Back and Body

They warned you to get over yourself.

But you didn’t

 

Mexican street corn venders


Of the Stone Age


Pour a pint into your gullet


 

And your pupils shrivel inside out


Like a contact lens pressed


In the opposite way of its natural synthetic form


 

The center of the room gets


Very near; surrounding objects


Blur out

Like the taste of your third glass of wine


 

Looking down, there’s a whole 


In the ground


Into which you spit


Your teeth and vertebrae.




Like the jib without a good gust,

Your now spineless body


Crumples

 

Your mind walks away


It can do much better anyway


 

It finds an interesting face 


And crawls in;


Unpacks, washes up. 


 

Making itself at home,


It watches the Chinese Cherry Trees bloom

Through dry eyes for a change

Two Poems

To End This

We weren’t built in a day.

How long do you think it would take to destroy us?

Which structure would be struck first?

Our trust, our fantasy, our rationality?

You’re right, the saved angry phone messages are an easy target;

A sound foot-hold for the enemy.

There’s plenty of wounds to be reopened there.

 

But I still say it’ll be the theft of a certain stash of secrets

Which will spark the real ruin

All it takes is one tiny secret to fall into enemy hands…

And the flags will fly

And the troops will march

And we will fire

And sanction

And force our mutual friends to take sides

 

Oh, but I’m forgetting-

There’s always the sideways glances we give,

Inviting the devil to join in the destruction.

No, you say, even the devil scoffs at the cheap thrill

Of throwing stones in our glass house

We are one sorry friendship too weak and easy to wreck,

Even the devil passes us by.

 

I nod, and offer you a cigarette

As we ponder more fast ways to end this.

Looking Good is For Lovers

Watching you sucking and bloating through the fish-eye lens

Wishing you would hold still

So that I could examine

Your tearless eyes

For some long awaited answers

To my unasked questions

 

You squiggle and squawk

As I strobe your dry eyes,

Trying to stun you

I want to see how long

Before a tear is squeezed

It’s my sick little game

 

A fish-eye lens and a strobe light flash?

How am I supposed to look good under these conditions?

This isn’t fair,

You complain.

 

You don’t, I reply,

You look bad

I look bad at you

And you look bad right back

 

With you pockets full of jingling

Reasons why you don’t need to look good for me-

You don’t need to be good to me

Friends aren’t for that

Looking good is for lovers

We are not lovers,

Remind me one more time