Poison Lake Honeymoon Suite

ancient birds, tainted by strontium and
uranium from distant nuclear blasts,
lean into the storm, they don't fight it. our
best days are behind us, the candidate
says, reddens, remembers the hotel by
the poison lake where he lost the ring. 
the voters hunger for easy answers, an
officer chooses the wrong chokehold.
it all feels like a movie, like watching 
his own reptile brain transform into
a monstrous imposter, a wicked twin. i 
can get used to anything except normal.
it's all the beauty that trips me up, and
what if the thin spots on butterfly wings
are holy windows? you squint hard and
every teardrop's an underwater empire;
a chimney is some angel's emergency
exit. that's not what i meant, he says,  
but so what? the way she would hold
her breath as she made a ponytail at
the top of her head, kabuki-style, that's
what i really want to talk to you about. 
this economy's all imaginary anyhow,
like a river in a dream, then falls silent.

 

Endorphin Ballet

covertly, small talk with a stranger prepares
me for a lonely date with destiny: centuries
from now, will transhuman historians refer 
to my rock bottom as their golden age? i
dream of passing unnoticed, like melting
icicles or faded billboards, through the 
dreary plot twists of my own life. imagine
passing the online screening process
and starting over as that ray of light
banging on hoods of rented cars,
laughing and then moving on. you
saw it too: a fiery muse beyond all 
vocabularies. all matter is just frozen
light: i tell myself this when my head 
hits the bottom of the canyon and it
barely hurts at all. just another trick i
learned from the old magician, along
with holding my breath until life starts
making sense and nodding my head
to lunchroom sports scores when who
cares, my team isn't playing, my team 
is invisible and two universes over. in
memory's jenga-web jungle sleeps
a key that would have unlocked it all.

Geometry of Thunder

there was music, and tomahawk missiles--
brutal counteroffensives punctuated the
doo-wop and the bee-bop. i thought of
first kisses and the end of days,
whispered, how ridiculous, my wild
hungers, my voracious need to eat
my own scars until there's nothing
left, just some frantic graffiti on the
linoleum tiles in our old apartment. 
geometry of thunder, lepidoptera
howling, swarming, then dying. 
monday morning sneaks up on us,
wearing an undertaker's tuxedo. 
goblins with gucci handbags--one 
of them says, we already ground
the redwoods into junk mail, so 
what's a few rusty coins between
friends? in the new economy
everybody is somebody else's 
i.o.u.  dumpster-fire algebra, 
cardboard heroes glowing in the
walmart neon. native flora and
fauna, choking on toy soldiers.

Bloody Bulk Discount 

as fluorescent halogen warms his cheek,
the getaway driver thinks of bills he can't
pay. there's a liquidity crisis in the bond
market, and scars on his back engraved
by a federal reserve board with rabies.
a good bender used to be almost free;
now i sell my blood until i faint and still
can't buy a laugh. one new year's eve,
martin wouldn't stop cartwheeling.
kid mix-up and lys were there, and
between life and death's the width
of a wall. weepy ash of the tinfoil: 
we smoked that too. smoke was 
everywhere that year, pooling in
our ear canals, choking the moss that
painted the rocks muppet-pillow-green.
less and less at home on the earth--
a disturbing trend! loneliness like a 
demonic itch hounded me through the
raspberry bogs and shooting galleries, 
the kosher deli with the broken sign.
once there was a street and a street
after that, and the corner of barton
and sherman doesn't owe us a thing.

Origami Staircase

and when the leaves change colors i start
to cry, put my faith in any random theory.
maybe my soul will heal itself, maybe the
devil gives refunds. sami's a flat-earther
now, doesn't think the moon is real. i'm
not sure anything is real, but i sure wish
i still had my old toys, they were magical.  
the city sucks its thumb, sheds its skin.
missing stencils from ancient storefronts: 
broken symbols from a bygone alphabet.
irving hats--vacant for half a century now;
the future--idling furiously at the red light. 
soon becomes too soon as lunar morphs
into lunatic. the story wrote the writer,
never had the heart to set him straight. 
steering wheels he twisted so manfully,
just zero-shaped fields of air molecules.
tonight it's dorothee's pulse versus our
doomsday clock's tik-tok, half-life of 
the atom's heart versus the ticking
time-bomb. falling upwards into the
true kingdom, sacred rivers full of sky, 
pain of a wish turned inside out, 
secret city in the white of her eye.