The fish’s tongue,
Its vessels severed,
Rots and falls away
And Cymothoa exigua
Grafts itself in place.
It wriggles one way
Taking note
It wobbles up and down
It makes a dance that seems like speech
And becomes its master’s sound
And when the school of fish consumes
Exigua-serving lies
They can see the world’s truth
With Cymothoa eyes
I wonder, before mass media,
How God named Light
In the king’s English.
Ecclesiastic hierarchy, sure,
But two men cannot see the same Sun.
And when the printing press came,
How far away was mass literacy?
How long until the masses can read the news?
Martin Luther put each man in front of his own Bible.
How could one book be read by two men?
Today’s stories come from the networks.
Corporate hierarchies, sure,
But we don’t have to read.
The internet knows things for us,
But we can’t read that.
One called Victor, a Dutchman,
The other a Scotchman called James Gregory,
And the third being a negro named John Punch.
They had run away from Virginia, were caught, tried, and sentenced in 1640.
The Dutchman and the Scotchman were condemned
To serve out the remainder of their indentured servitude
Plus one year.
And the third being a negro was condemned to serve out his life.
John Punch became the first piece of chattel.
And so, we took his time.
Eons passed.
One man might own a hundred lifetimes.
One fattened tick
That could never live a minute longer
No matter how much time he sucked.
No matter the genteel civility lavished on his equals.
The tick’s cause was lost:
Chattel disfavored;
Wages more efficient.
And criminals… who cares what happens to them?
Oh, by the way, if you don’t have a job
We’ll have to arrest you for vagrancy.
And now we have moved on from that barbaric dispensation
All the old problems have been solved.
We join together in harmony
And ignore the strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Every day in the paper I read about time.
Time taken before it was due.
How much time does it take?
He leaves work between six and seven every night.
Takes the same route home.
Obeys every traffic sign.
Pays his bills;
No bad checks;
No registered firearms:
The world's most boring human.
He has very nice garbage:
He's not looking for buff.
Rather, meticulous.
Refined.
Anal.
He eats. They linger; she fawns over him.
The busboy,
Over the whine of the vacuum,
Tells him the pair should leave.
She loves the pinched nasally whine of his voice.
Quivering, she asks him to stay and pronounce--
Sensually--
"Passport"
He does.
"You're right we should leave"
He asks if she would like to have breakfast with him.
"Sure. Fine. Whatever."
Foolishly confident, he replies:
"Shall I phone you or nudge you?"
They did not have breakfast.
A computer would never match her with him
I don’t want to say “goodbye.”
It’s nothing personal.
I don’t want to say “hello,” either.
I’d rather come and go
without the ceremonial recognition of
one another’s presence.
I don’t want to say “good morning,”
and “good night” seems especially grotesque.
Contractual obligation has crossed our paths,
but the meeting of minds sours when politesse
is expected to sweeten the duress.
I’d prefer not to nod my head–
whether up or down–
nor raise my brow in recognition
as we make our daily rounds.
I am intentional about my relationships.
I do not make friends with passersby.
There is a finite amount of air in the world.
I will share mine only when I choose.
I wonder at times
what life might be like
if somebody cared about me
if there were someone I could call
whenever I’m crying
without being a burden
if there were someone I could invite
to a birthday
and expect them to show
I have been made
to feel I must beg
for companionship
I wonder at times
what life might be like
if I believed somebody cared about me
I hate the whiteness that surrounds me.
That feeds me
educates me
pays me
celebrates me
disciplines me
shapes me
abets me
trusts me
gratifies me
winks at me
suffocates me
I hate the whiteness that moves through me
I hate that there is no way to separate
the color of my skin
from ostensible beauty of limits and thefts
from a normativity beaten from difference
from an entitlement of birthright without blood
from a divinity that crowned my father clean
from an objectivity that erases inconvenience
from a destiny that steals futures
from a nation that murders to make me
I hate to be marked
I hate to be favored
I hate to carry a history of rape and murder and engineered famine—
crushing the bones of little children like apple snail eggs—
and unload it with a thud
while knowing it’s heavier than I can perceive,
and you must work around it or be broken
by the weight of our knowing
I hate that the only word I have to describe this feeling
is as saccharine as “hate.”
What use is
Knowing
The mouton has nearly finished climbing.
Clench your fists
Grit your teeth
Gaze into the empty eyes of the heads in the basket
Perhaps you could shout
Some too radical words for the jeering crowd
As the white paint peels from the dry, cracked lunette
And a panorama of empty eyes
Hunger for someone else’s blood
You have time to think
And feel regret
Every time two paths diverged in a wood
You chose the guillotine
The frame shudders at the mouton's climax
What use is
Knowing
The blade is shearing through the air
And once you’ve stopped knowing
It will take another
Late nights for days–
unable to sleep or focus or do anything,
racing thoughts down the freeway.
I was thinking of the women I know and how lovely they are,
when something reminded me of you, and I reached out–
and you were excited about the people
who still matter to you
I slept last night.
No more racing.
I was thinking how I used to be part of your life,
and how quietly you slipped away.
You didn’t even leave a note.
I sat in a chair,
thinking at nothing,
until I felt bad
Bitter thoughts may be cruel–
but joy is no ally.
The good days are a Trojan Horse.
The bad days are reality.
And each day rewrites the last,
except when emptiness comes–
and both inside and outside the horse,
there is
nothing.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 