the critical race theory, and revisionist book bans
wondering what rabbit to pull out of what hat. The J. Edgar low men
in high places. They move in packs & cast long shadows, create
convenient terrorists, criminals, enemies, domestically and abroad.
I think about parts of the heart sticking to the ribs, imagine the coroner scraping the bones like they’re frenched lamb cutlets. Time is syrupy in isolation. There are no weekdays and weekends, just time passing.
I’m not bathing in blood, but it’s certainly not water, either, that covers my eyes and flirts with the edges of my nostrils.
Trying to light a wet cigarette
with a faltering match, and I wonder
if my readers are also living life in vain:
What happens when chaos becomes beautiful?
When the lightning falls,
when the old guard topples,
when the broken bell tolls
for the final time?
Li Qingzhao wandered lonely as a cloud
Emily Dickinson wandered lonely as a cloud
Virginia Woolf wandered lonely as a cloud
Marina Tsvetaeva wandered lonely as a cloud
once god becomes a weapon
there is no such thing as a war that
can be won
you fight just because it
feels so good to kill
Please be kind to strangers
Who hunker down in subplots
Where reckless voices almost blend
But most of us are still not allowed to attend
My children watch me struggle
not to send myself back to space.
We pretend my shadowy smiles fool
people formed in time with my pulse.
Brick five twelve tried
to overthrow the government
but nobody seemed to care
or notice
You are all that matters in your border town.
Bullets ping into stone walls inches from your shoulders.
Stuff falls from the sky, lands near you.
Arms swing and fists send air the way of your chin.
They’re talking away
nothing urgent, nothing Earth shattering
but substantive nonetheless
like an old idea worked around from a new
vantage point. Did you hear about?
. Amerikkka is a mongrel insensitivity to empathy
. A capitalist concept
of man
exploits man
our mouth of grapes
a profile at a bar, again a sigh and cough
have a heart
forgive my sway
I’m done now.
We’ve got Fritz, as always, to guide the way
for our philosophical jaunt today
and to remind us all, though it is grim,
that God is dead and we have killed him.
poultry air raid bombastic
missionaries regenerate scabs
sore momentum badge
constructed wholesale bee
The answer is: may plasma be a state of nature, may my aisle be flooded with fluorescence, may there be a balm in Gilead and may there be an inferential estimate in each machine.
Injure life support of the other species
and slowly disable your own.
Perceive redwoods as greenbacks shivering
and shrink people into coinage.
You pick up your body like a dirty cloth but no one listens to you the sheet is a square placed on the table like the square of the window like the square of your madness the memory returns in the flame we are no more
one can climb
to dispel the laughter
to add the ocean
to the ceiling
and the birds
to the trembling gown
Les gentilles femmes de Vandenesse take no cell phone calls while cooking ratatouille in kitchens open to the wind, protected from wasps by strands of colored plastic pegged to ancient doorframes of stucco cottages with red-thatched roofs
The police in my country are on
the warpath, going into the neighbor-
hoods to teach those black boys and men
a lesson --
mess with us you get shot, don't
mess with us you still get shot
Glorious and inglorious, both
All a matter of perception
Of those she cared little about
In her journey from obscurity