Paulie Lipman is a writer/poet/performer out of Denver, CO. He has been a part of 7 Denver Mercury National Slam Teams(including '04's second place and '06's national champions). In addition to extensively touring the U.S. and Canada, he has self published several chap books and CD's, and was recently included in the Write Bloody Publishing Anthology: The Good Things About America.

Four Poems (January 20, 2011. Issue 24.)

Apology

John Lennon
I am sorry
You told us to imagine and now
all we do is day dream
Not of a better or united world
but one of separate countries, heavens, and religions.
The only time we come together now is
wrapped in the safety of internet’s distance.

I am sorry
We never listened
twisted your lyrics into a hollow karaoke
The only words we can recite with any conviction now
is your eulogy
You laid out the difference between need and want
Love is all and war is over and we ain’t done a god damn thing
to bring about any of them
Mind Games
that’s the only one we ever got right

Karma
moves a lot slower than you thought

Jai Guru Dev Om
“I give thanks to heavenly teacher”

Heaven is the cruelest burden to
lay on anyone’s shoulders
We were so quick
to tack the cross to your back
Christ you know it ain’t easy
We are followers
selfish and scared
We couldn’t hear you over our screaming
and tearing at your robes
We couldn’t care less for your
marriage and children
We needed a father
I’m sorry we
are so small

Forgiveness
is only begged of gods with
hands clasped and heads bowed
Apologies
are what people ask of each other
looking them straight in the eye

I’m sorry that even in death
we couldn’t just let you be
a man
We were too jealous of
the balance you’d found between
fame, art, and family
If you refused to be our messiah
we could just as easily make you
a martyr
Our envy
cracked the sky seven times over Manhattan
leaving 2 sons fatherless, a wife a widow
and the rest of us with nothing

Our karma cannot come quick enough
Mercy is the only thing left
to plead for

You gave us so much
but your songs are only half finished
if all we ever do is listen
Until we all understand and sing back with
even half the love you put into them
only then will we be forgiven
We can finally be more than an audience
We can be human
and decent
It’s the very least we can do

I apologize that this
is all I have to give back to you
heavenly teacher
I know I can call you that now
because even though you hoped
that there was only sky above us
I pray that if there is a Heaven
you are there now

Jai Guru Dev Om

Fight Song
(written for the It Gets Better Project)

Rainbows did not kill them
The colors of their noose
were red, white, and blue

Tell me again, why?
Was it their vibrant color
that set bulls to charge?

Maybe the Bible
seldom read, never once grasped
and bereft of Christ

Like we use
god forsaken for emphasis
and not its true meaning

God did not abandon
these 4, 5, 6 or millions before
That, would be us

Those who vowed to shepherd
all lost souls to heaven
condemn them to burn

Who swore better
lives for their children but
drown their color in ashes

Those who inherit
parent’s hate like good silver
spend it into fists

And the rest of us
who bear all other epithets
keep lips sewn silent

But sulfur will find
other ways inside until
spectrums flow out our eyes

Only so much
silence can be born
until action is all that’s left

For you, with hues locked
behind your teeth, remember
it will get better

The priests, parents, and
pundits who demonize you
will soon be punished

They, have to live their
whole lives, as themselves
This is your vengeance

This is better than
any fist you could throw back
Live, just to spite them

Speak bright, bold sparks while
their grey ash blends to roadside
and irrelevance

Dance brash and loud, live
love wide as your arms will go
Live, hallelujah

Live joyous, like you
never knew its antonym
You are not alone

Please
just live

Charlie Brown Finally Flips Off Lucy

I used to strike out
in tee ball
Every time I stepped up
to the plate, the black plastic stand
would sit there perfectly still
and serenely…mock me

Come on kid.
What’s the problem?
The ball is sitting right there for ya
I ain’t gonna Lucy Van Pelt it
out from under ya
Just.. swing

I knew it could see
the frailness in my arms, skin
roasting lobster tone in the
harsh light of noon
Not to mention the patch
taped over my glasses to
wrangle in my lazy eye
blinding me from the mythical
sweet spot that would
send the ball sailing over all
my inadequacies

You’ll hit it this time
No one’s gonna laugh at you
Just swing

Fuck you, pal

There’s a reason
I had an ulcer
in the 3rd grade
It wasn’t just sports
or the color blind nightmares
my mother forced me into
forming a neon sign over my head
that might as well have said:

Please
Beat me
Hard

It was the fact that
none of these things
made me a freak
I did that
just by speaking

As a kid
I preferred open palms
trusting, vulnerable
and always reaching
It wasn’t until they’d been
spit into so many times
that they atrophied into
Louisville pine, still
too timid to strike, so
I took them to my own head
until my stitching split and my fists
wore down to nubs with one
prominent splinter:
Fuck you, pal

Its wasn’t me against the world
just most of it, but there’s a bunch
of us splinter fingered kids
This is our flag
A flickering light bulb that
attracts all the other like minded moths
ugly and tattered nevermind, but
always grateful for our gift of flight
We are fringe, freaks
Our whole lives
have been a series of misses
Most of the time
those smug, crafty bastards will
Charlie Brown out of nowhere and
pull the ball out from under us
but every once in a while, we connect
and sail past the fence glowing like glorious
bastard constellations

Just swing

Oh you best believe we will
and you
had better fucking duck

Thomas of Pomona

Sorry, Big Guy
but due to your rigid criteria

and lengthy application process, sometimes
we just have to make our own saints

We slapdash them in stained glass paint
mixed with our daily frustration,
wind, and whimsy

Horace
protector of blown tires
Philomena, champion of
cracked back, side walk mothers
Chester
the patron of cracked harmonicas
Zevo
custodian of sad melody

Others
are stamped in ink blood
wrapped in the merchandise necessary
for modern day martyrs
Che of Rosario
Martin of Atlanta
Ian of Manchester
and
John of Liverpool

But mine still walks
singing golden whiskey razors
cloaked in thrift torn shroud, swaggering
unrepentantly
Cracked rear views
carnivals
blown out Chevy’s
drunken pianos
box car jumping
and late night heart break
These
are all his province

St. Thomas of Pomona

His anointment
is black coal and greasepaint
His altar, a Bally tent
No one
speaks side show anymore
We are too timid to walk
the back alleys of our own deformities
Our hearts

have ceased to story

imaginations gone hard ‘round the edges
leaving us nothing but cold analysis, banishing
all of the shadows

Our sin
is all evil and no lesson when
dragged back to the guilty light of noon
We congregation, are ready to end the
rough hewn repentance of this boxcar confessional
and be reborn, bathed
in the night flare of Alabama 3 am

High priest of
Pork Pie Hat
We
have come to sit in the flicker of
your trackside tire fire
Cast your crooked light into the
black boogie dark and
report back to us

Regale us
with song
and
watch over us in this,
our time of conformity
Protect us
the true freaks, on the wrong side
of the geek’s cage

Amen