4 Poems

Fool Yourself

Fool yourself
and say it’s grass and not pavement.
Just before you jump
promise everybody payment.
I know people who have done it,
I know people who have said:
Hold on for one more day man,
and when I get paid
you’ll get what I owe you,
thank you for your patience,
I just wanted to show you,
your trust was not misplaced,
and I was lucky to know you,
and where was I again …
oh yeah,
look at the grass
and don’t call it pavement
you’ll get each and every line
on that final statement
and when I get paid
you’ll get what I owe you
and from the time that I jump
until the time that you follow
I was happy to do business
and happy to know you.

Clowns

Two clowns come,
one as fat as fat can be and
the other as skinny as a rail.
The fat one tells me
there’s a pushcart in it for me
if they can spit-roast me
and when they’re done,
the skinny one has to spit in my mouth.
The dwarf is just here to film it.
(I admit, I didn’t see him at first.)
That’s all, the fat one says,
that’s all it takes.
I say no,
and the fat one laughs
because he knows I thought about it,
and clowns, man,
they’re just fucking evil,
and clowns, man,
It’s like they know, they know
how many years,
exactly how many years,
I’ve been at this stuff,
and I’ve never been paid,
and I’m never going to be paid,
and I’m up against the workshop
(The middle common denominator),
and the dictatorship of the twitterteriat,
and I’m up against clowns
and clowns, they’re just evil,
and they live to see you fail.

Every Anxious, Sucking Breath

That night I was driving high and
alone on the streets at three am and
I saw two men in an empty lot
rolling something heavy
up in a blue plastic tarp and
putting it into the back of a minivan.
I looked at them and they looked at me and
I thought about how I’d duct tape them to chairs and
put the chairs and the men back-to-back and
put plastic bags over their heads and
watch the bags fill their mouths
with every anxious, sucking breath and
how they wouldn’t say anything,
couldn’t say anything, and
how I’d not speak to them and
I’d just douse the plastic with gas and
stand there a minute, able to smell
their sweat above the octane and the night
and then I would set them on fire,
set them both on fire,
their minivan too, and
sit back and watch everything burn. But
before any of that, before
I’d even finished the thoughts in
the order necessary to form intent,
one of the men turned to me and
held a lighter up in his right hand and
lit it and then he gave me the thumbs up
with his left hand and we were,
all of a sudden,
all cool with this,
whatever this is.

Nineteen

In the spring of the Pandemic a crow sat on
the streetlight outside my house every weekend.
I named him “Nineteen” and was pleased with my wit.
The streets were quiet but not still,
and just like in Vegas
on any day before or since,
people ran out of money,
drank before noon,
and lost track of the date and time.
I drank and worried about money.
I missed the gym, and going to movies,
but only going to the gym and going to movies –
My wife zip-tied the garage doors shut,
so that people couldn’t break in and
steal the things we store in the garage.
I just worried about money.
The worst of it was the censors,
the neighbors who called the authorities any time
they thought they saw people standing too close together,
or walking their dog.
The petty, the pathetic, and the vindictive
have always been with us, and always will be.
These are the people who cheer for photo-radar,
and who seek to levy their impositions
via the agents of bureaucracy.
They won’t change, ever, not this time
and not even when the thing that really does come
for all of us takes them too.
All of this I saw,
slow-motion eddies in a slow-moving current
beneath the wings of Nineteen.