Oh, God. This again?

 
DOOMSDAY BUNKER And suddenly you’re sprinting across the lawn— didn’t know you’d have to run for your life when you woke up this morning. Oh, of course you did. There’s a really low threshold for “Doomsday,” like when there are five black youths where there should be none— TO THE GUNS! So, Junior watches for threats through the periscope rising out of the collard greens while you dash for Safe Zone B—a Glock and 100 rounds of ammo buried in a Tuperware container past the corner of the house, and Little Dolly shouts a warning from the second-floor bedroom window. When the black kid asks what you’re doing dressed in camouflage and rolling around the Exurbs, you can fill him with lead.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:02 PM

 
THE KING’S JUSTICE king unlust us bust us and disgust us the king’s fucked us (and the queen, too) answers to questions unasked services unrequested did you get that thing from the king? It’s just us lying requestless full of unwant and unwanted.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:05 PM

 
WE HAVE 200 CHURCHES It’s all downhill, literally, as I leave the office with golden arches in the rearview above Steak and Shake and TGIF. Thank God it’s Friday, sky pillowed with cumulous clouds. It will rain tomorrow. I need to mow the lawn this evening, then, as I’m reminded, passing the Home Depot sign, now in the rearview, too. PJ Harvey sings “Kamikaze” and there’s the Chick-fil-A on the left. I’m boycotting, as they’re too small to crash a plane into. (Kidding.) And now the place that mostly fixes my car, my daughter’s TaeKwonDo academy, chain Italian across from local seafood, then quasi-retail Goodwills (two of them . . . I think one is a bookstore . . . kind-of boycotting them, too.) Like Anne Boyer, I’m pretty sure something-something-something . . . revolution. I think about dark money, our worship, the churches of capital with billboards on high, rising above the trees—Wendy’s, Lowe’s, climate-controlled storage—and I’m finally at the loop. Polly Jean sings, “This is Love” and it’s just newer infrastructure—paved-over forest and a bridge through lowland marsh—palmettos peeking over the cement barrier separating us from Mother Nature or a careless fate. I’m losing faith with no more signs to point the way. Anne Boyer writes, The Cartesian problem was how to monetize the abyss. I’m sure I’ll think of something while driving down this brief stretch of road, half-canopied with Spanish moss.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:40 PM

 
RIGOROUS WITHOLDING

There are cascades of water spinning away from your body,
a splendid, rainbowed truth

in concert with brightly lit, red-orange,
fragmented trivia, assembled and tightly aligned.

The cherished saferoom mountain prize
whispers, This is forever, an eternal residence.

Your breaths have quickened,
and you must be weary, your black legs

razor straight—impromptu
stiffness below navel like a wide-awake eye

as sheets are pulled over them. Nearby,
the streetlights hum their nightly welcome.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:16 PM

 
CROWD SOURCED

The earth will not sing us a lullaby
while we wait for our death
but pray for better.

God will not hear us
and, like the honey badger,
the sun doesn’t give a shit.

Perhaps the earth is praying, too,
for an unfortunate but well-placed asteroid—
celestial Frontline®,
planetary Revolution™.

If we have a problem that needs solving,
perhaps we can put the word out and receive
ten thousand solutions,
all of them: self-extinction.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:05 PM

 
ESCAPE ARTIST 2

All escapes are the same, but none are alike.
When I left, I stole your daughter
and her diorama of the swanky void.

She has no idea that foreign money is fueling household debt,
but she knows a beautiful emptiness.
It’s how we escape justice.

The headlines read,
Man Commits Crime to Escape Nagging Wife, and
Bank Robbers Drop Loot During Escape, and
Money Laundering and the Proceeds of Crime.
One asks, Are there Nazi War Criminals Still at Large?
Another offers, How to Deal with Being in Prison:
Step-by-Step Instructions.

Employees said a man entered the store
and demanded one billion dollars in customer funds.
He reportedly said, Money is the key to escaping abuse.

Being an escapist did not pull in the money
I’d hoped for.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:29 PM

 
BADASS PYRAMID POD

Dearest Discovery Channel,

You have all the integrity of a pissed-on toilet seat.
Extended doomsday-shelter infomercials as programming?
Let me offer a counter-argument
because I have seen futility
and it’s shaped like a pyramid.

You’ve discovered crazy—
"preppers" with an eye toward End Times
and tens of thousands of dollars to spend
on booby-trapped cargo containers buried in the earth,
or flame-resistant tee-pees made of steel and paranoia.

You see, the bad guys—
wandering Muslim extremists, zombies,
or welfare-hoarding sex workers—
are not going to attack you with falling cars and,
after the fire, they can wait you out.
They have nowhere better to be,
nowhere else to go.

