Bot

the next day [I] was
[stationed] in a mall
a security detail
[watching as usual] in
rooms making movies
EMPLOYEES ONLY
from hidden positions
[hands in the cash box?]
fingers in the [till?]

the week before [I] was
a stick figure [Human]
working as an [icon]
painted on a [BUTTON]
mounted on a [light post]
[watching as usual] saying
[“Wait!”] [“Wait!”] [“Wait!”]
on a [four way] corner
[pattern matching] faces
[analyzing data] looking
for a [suspect]

then I’m in a car [installed]
from a [phone] working
in a parking lot [finding
people’s cars] enumerating
spaces [watching as usual]
people wearing suits
[wandering in circles]
baffled and angry [looking]
for their [keys] watching
through the windshield
[I’m taking it all down]

David Foster Wallace Road Trip

how do we go down these
[car cluttered ways] like a
pair of footnotes to [Plato]
or a couple of easy riders
[pulling wheelies] on the knife
edge highways of doomed
Walhalla [its crystal cities]
stacked like fragile boxes
on skylines of denial

how goes it in the [netherworld]
is it like a [drive by shooting]
where the bodies are laid bare
like red clay [targets] epitomizing
the [curse] and [blessing]
of painlessness or should we
stop off for a drink to kill
some time before the next class
our notes [stuffed in the trunk]
with the bodies in the bibliography
of what we thought we knew

gone is the grass beneath
our feet the feeling of matter
mattering of nature naturing
it’s all in the rope [you know]
stepping off the chair as if
you never sat beside me
[map in hand] looking for the
offramp like a rubbernecker
[stunned] before the all
consuming stars where
everything is alleviated
and even the dead
are given up for dead

Seven Traffic Lights

[GREEN]

look at that house
with a [roof] like that
I’d have two kids
go to [J Crew] teach them
[chess] I’d teach myself
[French] I’d be riding
along with a willing wife
in a [company car]
taken as a [write-off]
on my way downtown
for a [pay-off] hey
how come we’re not
moving

[GREEN]

sometimes I wonder
“Why all this war?”
people getting killed
[and all] forcing the
losers to speak a new
[language] so every word
in every tongue reopens
the [wounds] it’s like
cutting myself every day
[oh shit] look at that
asshole

[RED]

now there’s a
[sweet ride] some guy
in a midlife [crisis]
bet he’s hiding
something [inside]
somewhere upstairs
in a room no one knows
[maybe in the basement]
next to the [power tools]
better watch out
for that circular [saw]
when the light turns
I’ll get the [jump] on
that guy

[GREEN]

my mother always liked
driving at night
up the [Thruway]
the [Jersey Turnpike]
the night world [ours]
the crimson streams
of taillights always
[coming in and out]
she’d take the fast lane
like a roller derby queen
passing everyone
until working our way
back into the darkness

[RED]

I know that movie
the guy is a spy but he’s been
programmed [not to know that]
so he works as a [shoemaker]
on some Heidelberg corner
[until one day] he’s visited
by a virtual Virgin Mary who
is played by [oh god]
what’s her name [you know]
she’s the one who was in
oh god [you know]
you know

[GREEN]

did you hear that?
[just listen] she wants us
to go left in 200 feet
[I hate this phone]
I mean there can only be
one [best way]
but it’s always changing
[like the beaks of birds
down in the Galapagos]
so I can never be sure
about that phone
[god] I think I missed
the turn

[RED]

my father never went
to war [if he did] he never
told me about it
he did [get drunk a lot]
I used to [get drunk] too
but [I stopped]
I never went to war either
[I mean] you can’t
drink and drive
[they’ll catch you]
tell your boss [lose your job]
[it’ll get around]
you’ll feel like crap
so you have to [stop]
go with the traffic