Cannot

TWO poems in a week? you lucky bastards

Headless woman, Palisades Park, NJ, by Diane Arbus, courtesy of The Met’s online collection. Image Description: A woman sits upright but casually, with a large checkered poncho and kitten heels, her hands hanging just off the arms of the chair, which is on a pedestal, with a curtain behind her. She is facing forward, or she would—if she had a head. Instead, she is a carnival attraction. The Met includes in their description: “The photograph serves as a subtle but sophisticated observation of how what in the flesh might seem to be an obvious fake is transformed into an ambiguous mystery when seen by the camera. Thus, Arbus suggests, the camera may be more an agent of illusion than a diviner of truth.”

Cannot

Assume

What I’d do

If I turned

Unconfused

Unmutable on zoom

Broken rules

Like diesel fuel and

Din like a

tin roof

Hot pursuit and

Ready to shoot and the

Anger of angels shook loose

It was, YOU who blew the fuse

I’m just doing what I do

.

You act brand new

Like you didn’t turn that screw

Tried to change,

blame, dare say

who couldn’t tame this shrew

Didn’t think me too shrewd

But all I know is truth

And all you know is performance as proof

And all I know is talking my dreaded skeleton crew

Left for dead

Off the boss’s roof

Remind them of the ruse

And show them the roots

And fuse all the harmonies

Martyred, now it’s Bitches Brew

All bruised up, brooding, losing

Chewed up, not choosy

Unspooling a school of one, two, too many

Hungry in the land of plenty

You could be a lender to me

For just pennies a day

I pen for less anyway

leaving fires in my wake

While my

Yet to be duly trained

Or anointed, attained tainted

joints wait in disappointment

It’s cringe, it’s annoying

No joy in deployment

I mean the word “ploy”

Is literally right in there!

Don’t toy with me,

Burn like Teatr Bolshoi,

And you can’t even show up

To another appointment

Because there is no enjoyment

Just none un- un- employment,

And conflict avoidance

Property as poison

Poverty as prison

Ask God for one less problem

The spoils of the spoiled

And flat notes and all noise

Cloistered in this cluster

Claw my eyes out like a motherfucker

Walk in these shoes and feel like a loser

Wallow in these blues, delight until daylight, while

Dirty dancing under moons

Dirty computer punitive over amusement so

Complete the noose, no not the news

Words mean things, that angle obtuse

No, the flames became fumes,

Became too stale to consume—

This used to be the land where the buffalo grew

It wasn’t perfect but

Not a nation of serfs

Dying under an empire

Of worthless surface

All suffering service

Contractual cervix

Everything and nothing urgent

But all for purchase

Divorced from purpose and

Overexertion, term for

Forced to feel earthless

And emerge suburban

Unlearn mercy gentle serpent

.

What

That thing on your tongue

Will unearth when we murder it