#4,000,007

Dear Kindly Participant:
You are not a novelist

with short blonde hair
and marbles in your head

that record each miniscule twitch.
You have never written a book

full of miasmatic hipsters.
Someday you will finish your meal

whip the empty plate across the room
and say Fuck you, Mayor Quimby.

Go straight to hell.
Until then, be sure the tailgate

is securely fastened. The beer
properly ensconced.

#16

When the minstrels came in the door, I left.
It was entirely their fault

for in me they had created a wall a wall
on which the pounding of my head

seemed entirely necessary and practical.
But that is the price of being alive.

You must be willing to endure
a seemingly unending series of illusions

one after another like puberty
or cup after cup of instant coffee

that cause you to become
the same person.

#76

Located somewhere within the circuitry
of the warm soft thought machine

composed of a series of sensations
that equivocate a life made mostly

of breathing and a single droplet
from which the effluvia suffer

to emit their gasps—
I have settled upon a small bowl of noodles

for my midday meal.
O blurry whisperers

suffer me not.
I am the worst sort of manager.

Always looking to end things
with little expertise…

#333

I am most grateful to the forces
which allow me to appreciate

the handiwork of fuckups.
I seek a pure beauty

unavailable to men and women
who don their oxygen masks

to visit the observation deck.
I cradle my ideas

made for those who seek
such things as whimper dross

whimper dross, etc…
I am the worst sort of manager.

Always looking to mend things
with simple flocks of geese.