You never noticed the fine
print on the box
your school arrived in:
some disassembly required.
It’s a learning experience, though,
no doubt. First
you must discard all the memories
in separate, government-
approved locations,
then extract your transcripts as if
they were nests of copper wire
& lengths of pipe
to be shipped off to China.
The bricks must be given passing grades
so they can advance
to the next life. Then
Abandon hype, ye who enter
these sound-proofed rooms:
you can fight City Hall all you want, really,
provided that your words
are bland as water & promise
jobs—drip—development—drip—growth—drip.
Open bribes will not be tolerated.
The voters expect transparency
& paper trails, sometimes even
the anodyne of a Town Hall meeting
where one by one they can stand
& state their names for
the record, that stagnant pool
that reflects everything
but their weariness, their anger,
the way their hands rise
Attention suicides: please have the consideration
to drown elsewhere. It is not that your body
would be especially toxic — that’s a myth.
But what we crave in water is an absence of taste,
not the taste of absence.
Also, kindly make sure your water bill is paid up.
It’s the least you can do for your neighbors,
who will soon probably be needing to recharge
their own reservoirs, those brown or blue pools
in which on occasion you may have glimpsed yourself,
smaller than life.
the news
touching us
too mad for madness
touching her child
they bury us
day and night
escape lies
in the ground
among other people
I harbor a war
in my music
an ordinary yes
can kill a child
reading for memory’s sake
a history of the present
I make changes to it
you a child still
and me in an office
pickled in wine and rage
seven businessmen rattle out
their seven thoughts
death giving them
what they please
a piece of hot salt beef
some brown bread and brandy
and we make little
but desire better
live only an hour
carry fire into our graves
an ark in a white room
like the heart in a king
dead for all
his anger bread
and management so ungrateful
as to put a wren out of work
under the want of money
is a place that disobliges
people not able to do
what they desire to it
who chase a place like a world
broken in pieces
lone stone war
state fit war
own pain war
old ore war
Lord Chance war
heat hate war
news night war
our news that will not stop
or stick
not our fight
but in our ring
our prayed-for ordnance
our mother of war
our sitting on the ground
playing at love and hate
our absence
of any questions
we are a people distracted and sucked in
to weep for the most ridiculous shows
as painted puppets tell us
the meaning of things
with no bare face
only lies
hate in the abstract
contracts into a tired road
and we shut up
unthank the dust riding us
no news
is what what we have done
to the enemy
but that the enemy own
little purpose