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
I write magical runes on the ice and poetry for humpbacks, which animate my tattoos, and create a restroom for celestial beings trying to get a heat in their bones.
This verse will be picked up by crows in the morning
And they will be thrown from heaven
On icy concrete heart rocks
hallowed be the whores, the sugar babies, strippers, porn stars, cam girls
escorts, freestylers--hearts of gold, cold hustle, whom i owe by the dozen
hallowed be the word of the whore, for i believe her over anyone
hollered over too-loud new wave or whispered in the bathroom
“Do you have a minute?” read the email. The Editorial Specialist opened Macrohard Community and saw that he had been assigned a Community Task, which was the same as a regular task, except that its assignment did not require human interaction, virtual or otherwise.
now that he was crisply re-figured at a bus stop on the same gravel shoulder, now that he had earned the insignia, wore the uniform of red and gold, a gold peaked cap over still tangled hair, now that he was raised
Tonight, fatigue’s grim flower unfurls,
but Gandhi, gunned down, had this to say:
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Americans live on a hair-trigger,
ready any moment
to depart life when
they and a bullet might collide,
and so they die,
either the one shot or the shooter.
I’ll be sorry to leave,
sorry to move onto
the next plane of being
to slip into the new skin
decanted in smeared dots
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