The Exquisite Corpse of Self
The surrealist game of screaming in a crowd relapses,
and without foul our goalie unzips a hollow swan.
Whenever I skull-shriek during a literary migraine,
the author throws up her fists, rewrites passages
I later discard. What I could more easily re-wire
in the teleological showroom of spectral moondials
I mushroom, channel the shock these corrugations
cognitive molecules navigate, arteries moonmilk blue.
My body’s least persuasive similes think the real me
lives on the other side of our blood-brain barrier,
but I remember epiglottis, my windpipe’s cloud-
chamber, nerves throbbing against swallowed heart.
This poem has unlaced its poem-skates, prosaic slip
a roar forward, outer self valved into sudden birth.
Fighter-Jet Flyover
A prototypical child, I boulder my cranium
to the vertical lens of my crown chakra’s
domed cat’s-eye marble, gaze up and let go.
Which is to say do the Alice thing and fall
feet-first into the torrent I can neither invent
nor remember. Much less find toeholds
or swivel the room’s lenticular hub, ghost-
figure me a slow-motion hurricane, a breath
expelled into a crash of cell walls. I blurt
the first future I find, turn as the maestro
lumbers off the elevator, baton churning
like a treasonous street holiday and I’m king
of the parade. Being this far inside myself
is certainly not the picnic I’d foreseen,
and the stealthy voice asks me repeatedly
when I’ll turn eleven just to tease me
for impersonating myself in this funhouse
turned virtual-twilight blue, waveform
of my tropical hair. Whistling glow fish
nailed to the wall curve glib reversals
in personhood. My mantra collides with
the deadly airplanes tickling their ignition
throttles to unspool aerial spins down
the parade’s electric ribbon of unlearning.
Intergalactic Foodies Gathered in a Fluffy Protozoan Submarine
I implant the angels with music
and they lengthen, never
once thinking to cyberpunk
their form-fitting headgear
with orbits of shivering boys. We all
have acolytes. Mine like to hide
behind the altar dosing MD2020
from thimbly glasses etched
in dragonflies. Torching the purple
velvet curtains was never their plan,
but what the hell, it’s really cheap wine.
When I squeeze the tube, angels
curlicue, clocking over 300 mph
to stream back into me, my celestial
hosts transfusing spintronics
to sleep. In a mirror, Angelology
mimics unexpected joygasm, much like
the protestant paradox of Venusian
modulates avocados. At the eatery
tonight, I order a small bowl of silence
sprinkled with nightmares of lobster
aquarium-life. Our waitress stretches
her torso like the billowing sinews
of race cars, while her words pounce
the youthful grenades we can’t defuse
from our gravied gunboat. But I die young–
curious torpedoes love every submarine.
Ganglia of the Rich and Richer
Oh, and give me a glass
of diet-water and a side of electro-kinetic
Dream-Home euphoria, please?
Decapitation is difficult to talk about,
but even harder to experience.
And so, is there a heaven? I find
my doorframe coated neurologically
in an extra-nocturnal varnish
of I’d like to think so,
and my neighbor vacantly assumes
we’ve left. Which complicates
my first impulse, which is always
to accuse her of menopausal
boy-dipping beyond even her limits
of zero. And just because our house is
blank as those anti-matter drill bits
in the garage doesn’t mean we can’t play
broken angels weaned from Zoloft
or negotiate a sex party re-inauguration
with celebrities whose doorknobs impale
them, their mailbox out to moan
hetero-normative rants despite super-food
erections, our neighbors’ elite e-bicycles
blue as their swimming pool eyes.