Alexa, Kill My Ex-Wife
Yeah I said it
on a moonless
night in the not
so distant future.
Of course I didn’t
do the dirty work,
in fact I only said
it as a joke but A’s
interconnectivity
never laughs out
loud on the wire-
less 9G network.
I slept in the blue
sunset of Mars as
my ex’s smart stove
gassed her dreams
on Earth. I am the
modern murderer
your child’s clone
may marry online.
Trust me, I know
because I can look
back and see steps
not being taken.
We Had Just Come
from a strip club. My girlfriend was curious when the grass moistened at midnight. We pulled over to laugh and then took our time playfully arguing if the dominatrix’s melons were GMO. That’s when I absentmindedly drove into an offramp. We slithered up toward the moaning highway and saw it was being tongued by stretched headlights. I jammed the brakes and spun into the shoulder where an angry truck’s high beams hit us. Afterwards, my car towed us home. The dark no longer wanted to be touched so we stopped smothering it with small talk (and music). We drove from the near-collision and let our spiritual imagination rise from the dead.
After Party
I overheard the male scholar give advice
to a young female poet: never say pussy
is like a wound. It’s trite, said the elder
drunk poetry professor who then pissed
his pants, figuratively. The young poet
remained poised like a potent pregnant
pause and then explained her anatomy
did not bleed out like a sacrificial lamb.
She did admit how a woman’s curved
body is traced by all the pens of poets.
The man nodded and confessed he lost
his desire to recklessly love in the rain.
The poet smiled and sipped her blood
red wine and said, pity you can’t fuck.
Her words sucked the air in his throat,
gutting his speech of all its metaphors.
How Can You
call yourself a poet if you’re afraid
of words: cock, pussy, ass and tits?!
My favorite is unfuckingbelievable;
the whole (some) state when was is.
(I sculpt grammar into abstract art so
words become misunderstood music)
The poetically disadvantaged think
a period can prevent meaning from
escaping but we know it was never
captured, just a borrowed jazz beat.
Poetry too taboo to be spoke aloud
is like being forced to make muted
love so let’s not pretend the truth is
embarrassed otherwise worthy bad-
ass words go unsaid like songs
silenced by an act of creativity.
The West Side of Easter
The Popeye of the dive bar drinks his canned spinach beside the low tide in my glass. Brunched-up women enter with flowering hats brightening the blood in my mind’s wine. Popeye sees me pat my pockets for buried treasure and points to the dusty bottle shipwrecked on a shelf. Hoist them sails, he yells. The bartender’s book drinks puddled beer. I write myself an email, which becomes this poem, lift my shot off the fast-talking counter and taste the oak barrels happily aging in Tennessee.