Copy Machine

Lift lid
(the door's open)
Apply page face down
(the contract's signed)
Input number of replicas to produce
(the future's set)
Press large green button
(cash the checks)
Ensure that runoffs occupy top tray
(keep boss impressed)
Pages should stack from bottom to top
(land a promotion)
Remove completed copies
(retire content)
Clear data
(now hiring)

What Makes Us Human

He wears the yellow paisley tie
that he never unknots–
a gesture for luck–
to compliment the new suit,
which his employment certainly
afforded him.

He received this client
upon the call from the secretary
of the junior partner who
simply mimicked what his superior
had done to him. The great chain
of delegation. Associates
must earn such perks.

As he stands in front of
the double doors to
the conference room,
he removes a comb
from within his jacket
and files away the uncooperative
strands back into a hairline
in the early stages of
retreat–something sleep had
begun long ago.

He corrects his posture, as
upright as possible, and
enters the room to stern
smiles and firm handshakes.

After a litany of drafts and redrafts,
the contract finally rests in front
of them on the table. Each chair-
man reads and nods earnestly.

They utter words like "airtight"
and "boilerplate," even
"genius." Thumbs grip
pens that flitter upon
paper. No future
litigation will harm
another satisfied company.

Soon,
you or I can sign too
so they'll allow us
to willingly walk
barefoot across
a five yard stretch
of burning coals.

Shit

You can't
fake having a kid which
renders parenting an exclusive
club with membership
involving a familiar anecdote, among other
terms, that they all tell to
varying degrees to
relate, to
disgust, to
embarrass.

They tell how
they strolled into
the nursery one day to
find their precious angel's
handprints strewn across
the wall like a chain
of islands bridged
together by the streaks
in between.  The story's quite mundane
until you learn that
the diaper functioned
as the little artist's
palette.

I laugh
unfazed and reply,
"Sounds like writing
a poem."

Anger

The match strikes
against the grain,
fledgling the flame's
growling arrival–

And it burns.

Flickering up,
but fading down
like a light atop a buoy
in the surf of a storm.

The scorched head
leans lower, reaching
for the flame, hoping
it'll finish the job, yearning
for oblivion.

And before it snuffs
within the grip
of my fingertips,
I put it out
with a fire hose.

Santa claws

Sometimes
he slips off
an icy roof and shatters
like a ceramic ornament
on a hardwood floor—
not this time.

Other times
a ginger man clutches
the walls of his throat refusing
to join his brethren below; blueing
the big fellow’s face; falling
him in a lump.

This time
his rotund figure proved
the culprit, packed in
the chimney like his chocolate
likeness in an overstuffed stocking—
except yuletide stokes
below.

Arms bent against chest;
hands flat upon brick,
he crinkles his fingers
and scratches and
claws.

That’s not Christmas
spirit he’s inhaling.

A youngster opens
his eyes escaping
this singular vision—tears
slide down cherub cheeks—
bad news
from the front seat
again.

Poverty: A Love Story

We know the story:
The planks creak under the chair's
sudden additional weight.
The wonky leg barely stabled
by a small stack of food stamps
that expired long ago.
The culprit leans back
in a careful balancing act
to lift his feet onto the porch railing
where more paint chips away
revealing the weathered wood
beneath. He watches the mailbox
–waiting–
for the welfare check to arrive
several cigarettes late in these parts.
His life complete.

We fudge the end.

Easy A

A batting of the eyes,
a flipping of the hair—
and if he doesn't notice,
I'll transfer to another class
where he does.

Bounds

Your argument is:
there’d be no Superman
if he hadn’t stepped off
a building’s edge
or leaped in
a bullet’s way
or sped on
the tracks ahead
of a train.

My argument is:
yeah,
there’d be no Bizarro
either.

Family Business

Our father's first franchise
featured a small menu, from one
to two to three items total, that
failed to leave too bad
a taste in his mouth.

So upon the next,
he dropped item one, the one
he conveniently could, and added
one, then two, then three more.
Similar to the first, the initial
item here soured

And on his third attempt,
he refused expansion
beyond an item at a time,
as the ancillary fees piled up.
Four staple items,
whether he liked them or not,
and one new,
until it would spoil.

