Monster Movie

You do right

By doing wrong, I do wrong

By doing wrong. Ladies and gentlemen

Of the court, I call myself

A ghost, I call myself a demon—

No, I call myself Satan, I call myself

To the stand to testify

I’m not fit to be trusted

To testify against myself.

I’ll swear on no Bible, I’ll not sacrifice

A drop of my blood, I won’t plead the fifth,

I’ve come here as an expert witness to the crime

Of love and my testimony, now unscripted,

Is this: I’ve never seen any of it. At that scene,

What crime then?

Outside the court

The law is

Outside of us

The law is

What?

I swear this is my first haiku

Cigarette. I swear I haven’t had

Much to drink yet. I swear I wrote this

Poem the day we met over Burnside Bridge.

I swear it wasn’t me who loosed

The Voltron-like monster on the city

But I will plead guilty for playing the music

That meanwhile lulled the populace into

An unstirrable sleep of a dream’s dream.

Neurotransmitters

Why stop there? Everything actually
does not matter.
Two neurons meet in a synaptic gap. One babbles
endlessly of a beautiful atom, the other responds
by firing back
“Shut it, deluded brother”.
I recall two mismatched socks
intertwined under your desk. I wished
to tell you, to marvel together at inanimate love,
but instead of where they should stay clasped
they would drift away —
O delusion! What delight you
take in a little “je ne sais pas”
sprinkled over that art-child that
calls himself an orphan only to find himself
the centre of beauty later. Imagine
there was once a certain young Mr. Z there,
now stands a self-proclaimed rogue-knight templar.
“Fountain overflowing!” A drought in Seattle
is reported on the Phoenix ten o’clock news.

To Pierre

As a practice to perform my ritual dance

for that voyeureuse I get drunk before noon

every Sunday, sitting on the edge of the Santa Cruz pier.

Feet kicking the air energetically, I smoke an entire pack

of menthols and drink a bottle of cheap wine before

walking away with glee. This is the only time I smoke

in the hopes of you walking up and asking to bum one.

The only time despite disappointment I feel happy.

Why are we thin boys who call ourselves the men of Salem,

Oregon still attempting to imagine the perfect golden

bird? Are we not content to watch the shadows of the colorless bird

that pecks at our feet? I may be alone in my disbelief in gold

but I believe in the value of an Atlantis torso

a chest of treasure sinking fast with a flushing sound

that can only be heard by what is in and by the chest itself.

I am of the type that never cries. And yet

here is water, and that damn tickle

I haven’t felt in so long. Why must I think of such dumb words

while I want to bathe in the beauty of every

word you chose? I’m sure I started writing this sober,

I started writing with something completely different

in mind but here is this intent to recite

to you to remind you who we are when we are in each others arms

again, but the bystander days walking towards and away

without a mention of you or your self-shamed sigh fluster

me, making me acknowledge this will never happen.