Deterrence

Wombats and other creatures
that make their living from others
have all taken over the cashiers’ positions
at your favorite supermarket.
You see their eyes, hungry,
caress every package you take
from the butcher’s counter.
Claws fumble against change,
clack on the till’s plastic.

The Empirical World

a poem
.

Gastroenteritis

Battered snake lies
in the woods, just beyond
the view of the garden path.
Thrown here by the sadist
who beat him with clam-
shells, threw cayenne pepper
in his eyes. He does nothing
but quiver, quiver,
now and then whimpers
like a baby rabbit.
The sun filtered
through leaves is still hot,
his tongue dries
minute by minute.

10 Poems a Day

slit wrist razor leaves red trails
bleeds words lines
gasps for air gasps for food
eats razors like caramels

you bleed so much you
maybe should see a doctor

floods of poems razored
like chemicals
tear through tissue
a whole page
covered
with one word
razor
razor
razor

Tit for Tat

She lay,
one leg propped up,
skirt riding her thighs
like a tomcat
on a bronc—

he could see
she wasn’t wearing
any panties.

All you have to do
is kill my old man,
she said,
and you get
all of this you want.
She spread her legs wider
and he knelt between them.

Ten years later
he’s still rotting
in solitary
for biting a bull
queen’s dick off
seven months ago

and she’s married
to (but not screwing)
some disc jockey
from Encino, has
an impressionable lover
on the side

Water is Wet

Trickle, steady, second
by second, Vision blurred,
glasses smeared. The day
not yet at zenith. Sharp
bite of radish fresh
from the ground cools,
a bit, but does not quench.
Crash of hoe into dirt. Check
the sky. Still cloudless.
Trickle. Steady. Useless.

Welcome to the Gig Economy

It starts with a trumpet, but one
that morphs into a piano given
enough time. Annie hears it
as she skips through the forest
with that basket of ducks’ eggs
that never seen to get to Grandma’s
house. The door is never open,
requires blood. No one has
cut themselves shaving in recent
memory. And what of the wolf?
Oh, he died of old age years ago.
Word on the street is he was still
waiting for payment on that last
commission, a building-sized
mural of the pigs who designed
thew city’s low-income housing
utopia. We await the soundtrack,
wonder whether it will be brass,
strings, or music we have never heard.