I HATE BRIAN KEENE by Tim Wick

My good friend Tim Wick (member of The Dregs) participated in this year's CONvergence Con Iron Artist event. In Iron Artist, a group of artists have approximately half an hour to create an original composition (painting, sculpture, sequential comic page, etc) based on "ingredients" provided by a guest. This year, I was that guest, and the ingredients I provided were snippets from Castaways, Jack's Magic Beans, Doom Patrol #16, Clickers III: Dagon Rising, and a canker sore shaped like our good friend, DC Comics artist Christopher Jones.

As one of the contestants, Tim's art was the following beat poem, which incorporates ingredients from all of the books mentioned above, as well as the canker sore. It's called… I Hate Brian Keene*.

The monsters came from the woods

Like vegetable Natalie Wood

Their curved black talons coming out of the leaves

A zombie salad, if you can believe

Monkeys

Monkeys

Monkeys

These were not monkeys

They were like a steampunk Robotman

Monster Volkswagen man

Only made of lettuce

At the Save-A-Lot

Like monkeys but not

Their high-pitched voices

Crunching stupid boy's bones

Growing canker sores of Christopher Jones

Crabs, lobsters, and scorpions

What happened to the monkey?

The monkey

The monkey

The old bag with the lettuce

Does she have the monkey?

Blood, death, and Brian Keene

Does anyone understand what I mean?

Of course you do

You have taste

Like a girl trapped in a Volkswagon bug

Caught in a lobster-claw bear hug

Shocked by a spark plug

Death will take her soon

But not to Mars

Because there are no Volkswagen cars

Or monkeys

or death

or lettuce

with teeth

Life is pain

I hate Brian Keene

*The original poem included doodles, but I've yet to unpack the scanner since the move, so I cannot include them here.