Sport

a well trained baboon
could kick our ass at most sports

gymnastics and powerlifting
and pretty much every martial art
the best ufc fighter in the world
wouldn’t last five seconds
with a hamadryas in heat

team sports like football
might be a challenge at first
but baboons are herd animals
and could learn to huddle up
as long as their teammates
don’t mind being groomed

there are many arenas in which
humans are superior to baboons
like writing sonnets or doing algebra
we don’t consider these sports
but maybe baboons do

maybe deep in the jungle
they’re holding a math olympiad as we speak
smacking each other
on the bright red butt
every time they solve an equation

–

The Definitive Guide to Stereotyping

there are three kinds of people in this world
big ones medium ones and small ones

big people are forty six feet tall
with black hair and bushy eyebrows
they eat tree tops
drink cloud vapor
and sleep on airport runways

medium people are five foot seven
have two point five kids
and work in the finance sector
they have accent tables from crate and barrel
and pomeranians named pikachu

small people
well it’s not polite to call them small
please refer to them as
people who have been systematically repressed by gravity

all people in the world
fit exactly into one of these categories
and if you don’t agree with me
then you are an ignorant racist
the end

–

Killing Time

i need to kill some time
is a terrible thing to say
life is short enough
without us needing to murder
its constituents

and anyway
we got it all backwards
time is the true killer
hiding behind the curtains
waiting to hack away at our weekend
when we doze off on the couch

it would be great
if instead of killing time
we could savor it or bask in it
but time
is not on our side

at best
time can be a friendly landlord
who we don’t mind most of the time
but who we’re always going to hate a bit
when rent is due

————

Andrew W. Turner did stand-up for a few years in New York City, and has been writing poetry his whole life, alone and in the dark. Recently he’s been attempting to fuse the two genres. His poems are ideally meant to be read aloud to drunk people, but hopefully they’re fun on the page as well.