I have seen your badass pyramid pod,
and it’s shaped like the greatest nation on Earth
burrowing underground.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:15 PM

 
Voice of Morning

of longing,
of all love—
certitude, solitude, solipsism—
a fixture,

a fissure,
voice of mourning—
all love, I’ve made you blue
for the sound of insects,
the wisp of spring’s dandelions at dawn
bathed in more than light
but all love and the major blue
of the sky.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:36 PM

 
Ode to Lord Monochromicorn

Oh, lord of towering blackness, you stomp
and scratch a Morse Code greeting I don’t un-
derstand as I only speak an absence
of color, shades of grey. We would have been
friends in high school. You, too, would say Faith is
the Cure’s best album—your hooves tapping out
your argument, slowly, your mane back-combed
into a Robert Smith fright-hawk. Are you
old now, like me? Or are you as ageless
and cartoon-smooth as on T.V., with Prince Gumball,
Fiona, and Cake? I see your grownup,
stern side—all servitude and business—
but there must be another side where you’re
Lord Monochromiporn with a cat harem.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:34 PM

 
OUR AWARD-WINNING CUSTOMER SERVICE

The North Korean factory workers are on display.
Western video cameras shoot from above
as bottles move around the slat chain conveyors
and various belted machinery,

but the workers look like they’ve never been in a factory before,
like Laverne and Shirley,
they should have gloves—not for hand protection
but to quickly fill with their breath and press
onto passing bottle tops—five-fingered headdresses.

I want the workers to break into song.
I want the workers to be happy workers,
or workers in any capacity,
or happy in any capacity.

We do it so well—our productive pretending.
It’s part of America’s Award-Winning Customer Service™.
We’ll do it our way, yes our way,
all the way to middle-management,
whores for a cause that none of us believe in,

making all our dreams come true
while we make nothing,

nothing but record sales.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:40 PM

 
BASE MODEL

1
Your showroom is outer space
or low earth orbit
or the West Coast of the U.S.

It’s three stages that end in the sea,
coming up short of the mesosphere.
What do you fear when you hear “blastoff”?

2
You have a rocket in your panic room.
You have a panic in your bomb shelter.
You have canned goods in your fuck parlor.
You have a gas mask in your convention center.
You have a Hummer instead of a boner.

3
Imagine splashdown after a short flight,
being pitched forward, your
metal tubes failing to separate,
your parachutes never billowing,
lowering you safely back to earth.

Scary, huh?
Now imagine how that rocket felt.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:09 PM

 
HUGEKOPF

Bright light of prophecy sipped from the skull
of Nostradamus. You see the future
and it’s me drinking lager—my stein full
and huge as my head. Death is a vulture,

a sniper come to crosshair your dreams, your hand
outstretched, surrendering makeshift bone cup.
He predicted the date you’d dig him up,
and now, dearest grave robber, you have land-

ed in the afterlife. And after life,
il pleut dans la nuit, and the wet night
stretches like the succession of German
beers on which I sail my abused liver.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 10:43 PM

 
THREE JEWELS

Blossoms spiral,
dance past dusk-dimmed windows—
spring’s downward promise.
Lights flash at the neighbors’.
S.W.A.T. team enters, guns drawn.

On the dark grass,
white petals glisten—wet—
sparkle like three jewels.
A dog barks, frantic.
You’ll frighten the children!
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:21 PM

 
WE HAVE A WOLF

circling us like an unsecured debt
and it looks as hungry as its corporate logo.
We have empty mouth holes while its mouth is full of teeth.
We have a threatening apparatus.
We have fright.
Don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?
We have a plot device, a precipice, a cavern of lost wishes.
We have an element of surprise—
out of rejection, a fistful of cherry blossoms, an embrace,
sky-blue silken gown falls to earth. Underneath, fur.
We have a Timberwolf, and no-one is punished.
We have a wolf named desire. We know what it means
to go without and, as long as we are here,
the wolf will never want for anything.
So, how do you starve it?
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:03 PM

 
MY BALLS, MY EYEBALLS

As Peter Murphy sings,
I have seen too much, wipe away my eyes,
and the gunman says,
You don’t want to be a hero,
there are things you can’t unsee—
not like goatse or tub girl—
but real things. In Egypt,
a man is lying in the street
with a valley where the top of his head
used to be. You’re safe
on the other side of the television
or computer monitor
and can’t say, I was there,
or even, I saw it through my window
as I was driving past.
It’s brain matter, scattered and pixilated
or in high def, but out of reach.
And you’re a cartoon where the only danger
is falling into the lumpy abyss.
At least you still have your eyes.
At least you can still see.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:41 PM

 
UNUSUALLY LARGE BEACH HAT

Brackish landscape
cut by a line of
fence posts, no fence—
foreign wood dotting sawgrass,
waterlogged and salt white.

