We begin with laughter
Get here, bruh, intoxicated, bruh
Two drinks & now you buggin', bruh
You can't guzzle this bittersweet liquor,
You're swayin' bruh, I'm just sayin', bruh
It’s a visual metaphor for an emotion
that, yes, doesn’t exist for you
But metaphors are better than
nothing for softening your steel
“I don’t care about your miserable shit life!”
A punch in the arm to me and she was spinning,
eyes flashing, body flouncing, door slammin’
pure D love a pass/fail stompin’ up the stairs,
This was the year Russian hackers
stole everything including our will
to live: fire sale for heart-shaped
boxes and personal ambitions on
the deep web, bitcoin only please.
The first thing we noticed about the rocketship perched on the roof of Hogan’s Bar & Grill was its small size, like a VW bus decked out in alien peace symbols, webbed in light, rocking as if at sea.
where a series of confused earthquakes makes for a new error of Holy Roman roadway. Or to
make a fairer era get off the road, hey, and let’s get some crab soup on this rainy day
stretching to halt these DTs like we gotta throttle the weather how we want it to be how
a topic they’re naive in. a society
misperceived. my complexity thieved
of its difficulty. no one said love.
The lining on Mr. Chepman's blue Upper Valley Cab Co. jacket looks like the interior of his car and he is driving it two buildings over to pick up Mrs. Plarst for her dialysis ride. She hates him because he plays Motown Mornings on Oldies WLLZ, and he hates her because he has to fold up her walker and put it in his trunk.
That boy said it’s all monkey talk listen he said. I wasn’t to listen but Jake’s door was open because I was to. It’s what you do he said, how the thing is done is nothing but whispering in the library, the boy said you won’t. I’m not approved of Jake and you won’t stand up but that’s not how things are done is it Jake what am I supposed to do then?
Must have at least (45) forty-five Concessions.
some Educational Shows, a good Plantation
show and not more than two gypsies.
[ATC Supervisor:] Ask them if they want to report officially.
[ATC:] TWA 517, do you want to report a UFO? Over.
[TWA Pilot:] Negative. We don’t want to report.
[ATC:] AirEast 31, do you wish to report a UFO? Over.
[AirEast Pilot:] Negative. We don’t want to report one of those, either.
It hurts you to talk about it
but it hurts you more to not talk about it
or
is that therapy gibberish?
I’ve got something you can defund,
right here. There is a hot sun,
just the other side of the clouds.
choking down entire argument in record time
continuing calculations are getting far closer
to where i want to be than where i need to be
unhealthy eroticism is in sensitivity training
so that it won't be instantaneously spooked
pouting, making a hand gesture. furrowed. a photo of a sheet of ice. having there at various monitoring points. reddish dust, uncomfortable. the foam springs. compensation for a more dignified life. exploration sufficed dropped into water. involuntary moan so.
Scribe. With a name known only to himself. Waits to pen letters to friends in Tunisia
Algiers, Morocco, or
Amsterdam. Writing to family, we scribble thumbnail sketches of ourselves, or who
we remember startled us
Still pregnant by some dumb 老外
Crying beside the hotplate
Right into my black sesame oatmeal
What will I tell my girlfriend?
Where’s the Taipei clinic?
He’s come to hate the academy, its sterile rigors.
Steel rails, parallel; long ribbon of wooden ties:
all night, all day, trains rattle that whole apparatus.
He lays his poem anthology on the track.
I eyeball her ribs, her sockets,
her cheeks, her scabs.
Why, girl. Take the
damn crackers, there is
fat on me everywhere.
we’re cycling & recycling as fast as we can but can’t get there in time
for the job, the damaged free stuff, the barbed assignation,
and usually need to replace something by the time we get home—
a tire, a lens, an ankle.
What an experiment it was!
But the art of improv is lost
for drum and fife
the song of sparrows swamped
by the sound of goose-step
You, volunteer:
You know the difference
Between cause and effect:
The people on the street
Are too stupid to have homes
Too filthy to wash
Tell us though
of unquestioning apartheid,
of segregation,
of that being-according-to-what-you-are-not
and of how-you-may-be-defined,
I sense my grandmothers.
I am now the age
they always seemed to be
with stern blood understanding
once removed from the sting of judgment.
to shatter
and shove
black reptilian oaths
vowed in penthouse palaces
back up their
vile asses
This flower was labeled Whitey;
this flower was marked Nigga Lover.
Is she still alive?
Didn’t he pass recently?
Was it in the paper?
Somewhere in our body
there is an alarm, an alert thermostat
sending its pulsations, something that says:
NOW!
There’s something straining us. Since birth we praised
his lineage, put wealth at his command,
and hubris has obeyed. He lifts his hand,
the throngs align, his inner organs raised
eyes stop still restrict
movement take midol
the red daze haze of sleep
she wants to fuck and fuck
and fuck and fuck
makes no gentle
it is not yet complete:
some of us are still here, webbed with
confused winds, the dirt below us
cold, moving in new directions.
we notice all fall down quicker than before,
The girl in the picture starts to twitch
There is a movement beneath her left tit
The poster flicks from the wall a bit
Two apprentices notice
i listen to the impatient dead
who never existed, however much
i wish they had lived their absence
Ohhhh do it. Worldwide. Uhhuh uhhuh uhhuh. Telecommunications. Uhhuh uhhuh. Telecommunication link link ahh up links ooohhhhh telecommute me it's so. Spectacular cash award for your yesyes unparalleled investment protections. Oh christ yeah. Pure cash. Yeah it's so good to uh uh cash me cash me in.
I’ll return as Queen of Sheba, or a vampire, or a reiver,
or a saint who cures the nouveaux riches, a wondrous, wealthy soul.
Yes, you see, I’ve found my niche, to preach and prosper, marvelous goal!
(Pills I took just took their toll.)