Because A Thing Is Not Real

Jus because a thing is snot real is no reason
to toss Baby out wit bath water, rye?
What snot got fins
my have wings, and looka you wit boph feet in lead boots.

Am I not serious jus cus
I fye sunflower in either han when I wan?
Can feel stem, face, yello starburss unda my touch,
sun hot on my skin,
and looka you wit all da fax, cand feel a thing
Who got tye fo dah?

Got lotsa say, in words my own chose seff, 
dun mean ain't got the Queen's English at my disposal dependin
wut planet spin unda me at any gibbon moment, babe.
_______

Manifesto

We have your stooge, the bank manager,
and are providing a steeper incline for her than her stupid NordicTrack ever did.
She misses Hubby,
her curtain climbers,
and their matching pure breed dogs bigger and dumber than trash trucks.
Imma give her back her glasses, poor thing.

If you want your stooge, the bank manager,
back the way we found her, you will publish our manifesto.
I want the New York Times on the line,
not your wind-up doll of a hostage negotiator.
Negotiate this:
Listen close. Hear that?
One less loan officer in the world.
Imma shed a great big tear.

You have an hour, one hour exactly to publish our manifesto.
We want to see it as we wrote it,
not redacted and full of ads to subscribe to the fucking NYT. 
Our Swedish friend was here with us,
and suggested some edits. 
Our Swedish friend is the one we sent outside to kneel on the pavement
with his hands tied and the bomb belt on.
Please shoot him.
Imma decline his edits, and yours. We good on that?

We are sick of:
rape culture
corporate insanity
sanctimonious cowards
fuckwit presidents
tiki torch wing nuts
extremist imbeciles.
It's time to bring some order to the chaos, so publish our manifesto.
As is.
In the New York Times.
Within the hour. 
Or imma go off.

We would hate for your stooge, the bank manager,
to die because we overfed her, poor little goldfish.
We started with a rag, but she's still hungry, I can tell.
Our California friend is calming her
by reading her the manifesto.
Check it out while we're waiting, and tell your SWAT team of armed editors
to stand down
or we all go up.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Come close, whisper me your thoughts,
and I'll respond, candidly and strictly entre nous, with my Kalashinikov.
Imma woman; I think and think and think and think and think.
By the time I act, 
you'll never see it coming.
________
 
for Bjorn's "manifesto" challenge at Toads.

Here Is A Sun

Here is a sun,
extinguished, small, 
not the same one at all, but a sun nonetheless.
On a bright morning or gray weekday afternoon,
take it out,
place it on the cafe table between you and your friend.
Feel the hum inside your head;
the tears that come without reason.

"What if we are only figures inside a snow globe?" you ask.
Your friend shakes her head, turns away,
opens her mouth but doesn't speak.
You're an idiot. Again.
An idiot carrying a small dark sun around in her bag,
on the bus,
queering the traffic signals as you pass underneath.

Big bang.
That was a long time ago, now.
You and your friend cast two shadows in those days,
so substantial and fine that they might have danced away on their own.
At night you dream of geologists
breaking their teeth by biting into geodes.
You call someone.
"I didn't sleep well."
Here is a sun to toy with, to set down and forget.
Calls end, days go on and on,
the sky fills with birds no one can identify.
Your head hums, 
tears come.
Nobody asks why.
_________

 

Logicians In The Sanitarium

Logicians, lit weakly by the skylight,
find each other.
Overtaken by passion, they posit avidly.

"Which," they wheeze to each other, holding bony hands,
"of the following is true, if any?"
1.If infirmity, then writing.
2. If writing, then infirmity.
3. red on the handkerchief reveals the heart's longing to express itself.

Doctors smile at the logicians, but hate them.
How are you feeling? Does the treatment seem to help? 
Who the fuck cares? Move to Arizona and die there, albeit a little more slowly. 

Dizzying excitements exhaust the logicians.
Staff wheel them in chairs out to the verandah, buried in sober wool blankets.
The sun stutters on the horizon.
The world displays its affliction in tones of slant red and crumbling orange.
The logicians gasp, but their minds race with articles
and the heady imaginings of each other's naked admiration.

And so here is what I want to say,
to you, to God, 
to anybody whose conveyance is locked to guard against accident. 
When medicated, 
when not hacking to the point of collapse,
I dream of the most illogical things.
I pretend that my body is not made of disintegrating papier mache,
and that you want to fuck me,
like somebody used to, in some other place, once, that I can't quite remember.
I see you and hope
that you, whittled down to nothing, incontinent and demented,
want the same illogical things.

That's when the logicians recognize it in my face like an obvious error.
They laugh uproariously,
joined by their new friends, the doctors,
who lobotomize me,
wait for me to babble through the froth,
and say, "See there? You're making sense," and walk away on skis
like giant L's held stiff by the wax and starch of correctness and clarity.
______

for "Aspire" at Real Toads

Salute The Magpie

Salute the magpie,
the solitary one without even a mirror-friend.
Turn a circle on the spot,
recite the rhyme out to its end.

In time, more arrive.
In time, a future told and spoken,
in magpie voice,
talisman and token.

Then, old love,
it is well enough to go
regardless wounds or weather
even so.
______

a 55 for my BFF.
 

You vs. Donut

Passion sears my senses and burns like fire as we--


Oh for fuck's sake. Start over.

I am in love with this fucking donut.
It can sit there and say nothing just as good as you,
but I can eat it--

Okay. Point taken. You 1, Donut 1. But wait, there's more.

I am in love with this donut, and this donut doesn't care
if I drool over its twin cos it has a million twins and so therefore I need never be lonely again in my lifetime.

This poem is for my beloved donut. Donut could give a shit less. 
Donut 2, You 1, one draw. Goddamit. 
_____

ridiculous nonsense for micro-poetry: fire and ice. 

Cat Angel

Cat Angel forgives our sins.
Why not?
She doesn't care about them, and wonders why we do.  
The Church of Cat Angel issues a denunciation of rocking chairs
and proscribes the covering of piano keys.
Cat Angel hears our prayers
but doesn't care about them and wonders why we do. 
Obey. Receive a dead bird.
____

a 55 for my BFF