Albino Suits
Come look for me tonight
in the white go-kart.
Yes we are making it funny.
Yes I need the humor so much
now that my face is murky.
Now that my life’s castle
has cheese in the turrets,
and the moat below is filled
with bluish, brown-and-green
sludge. It could rain today.
The leaves melt so fast
and my ice-maker is frozen.
My son is building the Death-Star
downstairs. On Halloween
I don’t want to wear anything
besides armor. It makes me safe,
and so damn happy. Only you
can make it this humble.
Damage
Scrimshaw bricolage breakdown highway
un-hip Mesopotamia
parts of the street / parts of mobile homes
slip out of the East Los Angeles night—
on CNN—
now they burn, now they don’t
Was everything always this ancient?
Dear to me,
I don’t co-exist with you anymore
but I co-inhabit—my bible
but I bleed
(I watch CNN a lot)
I think:
demise on another channel
the droll kings buried in the fire
(or if they were in ancient Egypt,
mummified)
They take with them
cats, possessions, hallways, human echoes
3-day-old meat
the only thing left standing
is the refrigerator
Dear Career Opportunity,
Sick therapy foremost hindsight.
Temporary. Foreigner.
(I want you so bad.)
I had some money invested there
that I lost in the great crater–
ocean. The ocean will soon rise
to swallow us all.
Though I don’t see my face
right in the light of others,
I belong to this horrible
middle class / swarm.
No doubt I’ll never understand
why America hates itself so.
We could have been so much happier
being broke, but instead
the work ethic sinks us. Oh god.
But otherwise it’s not so bad.
Some people in my neighborhood
had a pig in their backyard
this weekend. Pigs grunt. This one
was so black it died
without anyone noticing.
I don’t mean that as a racial
commentary or anything,
it’s just the truth of it.
Just tell me when / the next job offer
comes in from Bangalore.
I don’t want to be asleep
on the couch when it does.
Sometimes
I feel like I am writing the same three poems over and over.
Give All Your Limbs to Me
I’ve grown in my own home.
I wake up in the country
and I split wood, I feed the fire.
I feed the pets and the animals.
The cats and the greyhounds.
(The squirrels / squirrels you see
are about all you dream about now.)
Maybe I am St. Francis of Assisi.
Also I am St. Francis of Nowhere.
I am not thinking of turning
into a statue. I pull a bag of popcorn
from the couch and I draw,
I draw, Virginia. I draw on the clock
and it’s like 30, 30 seconds
until I go back in there.