1.
today I waited on a woman wearing heavy makeup to cover
the bruises flowering across the right half of her face
thick purple pansies, up to green gold petalled roses near her eyes
I gestured to the brace on her wrist. She lied -
"I was stupid, I fell down the stairs." I looked over her shoulder at him
Narrowed my eyes. He looked away and stepped back.
She's a white collar professional from a foreign country
living here isolated from her family. A man will do that to any woman.
If I jot down a website and hand it to her
I would get fired. She's on his side attacking herself
in her shame, she should have left him already ~
2.
the fabric rots
when time ripens the fire will catch
the mold and the moths who feed on the rot
will burn with it
pop with little pyrotechnics
kris wrote what someone else i'd read said
how the rats gnaw at the toes of our people
under the fabric of their talksleep
America
that quilt you wrap yourself with
filled with fat vermin
i smell the rot of your comfort
settling in with the diabetes
fed with a thousand tiny choices
i put my money on the poets
the liquor keeps their blood thin
and antiseptic. my colony in new orleans
test drove their survivalese on katrina
with great success
this is real, but with a little hubris and a little
lip service to literal i'm playing
hot damn, we can't pump gas out from under the ocean forever
mother nature gettin' a little tired of being
raped out of balance
and those kids' kidneys won't survive
another trip to the drive through for fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat
and salt.
let us worship at the bank of our government's insurance
let us sell our health care down the hell of for profit hospitals
let us engineer Demeter and become allergic to Her wheat
let us asphyxiate ourselves in the name of convenient transportation
let us build a society to survive in and have it kill us
let us disconnect compare compete for that fat lie of a brass ring
so distant from each other I can't look her in the eye and say
You know there are some places you can go
I'm a stranger I already know what he's doing
Just because your colleagues don't have the balls to
step up and nourish your strength to get out ~
once a year the native americans who we killed to live here
would groom the woods
use controlled burns to clean out the too-much brush
and the vermin that lived in it
they cared for the community
the fabric rots
when time ripens the fire will catch
the mold and the moths who feed on the rot
will burn with it
pop with little pyrotechnics