berserk. Hell, if you slit monkeys
for a living, you’d pray to me, too.
I’m not so forgiving. I’m rubber, you’re glue.

That elk is such a dick. He’s a space tree
making a ski and a little foam chiropractor.
I set the controls, I pioneer
the seeding of the ionosphere.
I translate the Bible into velociraptor.

In front of Best Buy, the Tibetans are released,
but where’s the whale on stilts that we were promised?
I fight the comets, lick the moon,
pave its lonely streets.
The sandhill cranes make brains look easy.

I go by many names: Buju Banton,
Camel Light, the New York Times.
Point being, rickshaws in Scranton.
I have few legs. I sleep on meat.
I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat.
I freaking love the line "I translate the Bible into velociraptor." Man I wish I could have taken some poetry while I was wasting all that money on a theater degree.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Weirdly, I DO teach at Columbia College, but that's not me. It's my colleague Michael Robins (with one B). This happens to us all the time.

Thanks for the kind words!

Billy Brame said...

Sorry about the sloppy linking. I fixed it up. Heck of a bio by the way.

Anonymous said...

Hi Billy. What are you doing at 6:42:47 PM on Saturday, January 10th 2000 and 10? I happen to be writing you, paying constant partial attention to my little Lexi (who is wide-eye and and drooling over Dora and Diego and Boots the monkey), sweating a little, rested back on a lazyboy, and also writing you a nice little note.

Hope you are well.

I may start writing again. Started a new blog at dandannoodles.net.

Say hi to yourself for me.