This trend continued
with the failed fourth.

That led to the fifth—
an outlying merger
that still lasts.

That's our father's business—
always five items in,
but only the most recent item
to particularly care for.

The Commonist Manifesto

Eliot has come and gone
and no love song of any
language will bring him
back. The elitist is dead
and buried in the back-
yard beneath the budding
lilacs.

Inside, the party
is wasting away—flat
champagne; flatter
conversation. The fat cats
have retired. The help
has quit. A storm
brews outside of town.
We race home to
escape it.

Upon the first thunder,
the heart stops—fearing something
massive, something more
destructive than any tempest
within our horizon.
We are mistaken.
This is home.
This is safe.

We are fools.

The world now fits in
every pocket and witness
the result: desolate
tables, empty chairs rusting
along the sidewalks
of Paris. In the lofts above
Manhattan, the lights of vacant
homes are off for good. The law
of London burns, police
car by police car.

Together,
we are
apart.

There will be a time
when those lilacs will bloom.
We'll stamp them beneath our boot.
No longer will we be the foot-
notes subjugated to the bottom
of the page, as together we
infuse the narrative with the lines
they can't forget,
with the lines
they won't forget—

The lines that everybody will understand.

Cursor

I'd like to think that
she stares at me blinking
or seductively winking,

but I know her
medication's depleted
and that annoying tick
is as ugly as ever.

Machine

This machine manufactures
the doodads which fit inside those
thingamajigs that interlock with these
whatchamacallits to get
the gizmos going.

The gizmos wake
the widgets that hammer these
doohickeys until those
thingamabobs spark this
machine into making more
doodads.

Thought Police

The original concept called for
a telescreen in every home, a TV
that could watch you back.

On the other end, a panel
of experts clinically trained to
inspect your every move: how
you like your eggs; which
way you part your hair; what
shoe you slip on first. They
would know—
YOU.

This concept far overreached.

A much simpler interface
was instituted where
you volunteer your
#thoughts and #rethoughts
140 characters at a time.

Happiness

Happiness stared
at me from across
the table with those
come-fuck-me eyes,
so I offered her more
wine. She summoned
me closer.

I brought bottle to
glass, closed my eyes,
and tried to trap her
lips in mine—
no one there.
My eyes opened to
nobody there.
She was gone—definitely
nothing there.

I finished
her glass,
my glass,
the bottle.

A hangover greeted me
the next morning, breath
stenched by vomit, sheets
soaked with bodily fluids.

I couldn’t wait to see her again.

Nursery

My poems need
a change. I can hear
them in the other room.
I robe up and slipper
down the hall and their cries
only amplify as I enter
the nursery to
their cacophony of
screams and sputters.

Moonlight knives through
the blinds, slicing across
neutral yellow walls. I'll leave
the lights off, for my
little darlings await, row
after row. I should feed
them too. I sigh—
so many blessings.
So.
Many.
Blessings.

And like any self-
respecting poet, I go
from crib to crib and
smother them, each
and every one,
with a pillow.

fashion

-verb

the act of trying
hard to look
like you haven't tried
at all.

Piracy

Their ships still sail
among the torrents,
within the world-
wide web of enforcement,
to a code beyond right
or wrong.

And those raided protest
as their coffers shrink—
hardly enough to
cease a trade
marked by private exploits—

So the industry strums on.

Yet these swashbucklers
hack away
anonymously
at the greater tyranny
that’s been accepted
far too long.

Reality

A punch connects.
A man falls.
Kicks enter the fray.
Blood spills.

Bystanders hide behind
camera phones.

con

in spanish,
it means
with—

in english,
it’s a
lie—

so pardon
my pessimism.

Torture

Contrary to popular
belief, the Chinese did
not invent water
torture. A lawyer
did. He'd strap you
down and intermittent
drops of water would
hammer your fore-
head until your sanity
submitted.

Fortunately,
relationships do not
condone this kind
of behavior—

They're much more subtle.

Disagree
over beers, then finish
yours first, and the silence
you endure until the last
drop is drunk
might persuade you to
go find that
lawyer.