It never occurred to me I could walk into a room
and not care for everyone
I could cut to couch
sling my whole body like a big fat dick
When you said your mind is the setting for a carnival
I lit the sound stage
I tossed the red pepper yellow pepper
I didn’t believe you
I held my papers tighter
apologized for sitting on the bench
which I was only testing for safety
Is this my treat or a piece of tape
Two minutes late is not considered late
but two months
better wear roped pearls back to the machine
for the puppet show starring a nervous radiologist
who never said once don’t worry many are called back
they come here they sit pretty
they tulip around like a doggie after a bath
Somber is not the same thing as sober
I can have fun
For example I didn’t know how rebellious I was until I was caught
Even when I was drinking
I was always sort of sober
Squeeze a pair of tits hard enough
something comes out
like a mousy laugh moan
or milk sort of always there
like back of the fridge milk
dinosaur milk
a memory of calcium
or a lecture about Raphael
and woman squishiness emanating from color
I have a body designed for compression
and a mind designed for apology
I’m sorry to cause so much trouble
Pretty much you’re terrible she said
Put your arm down
She touched me right on my somber nothingness
The only other way to detect cancer is to give it to you
She was the one they meant
when they said too many mouths
and she ate elsewhere in the garden during a lightning storm
so they wouldn’t know they fed her
That’s why it’s called a salad
she said with proud low teacher voice
because it’s a little bit of everything
everything being the discarded scraps
Who here is the real puppy
What’s it like in that nose hole
Does it smell like the land
or the flag of the land waving like a skin flap
What’s it like to be here
What’s it like to be her adenoid
that crawls out covered in sunscreen strokes her hair
and says if you cover your face a little more
no one will know how old you are
Her whole fruit market no ribbons or price gouges
crawls on all fours
actually on elbows so crawls on sixes
Go where the finger points to the good grass and right pop
down to the original wood
a place where they say circle for an eight count
Dress without weather in mind only femininity
Most women are associated with a color but not her
A white bra? Pat the air
If she gets lonely she can host a press conference
Do you walk with confidence or do you walk plain
into the challenge of never laughing
Once a billionaire you can’t be anything else
Shockingly thrifty or your origin story doesn’t matter
Laughter at the expense
Casual decisions make someone else die a little
You are a traitor to creation
less secret on the wooden floor
Trash separated and sorted
A bright sunny day means endless meetings
you’ll be tan anyway
The rat race is over
You won
It’s more like a please and thank you pile
in which the rats discuss the confusing nature of assets
with you as the love object
I like rats but I have never been one
Will the bank mow the lawns of the empty houses
The moral of folktales is to desire wealth
to love scarcity which is actual love
to leave in a carriage with a prince
who can’t tell the difference between a girl and bird
and wonder if we’re all one soul or isolated
8 pm deadline
Every mind channel shouts AMERICAN REGIME CHANGE
Go ahead and put the Bible on every reading list
Long books with many chapters are my favorite
What if it says not to eat meat
What if it says to care for those who have less
What if it says a lot about sharing
What if it says not to kill
What if it says don’t bother judging anyone
What if it has stories within stories
The hills roll like lambs
in the time of helicopters and black flies
How will the future remember this
Women who take long walks feel love
which is what I will feel when I meet someone
who is also not looking at a cell phone
I will say step into this air space
Tell me where did you go when you went far from home
Are most movies set in the past in order to avoid technology
You will say the beginning of social media marks the end of freedom
Who are you I don’t care but I care a lot
Who is your child’s influencer
Is your son watching a mantube bro show
The thing that’s supposed to make him more world learned
is known as a device
Mostly I’d rather be daydreaming
When I see someone else in a yellow raincoat
I know we are part of something larger than ourselves
Connected by yellow as though the gray sky wouldn’t swallow us
Even in darkness I know
I lost my voice
It crawled into a hibiscus bloom
which wilted and fell off
then gobbled down without taste by the dog
who had diarrhea out in the woods
A coyote licked the soup off a pile of leaves
turned around thrice and had babies
the babies ran through evolution so fast
one turned into time
and said your life is really long
time is not short at all
It’s not even time
The real hunt is to once unleashed
pick up as many hidden things as you can
put them inside you and call it beauty from within
Even if you found the least
All the children will have the most
Who wants fame when you could know everything about literature
and open and close your hands
reading them like books
Words melt together in a common mold
A new kindness emerges like moss
What ever happens grass will cover it
All the big ideas taste impossible
taste a little like destruction
I miss my tumors
My disaster is boring
My revolution is quiet
and requires much preparation
notes and reading
When a book begins with talk of districts
the setting is a future and utopia didn’t happen
By district I mean political control
a theft started softly as chuckles
rubbed into belief and then policy
When I’m quiet just know I’m whining at the door
I’m like the farmer’s daughter who turns straw into gold
except I turn hair into silver
When I say minutes I mean years
It took so long to get to the half-life
By long I mean effort
By so I mean so much
They drive you home
They unlock the door
They refer to people by first and last name
They press you for what you will give them
Give into them
They remove shoes
They walk with an umbrella but you are all wet
They are always reading
They strike matches
Pick up the rock if you have power
You do not have power
Kidnapped by narration
They are all in hell together
They wait at the mall gates
They will squeeze so hard until cancer rolls around and throws up everywhere
The needles go into a special glass
that will go into a special carton at the end of the day
Picked up by the ones who work there
When galloping with horses you are horses
They wear ribbed and satin ribbon
They forgot about cruelty and fell in love with the house
They slip into flannel
They will not bend
You thought you were free that you weren’t one of them
They slip into robes so cold they are blue
They said what about posture
