CLOCKING OUT

in some countries, cage matches are adorned with streamers
in the smoky head of vice, thoughts are riveted to origami propellers 
the vapors of sweat alone can turn industry
slow and sticky and dripping with honey is the voice of Romania’s queen of late-night infomercials
Boney M sang of the ridiculous tin
in the Tao of Nixon, you will see more engineering tips than in the handbook under a Boeing 747’s pillow
impossible to understand, but I bet the rumbling still got your attention?
for it may one day yield the secret of what the hawk sits delaminating on

the fight taking place in this cage is a neuron out of this world
it is a bucket full of Kodachrome rolls
once they had captured vulture foreplay
a Pez dispenser of dirty sound
she will be missed with a squeaky hysteria, i.e.
with the sound of a whole world twisting its collective sneaker ninety degrees
her reusable personality will finally beautifully atrophy 
authentic
the crimped muzzle of a mosquito savors its drink
like China’s esophageal missiles
the mouth of my country is shamelessly derivative of mole art

no longer do citizens have such fluid, impromptu, trigger-friendly confidence in their leaders
a moving picture museum responding only to one ratchet
learn from factories
they run on love

DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT

The president’s SUV looks angrier passing under the low light of the HP printer, but still verisimilar. We have only recently fully acquired a taste for pepper spray, and our washing machines finally got good at balancing mittens. Polarized shirtless, fretting, our president late for his very important annoying return, engaging his porridge in some kind of body-morphing performance art, his new advisor a bird with incredibly sharp avian wisdom teeth, a cry in the wilderness he for some reason deems witty. My howl, for its part, has been forged in a few days in a wheelbarrow.

I believe now is the time for cryptozoooids to transcend their differences, to come together and unite in a puddle-perfect phantasmagoria, murders being a thing of the past and forensic science honing itself on sand sculptures. Mark my words, brothers: a very big impact is going to be made by a 2 dollar sparkling gem. On other planets riots are caused in knish uniforms, and open casket burials prevent colds. Why are we so behind the times? Seems the death ray is bad at its job. Hey, your backpack straps are on fire! Belong to a club. Find a purpose. I am one of over a thousand insurance salesmen. By the way, my club foot says hello.

MAP OF THE MINEFIELD

navigated the interstices of optimism
found the fully-functional elephant
playing a flute, meaning you’re special
even though you read and got infected
by the bubonic email, and you thought
it best to boycott the wizard newspaper
when really –

this totally smashes everything with nothing
but glass may get healthier
shatters near the beginning
but on the other side, crystal
clear: the diorama of hanged toy
soldiers, vintage corn flakes
terminator plastercast
ceremonious adoption of remote lost crystals

propaganda dust devil worried by boots in
the warehouse where once was parked
a logic never before used by humanity
except in a japanese remake famous for
delaying the craziest but ultimately
most profound halftime show in existence,
with slippers that immobilized
the brawniest gait, with tusk glue
that doomed the elephant’s wrinkly grin

oh the intolerable austerity of the high definition
ice rink, the cold sense of the dough sniffing white
nose of the oven, the average cheerleader outfit 
cast in the form of a nesting doll, the lifespan of
boredom on 4chan augmented virtually the same way,
how to challenge the motivation for that ultimately
important connection, landings between floors,
concussions between minds

WHISPERINGS IN THE DRYWALL

On my arms, on paper, on the previous night’s math, on a prim heap of God filings. I’d been trying to calculate the curious sudden slump in the number of Korean boy bands. Coffee at 2a.m. Uttered the Dinosaur Slur, a slur against dinosaurs spoken, ironically, with a dinosaur’s slur, and meant to denote grave unhappiness. I hoard bright sharp metal shavings I use math to meticulously chip off of God’s body. I suspect I’m being tested, as any such mathematician would be. By some TV crew. I’m on ‘Hoarders.’ But also not. The challenge is to continue hoarding without knowing if I’m doing it for the sake of a few million bloated, bored viewers. I’d be devastated if I did. So this afternoon I was out in the garden applying a wet-dry Vortex shaver to the tree stumps. How I love the feeling of a smooth, pulpy shave. The sound. The rich wetness. Like damp feet walking across a new carpet. All the time I felt observed. But it wasn’t the usual TV crews watching me, it was a fairy.

I’m in love again. It’s that familiar tough time of the year again. This morning, I took that incendiary Julia Child morning bark so very personally, as I do every morning. The pigeon shit Kool-Aid look-alike on the bedside table swilled with a drunken flavor. I tried following the whispering communications between different oatmeal algorithms. I was vaguely aware of surfaces rumbling with unplowed acne. The world is fertile and rich with possibilities, but where to begin? The suicidal man asleep on such a night travels in a pro-life airplane. Morning is the resentful meatloaf. I’m usually unaware I’ve been catcalling some time during the night at the model army tanks and surfboards on my ceiling, or grinding new shoes in the area between sleep and waking. I have to go to work soon and won’t have access to my garage. There’s no cohesion, only possibility. Also, the machines in the laundromat I’ll later be visiting respond only to bagpipes. I don’t know who it is I’m in love with. Nor who the fairy I met in the garden was.

