Executive Overstay

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” — Mexican proverb

He wasn’t going to leave.
It hit us like a virus
when supplies ran out
or were never there.

We coughed in our elbows
wore handmade napkin masks
and ducked for cover
when the phlegm hit the fan.

All our plans changed
from places to see
and things to do
from a bucket list
to a fuckit list.

Me, I stopped slumming
in cheap genre
turned to my Bibles:
Bruen, Braverman, Denis, Duras.

My sister wore her hair up
and black drilling heels
took up smoking beetroot
in bed with her dogs.

My brother howled louder
than the sirens in his head
stalking the candy aisles
under a blood red moon.

We took our medicine
together
and laid ourselves down
at the feet of our leader.

He dug our graves
promising us
we’d pop up again
in the spring.

The Rimbeaudian symbolism
passed way over our heads
like a see-through cloud
of ghostly contagion.

Wag Us

The Administration spoke down to us
from the helicopter megaphone
as we floated on a rubberized raft
of long-term suffering. Ragged
paper towels and ice chunks tossed
to those of us with raging heat
rashes, pup tents and Sterno
like a moving target.

The Administration spoke loudly
on the laws of our ravaged land
oil for everybody, free education
on all the uses for AR-15s, nukes
and soybean sandwiches the Chinese
don’t deserve
phosphate sodas and dairy milk
from poisoned rainforest cows.

Every time the Administration spoke
we held out, we held out
our thin bones, lopped off tails
wagging, wagging
as we’d been told to do.

The Blimps

Their girth impresses,
casting shadows on the world.

Hungry for change
bloated bodies, fragile bones
we reach for them
in need of real sustenance
in the darkness of Obese City
under the flashing mirror
that sees only itself
like a gold-lit globe
of the entire world.

It could happen to us.
It has happened to us.

We need to use restraint
our leaders do not
nobody can restrain them
they do not restrain themselves.

Test kits for everyone
masks for the brass.

It could happen to us.
It has happened to us.

Hungary, Poland, all our
“democracies”
on the strict diet
of authoritarianism,
leaders for life
tell us all
to stay home
eat cake.