Chris Skiles
Earl McSwagger sleeps
In a trenchcoat in sunglasses,—
the collars pulled up.
Earl McSwagger brushes his teeth
With sulphuric acid, to make them more shiny.
Earl McSwagger has a dog that sleeps at his feet;
He calls him the “Duke of Earl.”
Earl McSwagger sleeps on a rug
He fashioned himself, from the bull
that killed the President of Columbia.
Part II.
Earl McSwagger lives in a tiny house
Him and his dad built.
In bursts Satan Gang.
While Earl McSwagger’s sleeping.
He pulls out his gun, but knows
His arm is not right; might break,
After Dr. Sol sewed him up wrong
In Nicaraugua.
He knows he must pull the
Trigger, before his arm breaks
The tendon in the fractured bone.
And he does. The leader collapses dead
Off the porch, Like turds pressed
Out of a can.
Earl McSwagger blows off his gun,
And goes back to sleep.
Part III.
The Next day Earl McSwagger
Is reading the Newspaper, and he
Sees someone calling himself
“Earl McSwagger,” And Earl
McSwagger, he sighs, and
Says, “People can try, but Nobody
could be me.”
Pt. IV
Earl McSwagger smokes cigarettes.
When he runs out of cigarettes, he smokes a pipe.
When he runs out of pipe, he smokes his fingernails, which are
illegal in 48 states.
Earl McSwagger
Killed a man—
The gun didn’t taste so good
he didn’t pull the trigger.
Earl McSwagger made a porno once
But it was banned, for blood
But not from the woman’s crotch—
The come came like a gunshot.
Earl McSwagger
Doesn’t sleep with women
Because it’s always them
Who don’t call the next day
Instead sleeping with every man they see
Because he made them feel inferior.
Earl McSwagger likes the Beatles
But doesn’t always listen to them;
He prefers classical sometimes,
Over John Lennon.
Earl McSwagger
Thinks video-games are for the weak-minded
Fools, but maybe
That’s why girls like them.
Someone wrote a poem about Earl McSwagger, once
A man on a mountain.
Had a crazy beard—
No one liked him.
Except maybe the bears.
Maybe they cared.
Earl McSwagger
Is a double agent.
He spies on who he wants
On how he’s feeling that day; no one
Disagrees.
At the annual Christmas party,
He was confronted by his boss
But the port worked nicely.
Earl Swagger lives in Alaska
In the shade of the mountain.
The sitka pines grow tall
The sun sets outside his lake.
Earl McSwagger was once
Kicked out of France
For climbing the Eiffel Tower, nude
The girls disagreed, disapproved
He should have worm something,
An American Flag perhaps.
But the crotch was disappointing.
The P.M. asked him back
Because there was something about his back
That needed breaking.
But there’s another poem in the making.
Earl McSwagger runs ultra marathons
He likes to train in quakes;
He says there good for his quads.
In California
Earl McSwagger found gold
But gave it to orphans—
it weighed too much.
Somebody tried to rob him of it
But he slipped into a arroyo
And slid down the mountain, telling that mountain
To eat the man.
The mountain said, “Really? He hasn’t showered in weeks!”
So Earl McSwagger washed the man in the stream
Making sure to get behind the ears
Before the mountain had man on the cob.
It spared the rubber ducky.
“Something’s fucky,” Earl MCSwagger said.
And hitched on an eagle’s back
Back to Alaska,
Where he watched the sun set,
Over the lake,
Behind the pines.
The Catholic church
Once asked Earl McSwagger for advice.
Earl McSwagger declined, for now, saying
God would get back to him.