1.
Many speak as if time were old,
But I have always known that it is new.
I tell you this, not from,
The growth, over 20 years, of housing tracts
like mountains of ore.
…
People now move to the city each year,
as if awaiting something.
And from the laughing continents,
it speaks for itself: the large
and fearsome ocean -
is but a drop of water.
I now fly as nicely as did the first
across the Atlantic.
But I hold a conviction: by tomorrow,
you’ll already be laughing about my flight.

2.
But this is a battle against the primitive,
And a struggling for the bettering of the
planet.
Like the dialectical economy
In which the world is altered,
From the ground up,
Particularly now,
Let us fight nature
Until we ourselves become natural.
We and our technology are not
yet natural.
We and our technology
are primitive.

-Bertolt Brecht (my translation)

These bodies have been,
already are,
in the art museum -
disintegrating.

Is that a pack of
lucky strikes on
the raised circular
platform bed?

I can’t find my
bearings in this
dimensioneless
world
the vanishing
point has
replaced me
as subjectivity
incarnate

Where are the
gunshots?
Bodies are
blown out of
proportion in this
Grotesque hotel room
of the future.

if placed before the crowd’s rousing applause
would there be a smirk on his face?
i placed my chips on 24 red
but the spinning wheel has a tendency to
induce narcoleptic spells
in nonsmoking caucasian control groups.
so i can’t help but look elsewhere.

the other choice, of course
is to join the ranks of the sleepwalking dead
navigating amidst blank white ceilings
and densely patterned carpeting

the brunette with impeccable teeth
brushes shoulders with a floor level ice sculpture
mr. willy porter is on the saxophone this evening -
so let’s make a toast to unabashed merriment!

we’ve no principles in mind tonight
except ‘creating memories’
slippery burdens inevitably
escape these well-trodden circuits

the ladies room on the second floor
is the ideal slacker confessional.
a common code emerges
through the furtive glances
of expert gamblers

when she sees him,
sam is stuttering and inconsolable.
why do our lives feel spliced together?
she wonders.
what it would feel like,
simply to report nothing in the morning?

            *****

there’ll be some showers just past dawn
according to meteorologist steve fielding.
the streets will be flooded with
yellow jackets and plastic napsacks.
the mister spends lunch with a couple of old voicemails
and buys another copy of the sunday paper

he wonders if she’s forgotten
the school bus graveyard by the colorado river.
who else could claim to have been passed over
in favor of strictly sexless vinyl seatbacks?
could it be that her cinammon chewing gum cunt
is of interest only to the rising waters?

why not stand with a placard at the terminal?
will the hugs of separated relatives
serve as ultimate proof of his indifference?
unfortunately, the airline remains unable to guarantee the
on-time arrival of the 12:22 from mccarran international

don’t think his pace quickens
when he pictures her figure whilst deplaning
this is a gentleman who feels no need
to repress a most perverse kantianism

he’ll be sure to emerge solemn and mangled,
carrying the baggage of his elderly seatmate,
pupils dilated with unabashed desire
chapped lips tinged with V8 tomato juice

the mirrored glass
at gate 56B
renders his image interminable
no one dares meet this
cosmopolitan gaze

the rental car is a sedan
with leather seats and satellite radio
and the gentleman sits,
a master passenger.
at the press of a button,
the stereo cycles through
three hundred stations.

from a pair of backseat grocery bags
he produces a can of organic peaches,
meats wrapped in butcher’s paper,
and a lime flavored seltzer water 12-pack.
 
by her third encounter with pike street
his hand has readied itself
and now
it works its way up her leg
until it’s lost in the folds of the
light beige skirt
but wandering no further

‘which building do you live in?’
his fingernails don’t quite
puncture her flesh
a gasp and a westerly nod are
made in the last moments
before her composure
haltingly withers

his pinkie finger seems destined
to meet the dormant disjuncture
which he ordered remain unmolested
except by the fiat
of glossy black hair and designer spectacles

for the next three days
he soaks in the lukewarm water
of her clawfooted bathtub

‘i need to catch up on some reading.’

this statement comes as
her head is secured to a
cedar support beam.

the tongues of a dozen peach sections
meet forcibly with her tonsils

counted among the lucky, by morning,
she’ll simply have drowned in their syrup

Crystalline blades of silver green grass
shimmer idly under the autumn moon.
Upon these shards of glittering glass,
lies, in wait, a gold doubloon.

A passerby at the edge of the plain,
who lacks both fame and glory,
wanders thence, to, in vain,
propel our stillborn story.

The air is chill as vinho verde;
the dew as frostbite fingers.
The wind strikes as a sullen serenade,
like honeyèd wine it lingers.

The owl, whose call, is placed collect,
finds his unctuous discourse cut to size.
Our startled traveler is wont to protect,
his sumptuous hard-earned harvest prize.

Standing precisely above the spot,
where the fabled coinage layeth,
before drinking out of providence’s trough,
the Christian fellow prayeth:

“Away with the scythe,
away with the sweat,.
away with the smell of cedar!

Who’d work a day,
in fields framed by hay
besides a bottom feeder?

Eels and snails,
And fish without scales,
haddock, bass, and cod,

I’d venture not,
To become such rot,
And cause offense to my God.

For these are so an anomaly,
that the holy Deuteronomy,
prohibits their ingestion.

Thus, I’ll reap the plunder,
sown fortuitously asunder,
by God’s divine suggestion.”

By Zeus, by Jove,
by all of the above,
Our hero did scoop up his birthright.

Arriving in town,
where taverns abound,
he squandered it in nary a fortnight.

i, a corrupted savant,
am sent not to a sanitorium.
i’m placed, instead, aboard
a reconstructed santa maria
——
it’s a carribean yacht,
custom-built for the /ultra/ wealthy
mister michael michelob.
‘it’s mister michelob time’*
—-
on deck
we talk in feet, knots,
and displacements.
these precise figures
help my psyche
avoid metaphor.
(which is fatal)
—-
we dive for spanish silver
i give rag dolls sea burials.
three chefs sear tuna steaks
& balsamic reductions abound.
—-
corrupt officials
let us cart off cubans
by the boatload
at each port-of-call
—-
my morningtime
cc’s of morphine
remind me of
chris columbus
and chocolate cake
—-
doc says the rocking
lets me regress
i up the pump
pushing further back
*this poem brought to you
by michelob ultra