“OUT, OUT, DAMN SPOT!”
(THE GAME SHOW)

I wouldn’t speak that way to me if I were you.
No, almost definitely, I would not. But then, if I were you,
I most likely would not speak at all, but curl up, fetus-like
in the corner, stricken with the ineptitude of God’s financing
in areas such as creation and genetic inheritance. And if I
were doing this, and I were you, who would you be?

Lost in the shuffle, that’s who; a blank spot, a shadow figure,
a dawn-day silhouette no one would be willing to step into.
And yes, all the crustaceans would curl up their tails in salute,
and the tad poles would do a slow dive backwards into
the sperm pool, and it would all be like some old
Esther Williams swim-&-dance routine;
A celebrity roast to the blind force of evolution.

Up to the podium walks a man we’ve never seen before,
and he would ask, “The envelope, please…” and your name
would be on it, announced to the crowd, the camera crews
searching you out, the spotlight frantic, and we would all
fall down the open keyhole of your identity, spiraling down
like a DNA chain, holding hands, not knowing whose hands
we’re holding, partners for eternity, like Groucho & Marx,
like Karl & Engels, like Fish & Chips, tumbling, deposited,
as safe as a rerun, as two lovers—each with their finger
in a socket—stretching across the long room
to meet in a kiss.

DEFUNCT KING

Today, I needed to talk to my father
and I had to go forty miles to do this,
and it only cost a few slim quarters
down the pay phone’s throat.
Me, a little lighter in my pockets,
and my legs no more tired for it.
“Kill the Messenger,” they used to say. Well, now the messenger can keep his distance,
but there are still ways to drip poison down the ear of a king just turned defunct.

HORSES

So, who was that ferocious god we answered to, who lay buried
in the coarse thicket of our pubic hair, in swigged beer and the serum
of our guilty sweat? He was our outpost of dog fur, our immaculate
boner, he was radiant. He ran through flaming sewer gutters,
exploded mail boxes, all juvenile pranks while our bodies burned
with tides we had no name for. We were wired to his spine,
we knew his dance which set us running, but we could not
speak to him. The power plant hummed at the edge
of the neatly combed lawn, which was green in a way
that whispered green even in the gathered dark.
And our shadows galloped like mad horses, afraid
their own muscles could tear them apart.

MR. CRUNCHY

(part one)

This dance you do, what do you call it?
This old thing? Oh, I don’t know.
Maybe Waltz-with-a-Hole-in-my-Pocket,
maybe the High Voltage Serenade.
Maybe I dance when I sleep and don’t know it,
my follicles swaying toward star light. Maybe I am photosynthesis in reverse:
All crimped and fetalized under sunlight, all milk tides and electric limbs by night. See how protectively your skin is gripped to you?
Force of habit, that’s all.
It just never found a better dance partner.
Let it slip off your coat hanger bones
and find the real freedom it needs.
Let it have an affair with a traveling salesman
in a sleazy motel, let it assume the form for him
of an aging movie star he was in love with as a child,
and as they sleep, their tattered bodies lit
by late-night TV, by its’ blue swarm
of itemized moonlight, someone on the screen
is squawking, about a 1-800 number.
A place where you can dance all night.

You’ll catch me down there
at the Omnivore’s Ball,
swinging with the spectacle,
looking for my latest victim
who could pass as my own lonely double.

MR. CRUNCHY

(part two)

This dance you do, what do you call it?

I call it the Caustic Two-Step,
I call it the Tango of False Intimates.
And let’s play a game:
You’re the forest, I’m the defoliant,
this world a ballroom of asphalt.
I am not still, dumb in the sway
of static’s ebb and pull, I am not
spindling out to match the galaxy’s black-sun demise---I am dancing!

These rooftops, they are not still.
They’re leaping; black-gapped jaws lapping up the sky’s oblivion.
And these leaves, scattered in the streets like the toilet paper of dead kings,
they are dancing, too!
These muddled street lights make islands of vacancy for us to belly-leap and frollicate
endlessly through, without any thought at all.
Whatever carries us, whatever moves us---

Dance the Bodily Holiday!
Dance the Contusion’s Delight!
My skull on a blind date with the Titanic—
I’m about to crack, I’m about to go down
drowning with champagne in hand…

MR. CRUNCHY

(part three)

This dance you do, what do you call it?
I call it the No-Skin Crispy.
I call it the Nutra-Sweet Goose-step.
And this thing between us is not love,
but waxy build-up.

Call me by my real name; Mr. Crunchy.
Call me by my real name; Microsoft Willy.
Call me sugar when I melt at your mouth-step,
filled with a fever of false promises.
Call me Son of Cheese-Wiz,
Son of Sons of the American Spread.

I will cover this landscape in redundance.
I will cover it with the flu of surrender.
I will check on the status of my deadened heartbeat
and think, “This will be the only sound
I’m hearing when I dance, when I dance,
the only sound I’m hearing
when I dance from now on…”

AFFIRMATION

It’s not that I am dead. It’s not that.
It’s just that I’ve been burnt a little, that’s all.
When that happens, you tend to loosen up,
in terms of slipping. Parts gone since
you last checked them. Funny.
Things seem to run fine, even in their absence.
Maybe they weren’t needed to begin with.
There’s so much excess baggage nowadays,
it’s hard to tell.

The circle has wandered farther than the name
we put on it, its’ letters spread so thin
they barely cast a shadow.
We don’t even recognize them
as letters anymore; just long, deliberate slashes
made through the landscape---to tell time, perhaps,
or was it to measure miles?

The mechanism rusts in the desert.
I keep walking, hoop through hoop.
It’s not that I am dead.
I just keep walking through.

EPIPHANY

Things work out. Things always work out. How many times can we fool ourselves? There are candles burning out there, there are lights that stay on all night.
The glow on the sill lasts long
after the switch is hit off,
but still we turn our shoulders
like the bows of ships
toward what might hit us,
and we curse the things that bring us here.

AGE OF GRACE

Suddenly, all the clocks fell dead.
Their arms went limp, rigor mortis set in. The front doors blew open.
Those of us inside were finally coming out.
We were sons abandoning our fathers, children
who left the radio on, the faucet running, the oven burning high as they stepped greedily into the sunlight.
It was an age of grace, I think,
and all we could do was pick up and leave.

PRESS HERE TO ACCESS SEXUAL HEALING
I love to see you this way;
your wide-spread, circuited body.
You who were once so distant from me,
now made an infinitely soft-wear.

My keyboard shimmers in symphony
with all twenty of the programmable senses,
my fingers press further
through this gnarled and circuited light. My joy-stick begins its’ joyful wagging, dancing like an ice skater freed from my palm:

(The pleasure center is under control.)
(The pleasure center is open for business.)

(The pleasure center has been seized by terrorists. Please stand by.)

So many buttons to push, so little free time…