Our kayaks drift
through salt marsh canals
half-guided by a breeze.
Your hat makes small shade
of sun bright as plastic boats.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 10:45 PM

 
EXTRA WRATH

Lined up with the others against the wall,
waiting for her bullet, she

thinks of ash trees in Texas
stripped of their new spring leaves
and littered with bits of disassembled trailers,

thinks of cops in riot gear downtown
and how, sometimes, even they show restraint,
as the pops are loud and in quick succession.

You want to tell her she will be okay,
the handgun was purchased legally.

You want to say that
an exact revenge should be
less indefinite.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 12:41 AM

 
REALLY, GWYNETH?

Perfect in a way that does not inspire hand-release,
your on-screen suicide will be stunning in Blu-Ray.
This yoga pose is called the blonde courtesan.
Your on-screen suicide will be worth it in pay-per-view.
Your theatrical legacy is a futile enterprise.
This is the part where you simper, lisp a seduction,
a showpiece, a powerful monologue about hope.
I’ll always remember your head in the box.
Your theatrical legacy is a solemn endeavor,
perfect in a way that does not inspire hand-release.
Your theatrical legacy is a tiresome exercise,
tantric showcase, tactile consort.
This is the part where you simper, lisp a seduction.
This yoga pose is called lazy-eyed princess.
This is the part where you simper, whisper, golden statuette,
perfect in a way that does not inspire hand-release,
such stagecraft, a powerful monologue about hope,
tantric showcase, this yoga pose is called my mother the Quaker.
I’ll always remember your head in the box,
a showpiece, a powerful monologue about hope.
I’ll always remember your head in the box,
and this yoga pose is called seven the hard way.
Perfect in a way that does not inspire hand-release,
tantric showcase, tactile consort,
a showpiece, a powerful monologue about business, cooking.
This yoga pose is called the soulless performance.
This is the part where you simper, lisp a seduction,
but don’t ever dress up like a man again.
You’re a showpiece, a powerful monologue about hope.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:03 PM

 
TORPEDOES AWAY!

Streaking toward horizon alive with boats—
white lines reaching across the sea at meters per second.
I’m holding my breath.
(Explode, goddamn you. Explode . . . shit.)

Torpedoes away!
Our shipping lanes are clogged
with your shitty terrorist flotilla—
outboarded skiffs with mounted 50-caliber machine guns.
No matter what your god has told you,
our God says, “Boom!”

Tornadoes away!
Do us a favor and die, already,
Bible Belters, Rust Belters,
shady denizens of the panhandles of Texas and Florida.

God wills it. It’s in the Book.
Nothing just happens, crazy person.
There is a Plan. This is a Test.

Torpedoes away!
Your destiny is propelled by German-engineered supercavitation.

Tenzing Norgay!
No Sherpa can lead you to the Kingdom of Heaven,
not even from the highest peak on the planet.
Besides, what religion do they teach in Nepal?

Damn the torpedoes!
I’m lashed to the mast like David Farragut,
and you’re going down!
Full speed ahead!

Goddamn you! Goddamn you! Goddamn you!
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:04 PM

 
ESCAPE ARTIST 1

I am not here to help.
Arriving in a new town, I claim

my ability to escape from it.
The straightjackets and handcuffs,

myth and misdirection. I am ruinous
to your early Twentieth Century torpor.

When I see an underwater chamber
and a length of chain, I say

it looks like a door—not a trap,
not a menu of confining circumstances.

But when I gaze upon the Capital—
the concept, its obdurate green—

I see a ghost ship
adrift in the Pacific,

captainless and chasing no fish.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 10:17 PM

 
LAUNCHED

as turtles paddling through lake strewn
with biomatter,
as hurtling space junk, which Voyager One will become
in a dozen years,
as Tibetan monks immolating themselves toward an afterlife,
the big empty,
as they burn by the dozens, we don’t notice anymore
as a burning, as a speeding outward
and interplanetary,
as a golden record the probe carries
with baby cries and whale songs,
as the monks drink kerosene as an internal accelerant,
exploding in protest,
literally,

and we are cheap gas and unlimited condiments
and all-you-can-eat and two-for-one and Happy Hour
and T-minus fifteen seconds
and made for T.V., reality T.V.,

as long as reality isn’t burning monks
or whales driven insane by Navy sonar
and beaching themselves,
or unloosed sewage streaming into the ponds
of our unfertile crescent.

We are engage, ignition, liftoff of the Titan III,
pushing ourselves toward the heliosphere

as a crying newborn rocketing from the womb.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 9:42 PM

 
WINTER AIN’T COMING

Awake to the goddamn grey
as winter has long ago fallen,

as we are in between storms
dulling the floats in the springtime parade—

conquistadors, airborne manatee,
time-lost Confederate belles—

as skies over Tallahassee briefly open
and the parade is a bridge from shadow to shadow,

from darkness to more darkness,
and any cultural sensitivity is as forgotten

as the last cold snap.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 8:20 PM