WORLD PEACE

These days, we drive jokes too far in therapy.
Just a few minutes ago, I was laughing at the sick mind.
We’re pushing construction of the labyrinth into
another parking lot, handicap parking has a special
venn dimension, like wheelchair donuts, only two
clicks removed from deep spirituality. 
I quickly saw that this blizzard forming
was a serotonin aberration, handcuffs between patient
and therapist now forming a matter of intense
debate. A thrashing screech and a yawp.
‘Arrestation with the jelly tot on the table, hmm,’ I write
on my knee. Again forgot my notebook in the car.
Like customer service failing at return of gift horse’s
teeth. Rearing back at horsedrool dribbling
from countertop. ‘Do you enjoy watching your addiction
from over there on the comforter?’ Classic chin scratch
with upward movement of fingers.
‘Never been prouder.’ 
He said some time ago that the Bat Sign is here to stay.
‘At the end of the sky’s baseball bat.’ Did I detect
violent inclinations?
Pointing at the window yelling: ‘Are you telling me I’m
the only one seeing it?’
OK let’s rule out violent inclinations. I think there’s something
deeply moving in the delusion. It might be a striped,
humpback worm. Too many people in this town seem
to think the fire department’s impromptu Christmas eve
vaudeville was as unsettlingly sad as the rest of the world’s
nose-evacuation rituals combined.
Tearduct ignition: gonna make me cry.
Pinecone-obliterating: gluey sterile tears.
The loveliest of dismembering, though... 
Berlin hoping this will all blow away by bowel movement’s end.
Clean restroom an obstruction of world peace.
The Scotch Tape maestro just dropped by to trumpet hello
through his nostrils. SAD.
Blockbuster video: STILL an exotic hit.
Thought we’d celebrate a little tonight.
‘Humph.’ 

NEW LAND

Why doesn’t the pilgrim have anything to talk about,
especially after taking Victorian heroin,
when he can’t even imagine the point of a
handbrake on a broom? Technology is still
in its infancy and we’d like to be easy on the
brute – we can’t keep faulting him for his ignorance –
but after a while it gets a bit tricky.

So many opinions flash through his mind
when he sees Charlie Brown, hooked to hairclips
hanging under the fat of the land, or hiding in a bin
and fermenting nicely during an apartment
heist commissioned by the pilgrim himself,
but honestly – how to formulate
these opinions? How to start pinning down
the mass of thriving, heaving gristle
in a suitable corner of the mind’s
vestibule?

Flush, then shoot an eye out with the
most inept handling of this futuristic technology –
opening a jar with toothpicks, adding bugs to
the fig in a glorious tribute to
the sweetness of the new land.
Toupees struck a cord with
all the wives’ pugs, while the honorary members
of the as-yet-embryonic TSA put a
rusty wire up the piano’s butthole.

THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR GAS

You’re in a crawlspace, not moving, not really living, bench-pressing claustrophobia, doing squats with gloomy impatience in your trousers. You’re training for the 2089 Olympics. We’re part of a groovy little band of sex stereotypes. We’re trying to prevail against an army of permanent markers. Society no longer considers it polite to pigeonhole us with sharp, glowing instruments. I used to like drawing peanuts. I used an average brand of steak knife to tattoo them on my food. Truffle infusion stabbing. That fast, yellow, rising mist. My favorite drink? Finger bone.

These winter warmers have been made in China. Should’ve worn my meditation swag, to prevent getting worked up over the inferior wiper fluid I’d been sold to clean and reuse pizza boxes. The famous Malva pudding tracker is speaking slowly, his voice thick and slimy with satisfaction. He is perversely successful and talented, half bushman, a quarter dog, a quarter metal detector. Shakespeare promotes porn and video games with the allegorical language he’d picked up from the latrine. Allergies are a sensible precaution against altruism. It turns out masochism is actually illegal. No one had known that.

It’s sad being stuck here. We all basically got what we came for. One guy’s searches rewarded him with the ghost of petroleum. It is beautiful and seems to have a fondness for human hands. A woman is playing the weightless clavier. Certain supernatural musical organs work a lot like the lids of stainless steel pots. They feed off gravity if the correct buttons are pressed. The notes they belch out are in themselves not weightless (for that is a logical impossibility), but CONSIST of weightlessness. A fog machine would now be great for boosting the morale, if not simply for that epic effect. It might also usefully blur the vile glint in the eye of what’s indisputably a French maid ogling the horizon of the countertop growing larger. But we haven’t moved an inch yet.

It seems the very molecules that make up this line are on their way to becoming quite turbid. I’d love for us to run on air, would’ve wanted to see us as a bunch of angry shopping bags curiously holding ourselves back. Out of decency. Jamie Oliver says he likes rubbing nutmeg into his G-spot. We will have to listen for the next twelve hours how the policies of its dominion over the rest of his nervous system, and even speech processors, have been grafted over the years. In double queues, the other line always moves faster.