The Tyranny of Toilet Paper

hands lunge through darkness
distancing answers, delineated, point A to point B
disposed into toilet paper
salvation soothsayers proclaimed
sages who inherit earth of empty gospels
white fabric seduces souls

windows are broken
by royal we, doting dads don toilet armor
moms say hello to prying into intimate spaces
child’s hands wrest toilet paper from neighbors
friends, sisters,
salvation is here for us who can obtain

once we threw it away
rid ourselves with glee
now hands lunge
into beaten-down cars and BMWs
mildew-infested bathrooms and boudoirs
shit happens when truth

tears
so thin
tearing so easily
but it’s our salve salvation
son or daughter saved durable
 protection

 sages might be assholes
but it’s information, point A arising from
corpses that pile up
and bars that close
we can fight

you chose poorly, proclaimed real sage in Indiana Jones
but real sages lack robes and beards
geriatric inconveniences who connect event A to event B
then to C, besides back then
 Nazis were clear enemies
 real sage never reckoned with toilet paper

hands lunge
another roll of toilet paper claimed
another life saved, our lives
I, I, and the appendages of I
until someone dies

clutching torn toilet paper

Dear Encapsulation

Dear encapsulation, disguised as an application,
who am I? In three sentences?
I’m a Romantic, a raging Tchaikovsky addict, a Debussy lover
on moonlit nights when
emails go unanswered. Give me personal communion
one cup of coffee, one beer, one smile, one how the fuck are you.

(do I have to have two dicks and be an alien to get a response?)

fuck off philistine, you whisper, you encapsulated egghead
personal communion is for psychiatric evaluations
now who am I? do you want to know, you damned encapsulated you
I’m a man who looks across booths at bars
wondering how friends form, what antics
they convey in secret booths. nicknames, pet names, dirty jokes, failed tests, confessions
laughing at loneliness, laughter lilting, waiting for communion

(do I have to blubber like a boozing bastard while wielding two dicks?)

do they know the lilting lingering call
to refresh and check emails
wonder if old classmates can recall my name
that dirty joke I told, my favorite drink
White Russians at a bar that looks like an Edward Hopper painting
with dim lights and vast blackness and train horns

(do I have to get into a jukebox fight while wielding two dicks and blubbering?)

who am I?
I’m the dark man, holed in a room
give me drunk mothers, runaway mothers, kids mowed down by trains
personal communion
not an option. try again. I’ll take Hitchcock Presents stupidity on the screen
is a fleeting substitute for smiles and shared spaces in coffee shops. good evening, good evening, give
me the rumination of rooms while the moon
dances in a gown of wisps and Netflix glows

(If I said an earthquake ripped off my balls, while I wield two dicks, can I get a connection?)

promising depression in the Crown and Sam Elliott’s F-bombs from
mustaches. give me a mixture
who are you?
I’m a man who hates tempers, rages, broods, regrets
masturbates and try to figure out
how to get some personal communion, a smile, a laugh, a recitation of all my favorite things

(So, what if I had two dicks, lost my balls in an earthquake, and I’m transitioning into an asshole fast?)

who am I?

can you hear me encapsulated egghead?

were you listening?

The Narrator Presents

why do we thrive
on people gone Psycho?
good evening, the narrator on screen proclaims
baldheaded in British accent, while
children betray parents
husbands betray wives
and people milk mendacities and notions
of post-war dreams without picket fences.

why is love so garish,
too tender, complex, something to be brushed aside?
yet when a man is murdered by anxious daughter,
a couple feigns death for dollars
from black-and-white screens,
we laugh, a funeral march for idiocy
playing, minds pirouetting.
why? why can’t we quit?

fragmented families
that need not answer obligation. unlike the real things,
 starched smiles and the phone calls, intimate connections that require
dissection and feigned fealty to lectures and tirades
 homicidal children and couples require only
dells of dark delight and simple logic,
which we keep in the shadows, in the form of
black-and-white costumes

we may express outrage over their idiocy
and the baldheaded narrator in public
so flippant in describing heinous crimes
but nightly we inhabit their heads,
wanting to feel the coldness of motion,
guns, cyanide, crackling with chilling cries
and the narrator laughs in his baldheaded British
logic

why can’t we bump off a boss or a husband
for insurance money? why can’t we turn our own
pompous parents in for rewards and revenge?
we dwell in hypotheticals
while we ignore the black-and-white fates
of mendicants on screen
seas of sorrow and corpses
although you never actually see them.

good evening, logic. good morning lunacy,
the narrator proclaims, baldheaded,
while the funeral march plays for us
and we march through darkness
with our regrets
smiling our starched smiles
clamoring for more mendacity
we’re a tad Psycho. more mayhem, please.