Snapshot

By the time we gathered round the punchbowl,
exchanged our aches, passed through
spectral penetration and spin back
to our moment, picked clean -
the smaller denominations that held up in earlier decades
get traded away, in a manly way
bid down on the floor for bidding it up
so the spenditure can mature and time flag us down
one by one branded in blank awe, folding
into a détente of happy daily days on installment plans.

But what of the revolution within,
traces mounting cortical ladders of the reactive?
Calls grew far between edgewise.
There was no longer that tumbling
of universal love anyway, though no one stayed home
nor fell back on roll calls elsewhere.
Nothing was on sale.
* * *
By the time we gathered to pass through
our aches and spin back to our moment
picked clean, no longer that tumbling,
the sale edgewise bidding it up
anyway, no falling back, happy calls within.

Antidote #1: Twelve-Step Playaholics: The Lemonade Stand

When a boy says it’s so deep you have him*
nibbling from your palm like a deer
in an open zoo. Everyone needs a niche,
ask my girlfriend. It’s all my kitsch, I fear
never having enough details to open a blog
and post pictures of my lemonade stand,
stuck waiting so long, no takers.
For me, and this is the problem, it’s not the sale,
but the funny things neighbors took the time to dream up
that keeps me here—
how to get a sassy young dare to
pee on an electric fence wire;
how a dog was so jealous of a fat cat
it could be induced to eat soap to keep it from her;
how a father was so violent the boy had to
get a gun to chase him off forever,
breaking his soft heart;
how even in penny-anny poker someone
serious as a heart attack would send signals;
how a true test of friendship is whether
they're close enough for buttfucking;
how when a neighbor breaks something
the father bans him from the premises, and how
they couldn't pay us enough to stay then;
how after his mother remarried
the boy next door needed a father, not a grandfather;
how the undersexed women of the neighborhood
were all ballooning out of control;
how the lady on the corner who couldn't have kids
would flag down our car to report to my mom
gas stuck here, poked there in it until we had to go;
how one boy was said to have affairs with his cows;
how when I grew up I'm going to have to shave my entire face;
how I not only couldn't get a date, but would screw up a wet dream.


*Inspired by a scene in Terminator 2.

Putting Bunnies in a Trance

Drawn to the aroma of home-baked apple pie with clove and cinnamon
we lingered at the door like missionaries exemplifying emptiness—
not the clean-sleeved souls that get our feet in the door
but suddenly gaunt and pouty at the jaws.
Not a good start to a rainy day, out in the rain.
Later we were greeted by friendly wagging tails
and the aroma of barbecued ribs sweetly basting.
Luckily by dusk we had had our carrots and could see in the dark
long enough to rival the special forces scouring southern Afghanistan
for heroic figureheads that sent the other ships shipping
nocturnal goggles, making the world purpler—
but they do not like being disturbed the next day.
‘The technician moved the slickened transducer across the woman's abdomen
serving as guide’ to the suspended future, ‘pointing out landmarks,’
slowing the campaign making me long for Alexandria
and all we lost there. We do know the Babylonians
used a method for finding square roots
and replaced the Sumerians in Mesopotamia
and the Akkadians. The method involves dividing and averaging
the coordinate system of twelve zodiacal signs,
each 30° long. Policemen arrested a man in D.C.
with an archaeological piece dating back to the eleventh
tablet of the flood. Putting bunnies in a trance
was used in some parts to drive evil away.


[Note: This poem makes use of Google searching to experiment with collaging phrases found online, following Moore's example of mining miscellaneous ephemera.]

Exit

It doesn’t take X-ray vision to see the videobomb
Of a cave’s quantum entanglements
With a desert spreading its deeds and constitution
Of wells raising the living into a hell of greed.

If I were a better person I would stand
In the middle of I-5 by a base
With a sign that says “brake for peace”
Until I was dead or arrested,
censored or not.

If I were to stay,
Had faith it could come around
I would try, sacrifice.
But I am like everyone else

And there are still places free of drones,
So before it all wakes from Hollywood
and all that hate, I'm on my way.