Welcome to the Fortress of Solitude

for Bill Merricle

By Chris Toll

Rain fell into my father’s hot chocolate.
I inherited his blood.
It’s gasoline.
He didn’t forget to give me his tears.
A ninja does a double somersault
and lands on top
of the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
She buries her spear in the dinosaur’s right eye.
An Apache fires a shotgun
at the creature
with five eyestalks that never stop moving.
T.S. “Tough Stool” Eliot weeps on a precipice.
He would have buttfucked Billy Miracle,
but Billy couldn’t sit in a speeding vehicle
and drink coffee without spilling it on his shirt
at the same time.
Being drunk was no excuse.
An assassin whose braided brain hangs down her back
materializes in front of a British commando.
His right hand claws at the crystal knife in his chest.
He disappears and the assassin catches the falling knife.
It killed his mother before he was born.

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I Take the Blue Pill and the Red Pill

Three Poems by Chris Toll

1. Perfect Love

When stars steal the sky,
after the electronic campfires
are quiet,
a collection of antimatter logarithms
(BKA Jesus)
walks through every doorway,
stands over every bed,
and lays a singing hand on every brow,
“O giant in chains,
O darling,
let the eternal divine feminine energy
awaken within you.”

2. The Third Station of the Double-Crossed

I build my mansion
on a thunderbolt.
Attorneys are movie stars,
movie stars are junkies,
and rivers are blood.
Why is justice just ice?
The first shall be fast
and the last shall be lost.
Love has no rules.
A woman wearing a dog collar
and a wedding gown
is weeping in the rain.
My mission is so secret
I don’t know it myself.

3. Listening to the Sex Gods of Mars

Jackson Browne
was famous long ago
for playing an electric violin.
In Psalm 547,
Peter Pan
leads an army of Yodas,
a swift tumbles
from her paper prison,
and I button your cardigan.
The waitron unit
locks the bathroom door
and uses her driver’s license
to chop up a blizzard
on the edge of the sink.
I write poems now
so that noday noI will write rosebushes.

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Is the Bear in the Woods a Catholic?

By Chris Toll

A friend of the backbeat
is a friend of mine.
The hard times are behind me,
60 is the new 16,
and 28 is the new 53.
A priest opens a door,
opens his black umbrella,
and steps into a hymn.
I hate reality,
the Society of Susans finds a trophy in entropy,
and your eyes say, “Yes!”
The Indifferent Joker
guards his hoard of paper clips.
I’ll be a desperate 17-year-old bisexual virgin
till the day I die
(my friends will snort my ashes off the kitchen table).

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No Blues Blues #43

By Chris Toll

I call my sickness the Guest.
The Guest will speak now.
On the steps of the Winter Palace,
the guards turned
and fired their carbines
at the Reptilian Overlords.
I used to be the King of Hell.
The Overmind of a praying mantis
loves your Higher Self.
A robin retires from a branch
and resumes his Intransigent Grace.
Jessica the Christ will have miracles
crackling through Her fingertips.
The ache in my heart lets me know you exist.

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I Can’t Stand Along the Watchtower

By Chris Toll

Many are stalled,
but few are frozen.
Emily sits on the edge of my bed
and says, “You can’t go on
without an image from your dreams.”
I throw my saddle
on the spider’s back.
Why is a path in antipathy?
Why is Ant in Antichrist?
Anger drives a midsize luxury sedan
and a cheetah sleeps on an adverb.
Ruth doesn’t belong in a poem
unless she’s wearing a wig
and paying cash for a train ticket.

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