Sunday, October 24, 2010

Customer Service Complaint

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
not the dying leaves or the birds flying south
or afternoons that arc into evening,
waking up to a sun half-set.
It's not mice crawling back into houses
and sad wet cats meowing for help
in the alley, hiding under dumpsters
from the next pummeling of rain.

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
not the tired-looking evergreens
wondering when, if ever, they'll get a break
from their relentless color,
or the last of the bees still wandering,
starving mad, aching to please their queen.

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
it's the fact that regardless of what season
it is, how many birds or bugs or vermin
are all holed-up, every day remains
the same deluge of self-important people
with the same self-important problems
feeling that I am somehow obligated
to help solve them.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Moon Moths, Slugs, and Insects

"So steadily moves the solemn procession"
-Andrew Carnegie

Nothing if not
the feelings of sunny afternoons
when blinds draw to breathe
loose teeth in dreams.

Good sex!
says the third condom
sobered enough to get hard
after a massacre of foreplay
written on a bathroom stall
in Denver.

Made up like an eating disorder,
roadside or not,
I attempt a lost earring
for two years and six months
I named my microwave Montana
for it being easier to navigate
than an oven,
stove, or the distance between want
and a loathing to be clean.

A footnote in military history:
Terrorism should be a bomb.
It was a european beach
in the nineteen-forties
until i moved from the bed
to a futon in a windowless room

where dark but expecting
the stark moon a raven,
where I your young
bemoaning stomach aches
spoke

Feed me

Friday, October 8, 2010

Being home.

I’m starting to realize how much im like my parents,
picking up on similar habits. Dad’s sense of humor.
Mom’s too. Living like I travel, only a few different articles
of clothing to mix match. The theatricality of our world
and I buy into it. Coupon clipping what comes in the mail
for buy one get ones at the shoe store or getting stoned

before watching the perfectly fake gore of Sweeny Todd
or the strangely erotic gore of True Blood. The first time
we watched Interview with a Vampire since we were kids
and wondering if I should admit it was getting me off.
It wasn’t until the end that you said something.