I don’t divulge this stuff to conspiracy theorists and chin waggers and such. But we’ve invested all our profits into plastics. Every single penny. Plastics. So there’s your story.
Burning Bus(h)
There’s no sound of sirens
And that’s a problem.
Some girl with a head wound
and Ugg boots
Is drinking a placenta mocha latte
While talking in a staccato style
In an affected, sing-song,
Mezzo-soprano rise- and -fall about Pablo Neruda.
There’s an overwhelming smell of burning flesh
Pulsing out from the street
To which she seems impervious.
But the problem becomes apparent
When we see she is speaking to a flaming bus
Which she includes in her imaginary clique of well-heeled friends.
Bus passengers try frantically to get out.
When we pull back we can see that her convertible Saab
Is all-but-demolished.
A man smashes his way through the front door of the bus
And leads ten people with multiple flesh wounds
And third degree burns
Outside and way from an impending explosion.
The girl wrinkles her nose and says “Ewwwww!
Let me check my purse for some wipes.
You look gross!”
Everywhere in Chains
I do not wish to sing for you
I don’t need carnations that fade from view in the cold, grating air
I do not wish to dance for you
While you dangle compliments
Like treats in front of hungry dogs
I will not humour you
Or meet your greedy gaze
Have my use to you weighed on crooked scales
I will not be that expendable man
Decorated like a cheap cake
For a shotgun, midweek wedding
And my exit will cover you like a temple curtain
Torn in two
Daddy-O
The sea pig was loudly sipping slurping and sucking bottled water with a straw until there was nothing but air in the green glass bottle and he sucked that too until a fellow patron and psycho-biddy paid a waiter to bring him another bottle of water to keep him quiet as the sax man on stage was getting heavy with song and labouring over squeals that wanted to become definable notes but something was wrong there was a wall that had to be broken and so the sea pig at the front table sucked down some more water and the psycho-biddy held money out to the docile waiter who produced another green glass bottle of water complete with straw and the sax man bent his knees and squealed some more until his horn blew fourteen hundred different notes that spun like baby replicas of the sax itself, fourteen hundred visible and audible sons and daughters of this brass seahorse manipulated by anxious hands and mind variously applauded and recognized by seated spectators made ready by wine and water
615 Words to Go (Before You Get The Picture)
When I was young and foolish
I worked as Chief Photographer
For an award-winning studio.
In the course of the day,
While immortalizing high school graduates,
Rich fiancés, expectant mothers
And undertakers,
I would take a moment to dust, sweep and
Mop the studio from front glass window
To the rear bathroom.
I felt that this cleaning business was part of
Eliminating the unnecessary.
But I was young and foolish then,
And neglected to take out the owner with the trash.
He was old, rich and hateful.
He was the one who would boast:
“I can sell clothes to a nudist,
Constant craving to a Buddhist, and
Go to Jail cards to bail bondsmen.”
He had me selling eighty cent 8x10 portraits
For forty dollars. Just because they bore his name,
Even though I had shot them.
When I set up my own studio to set up in accord
With my ethics, he came walking in with a contract I
Had signed, and pointed to something I hadn’t read carefully:
Something called a non-compete. I couldn’t shoot in a fifty mile
Radius of his studio for the next five years.
So I took up work as a realtor,
And in four years’ time bought the three buildings closest to his studio.
I sold one to a nudist cafe, a second to a Zen meditation group, and a third to
A bail-bond agent. In the fifth year after I had left this
Award-winning portrait studio, many parents forbade their children
To walk near the nudist café, even though they had a high fence.
The monks who ran the Zen meditation center would sit peacefully in their long
Garb with their shaved heads in the studio waiting room, causing the
Vanilla-middle-class clients to flee the scene.
The sudden loss of income came at a time when the studio owner’s debt
Was through-the roof. Finally, the unscrupulous bail-bond agent
Sold the studio owner a bond following his arrest for stealing money
From purses left in the changing room.
When the studio owner couldn’t pay an additional fee, he was led back to jail.
When his studio and equipment went up for tax sale,