3 Poems

By Brad Liening

from Sick, Poor, and Stupid

One telegenic pastor weeps
Blood from his urethra
Prays so hard his teeth get real white
He is cleansed
He is clean forever
And yea all their puny dicks weeping blood
Trickling down wide marble steps and creeping to the sea
And you can sleep outside in the icy grime
You can do whatever it’s fine
They’ll padlock whatever you’re not allowed to get into

from Sick, Poor, and Stupid

Can you opt to not be part of a larger organ
Like removing a wig at dawn
Thirsty peristalsis of the collective psyche dragging you along
As you struggle against the tentacle wrapped around your ankle
Doom spending doom scrolling doom praying doom masturbating
The State tugging at your fly
It’s gross
Getting cozy with gross bullshit it fawns over itself it’s gross
Asks you to watch asks you to jerk off with them
Asks you to give more time money blood
You can keep your piss
That’s yours

from Sick, Poor, and Stupid

Another tech company abruptly shutters
It’s just a whiff of a memory now wafting around outstanding debts
Now what
They were a vital part of the information ecosystem
And now it’s inefficient and skidding like a shitty moped over a cliff
Into a ravine full of shitty mopeds
Now what about our think pieces
How is the left gonna win back working-class votes
How are jobs gonna come back
Come back
All the wrong kinds of meaninglessness
Press against our lives like neologisms we just don’t get
God’s cruel joke

Brad Liening is a poet living in Minneapolis and at bradliening.blogspot.com. He is the author of You’re Doing It Wrong (Scud 2025).