The Tattooed Poets Project, Day 22: Cody Todd

Today we have two poems from Cody Todd.

The first is called "Boba Fett" and it might be worth checking out, if you haven't already been there, Cody's post over on Tattoosday, where one of his tattoos is a Star Wars-themed back piece that features, among other things, the character of Boba Fett.

Boba Fett

Bad-Ass is as Bad-Ass does. I tilled earth

before the war and knew nothing of greed

or vanity. There once was a woman’s face

I looked forward to after my labor. Her shadow

burns in my helmet, chaffed and singed

as a dead clown’s skull. Pigs are cleaner

than humans, but all deserve to be

on the spit. Any woman can be a wife

for a night. I’ve got more weapons

than my life’s got chances. Money talks,

and the thief and priest abides.

Fire is as humble as a man’s pride

minutes before he begs: sweet hell,

sweet lion’s mouth, headfirst. Mute law

enforcement. Mute victims shot

in the back. Mute tombs kicked in half.

I’d barter light for a necklace of dried eyeballs.

Hell, I’ll trade in that hot-spurred devil himself.

Cody also sent in the following poem, as well:

Currency

Watercolor paintings on the refrigerator.

Watercolor painting of dinner on my plate.

The eyes were flashlights and black holes.

The political party with fire-eaters and acrobats

won the prize.

Mainly, laughter was swept gravel in the street drain.

You could see it the way you see it

eat its cheese: the moon

destroying two heads of glass.

My watch never stopped: spiraling

a miniature tornado atop my wrist.

The beautiful angel adorned with tattoos

from head to toe—plumes of smoke,

the neighborhoods became tears,

in and out of my windshield,

it is a currency between thought and motion.

Cody Todd is the author of To Frankenstein, My Father (2007, Proem Press). His poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain, Faultline, Bat City Review, Salt Hill, The Pedestal and are forthcoming in the Konundrum Engine Literary Review the Columbia Review and the Georgetown Review. He was born and raised in Denver and received an MFA from Western Michigan University. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is a Virginia Middleton Fellow in the PhD program in English-Literature/Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

Thanks to Cody for sharing his work with us here on BillyBlog!