Modern Life Is a Porno
Life, like any fancy dinner, started with soup.
And then an inflatable backyard nightclub
and terracotta army. What if I told you it’s a time bomb
and neither the red wire nor the black wire
are connected to anything important?
Joke’s on you then. You should have cut the red one.
The only acceptable growth is infinite growth. That’s what the explosion says.
And look how well that’s going. One can sleep through an alarm
and be awoken by a whisper. And then I died
and got into composting. End of season one.
I climbed through the window, so the window’s a door.
Kindness was also a survival strategy. Thank you.
Can you pass the salt, please? Thank you.
I’m going to try eating my heart and having it too.
Knowing it’s an advertisement doesn’t keep it
from persuading you. Like when they talk about sex and death
as foreplay. Hold on.
I’ve not yet gotten over my desire to be beautiful.
Walking down the hall just now I imagined I was
someone else, far away from mirrors, and one of the rest
of these people. That beautiful one.
I decided it was a simulation and that didn’t change anything.
We still debated free will and that didn’t change anything
either. The point of vistas is to be cumbersome
in their staring. And then desire pops up, and all bets are off.
Pull down the shades on these shady streets,
the remote viewing and hideout. You’re not fooling me.
Oh, America, at long last. Everyone’s in drag.
Anything Outside Our Senses Is Invisible
You’re a goldfish watching a feather. Maybe it’s ash.
You have a concept of ground and sea coming to a point.
Your truck goes airborne on ranch Road 12, flipping
and then landing flat back down into oncoming traffic.
A woman drives under, with a concept
of tunnel, maybe trellis. Or force field. God.
Everything is proof, says light to the double slit,
but I keep coming back to bed, saying “Yes, but.”
I’ve run out of variations on my approach. Hopscotch.
Bunny hop. Pogo stick. It’s paratactic. Floors
shine. My forehead crinkles and shines,
an edifice rising across the stars of noon. Say three “Hail Marys”
and don’t forget to vote. Be the statue
in a long conversation with the courthouse atrium wall.
Holding a warm cup will cause you to feel
that other people are warmer, meaning nicer. Friendlier.
Somewhere in my body the decision is already made.
What gets you here won’t get you there,
unless it does, as things are both complicated
and redundant. You have just enough milk for your recipe.
If I could describe something closely enough. You escape
with only minor bruises. Sorry for all the jumping around.
A clear version of how and why, which ends up
on a cliff face where someone hands you a menu
to explain your hunger. New names for weather events include:
Thundersnow. Bomb cyclone. Heatflation. Atmospheric
lake. How about some fancy chess move as metaphor.
And my plans for a speedy recovery.
At Moments Such As This
They say positive people live longer and I’m not a positive person.
Define “positive.” Define “longer” and “person.” Meanwhile,
these freakishly normal things keep happening.
This toothbrush, for instance. Divorce.
Remarriage. Like that feeling you get when someone’s
looking at you, and you look around suddenly
and you don’t see anyone looking at you, or you see people
who might have been looking at you but have now
looked some other direction. Why might they have been looking
at you? What of this napkin on the floor? Is it a signal?
I’m holding on for a loophole, and what a positive person
might do, like the unexpected appearance of mercy
or it’s some girl scouts selling cookies. “Yes, we have Thin Mints!”
Concentrate on your breathing. Breathing is a positive development.
Context demands action coherent within that context.
Sail on, sailor. Mow on, mower. Etcetera on,
etc. In history, before the rise of the industrial revolution,
most people didn’t live long enough to see all that much
change. But now we’re all dizzy. Falling over
is an action. So is panic. Living in a loud place,
one will be awoken by silence. I’m going to make signs
to hang around the kitchens of America on this and other matters.
I’m going to write something about life that doesn’t say death.
A car can last as long as you want it to, if you’re OK
with it not being (What was I even thinking about?)
a wise financial decision. This is a study of change. Maybe
you choose wrong in the fire, but an escape opens anyway.
Maybe you freeze as the bull charges, but it passes by.
As One Navigates the Hapless Colonnades
At night, the body says “roll over,” but to roll over a specific way,
and so why that? I flip the pillow, and then again,
like I’ve lost something. It’s one of those overnights
I wake up at 4am to do philosophy. And this clock
keeping everything in order. 4am is a great time for clocks.
Waking up, visualizing your skeleton lying there
in demure repose. It’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.
“Let’s create a threat level hierarchy,” the clock says.
Ants are going to carry this house away. “Wait for us,”
they cry, in their tiny, adorable voices.
The mental health marketplace is so different now. The brochures
are in color. The smiles terrifying. Like the world
is filled with teeth. I look in the mirror
and wonder what it would be like to be this person.
You can say all sorts of things that you imagine are true,
later, when everything’s calmed into day, and truth
only matters generally, full of dictionaries and breath mints.
But 4am is very clear. It’s April 1st, 4:15,
a perfect time for saying what you really mean.
I really mean a set of reactionary diamonds. Like a framed picture
of one’s elementary school. Here’s a list
of everything there is. Here’s a list of everything
there isn’t. Ignoring the picture and holding the frame instead,
saying all I can hold is beauty, as I hold you, some you,
the band revving up for a big finish, the lights on my
neighbor’s garage, perfectly aligned through my window,
like feeling terrible about the news, sleeping with it
under the mattress, rubbing myself with it in the shower.