Red Soda

Cómo se dice please don’t kill me
is a question I hope to never ask someone while vacationing
is a thought many people have before falling asleep each night
is something I once read in a guidebook
to a place
I may never visit
is something you once wrote on a piece of paper
and tore into smaller pieces
and threw from the observation deck of a tall building
which I thought gorgeous
because cómo se dice please don’t kill me
is a question I hope to never ask someone while vacationing
is a thought I have before falling asleep each night
and last night those torn pieces of paper
came to me in a dream
and I put them together
and buried them in my front yard
is a dream I had late one afternoon when I was feeling
there are so many singing voices I don’t understand
and I want to run away run away run away
but I didn’t know why I was feeling this way
or why there were so many singing voices
I didn’t understand.
I’d driven to work like always,
but on this day I thought
there are people who think about what they’re doing
and there are people who feel what they’re doing
and of those two categories I fall into the latter,
which I wrote on a piece of paper when I arrived at work
and tore into smaller pieces
and threw from the observation deck of a tall building.
I hope you find them, because if you do I think it might mean
we’re supposed to be together.




Mongolia

He remembered the night she wanted him to watch a campaign video
for her favorite political figure
and he refused
and she became upset
so he opened her mouth, placed a sedative inside
and massaged her neck until she swallowed it and fell asleep.
He remembered it particularly well
because it was around the time
that Will Lyman became the permanent narrator of his life
in his head.
He’d begun to feel trapped in this life
but found solace
in the fruit salad he’d purchased earlier that day at Dominick’s.
It was important to enjoy the little things, he thought.
He’d recently begun to realize
everything he once believed he understood
he no longer believed he understood
and this realization frightened him.
To distract him from his fear
he wrote an elegy for a character in a movie
who he’d presumed
was obliterated without having seen him obliterated.
In the spirit of subverting the way he viewed his life
he began taking down
all the pictures in their house each night
before they went to bed,
he began aspiring to eat cans of baked beans for dinner the way others
aspire to eat successful people food.
Did he write a letter to himself asking
if anyone’s voice is ever
truly normal or if societal constructs define the idea of normal
and if we play into that idea or choose not to play into that idea?
He did.
At two o’clock that morning
he cut off his toenail with a pocketknife
and washed away the blood in the bathroom sink.
While doing this, he wondered what the citizens of Mongolia
were up to.
Was it tomorrow there?
Was it as cold there as it was here?
Did their societal constructs demand assimilation?
He was only trying to get it together, man.
He remembered the night she wanted him to watch a campaign video
for her favorite political figure
and he refused
and she became upset
so he opened her mouth, placed a sedative inside
and massaged her neck until she swallowed it and fell asleep.
He remembered it particularly well
because later, he watched the campaign video
for her favorite political figure
and when he woke her to tell her his thoughts, she opened his mouth,
placed a sedative inside
and massaged his neck until he swallowed it and fell asleep.
When I needed you to listen most, she said,
you were too consumed by your own fear.
And now all I can do is hope that in your dreams, as in mine,
both of us remain awake.

Elegy for Woodrow Blake

What’s it like to spend so much time dreaming of space
is a question I’d always wanted to ask but never did
and what’s it like having sex in space
is a question
I’d always wanted to ask
but before I did
globules of blood and Dr. Pepper
were floating all around you
and you exited the cabin,
banging the screen door as loudly as possible on your way out.
I’ve always wondered if you’ve ever had space sex
I called out,
but it was too late
as you drifted toward Mars
much the way globules of blood and Dr. Pepper
drift toward thirsty hemophilic astronauts—
with menace, awe, sadness.
It’s funny how sometimes hurtling can feel like drifting.
What was happening in your head?
Were you regretting having never had space sex?
Were you thinking of all those nights
you spent with your dad
looking through his telescope at M13?
Or had you finally realized
your size in the universe, like that of one globule of blood
or Dr. Pepper floating toward one irritated astronaut
who may or may not
have done the space nasty?
And if none of those things—as you approached the red planet’s
atmosphere, how is it you prepared yourself
for your final, spectacular disintegration?

Parable

Whenever I’m sad like this, I put on happiest me outfit and visit
nearby zoo to verbally stroke panda.
It’s my temporary escape from blood-soaked destiny, yes?
Basho, he could do little to prevent
blood-soaked destiny.
After slicing shopkeeper’s neck,
he read poem of death and autumn-time that make you cry
if you not already corpse.
Of all I learn from man holding sandwich
outside panda habitat,
pandas are black and white and cute
and delicious.
This horrify me.
I tell sandwich man about trip I take to Shaanxi province.
Basho kill because he never see cute panda or any panda.
He kill too because he ninja,
but maybe he write because he never see cute panda?
He carve into dead body flesh
rhyme of dying dream, dream of seeing panda,
who is cute and likeable.
But he live in different country, he only hear legend of cute panda.
I see panda with own eyes and yes panda very cute.
Sandwich man apparently eat a panda.
I tell sandwich man panda really cute when eat bamboo,
he say he never try bamboo.
Likely Basho eat seaweed, I say,
after decapitating head of local prefect
and reciting beautiful poem
of how he not see panda and only see radish.
Sandwich man do not like radish, he say.
I recite poem about cute panda,
which he say tasty and delicious.
I relay to sandwich man of my blood-soaked destiny.
He thinks of me crazy. His death at my red hand inevitable, I say.
My dream die long ago.
I cover home interior with panda photograph,
I try forget the death I have see because of my destiny.
My family die long ago. I think of panda
and Basho and how I see what Basho long to see.
It not feel better make me.
I read sandwich man poem of bamboo forest, mountains, death.
I then cut his chest.
I am mercenary, this my destiny. Pandas die when my age.
Bleeding sandwich man tell me of castle in Shaanxi mountains.
It look like Medieval Times but not Medieval Times.
The panda there delicious.

Invisible Touch

Part of what make the Phil Collins
the portrait of the brilliant mellifluous God is that he radiates
the perfection like the entire universe shot through the cannon
of unbelievableness
toward another entity of unbelievableness
as like another Phil Collins being shot out of a cannon toward a third
Phil Collins singing his smash hit
Don’t Lose the Number
to a crowd of hugely glowing Phil Collinses
all a million feet high
and singing their smash hit
the Sussudio
in the Phil Collins Del Monte Stadium
of dreamland amazingtown—
Rock!
This my dream, to see this Phil Collins experience of like no other.
By now of course most of you are accustomed to how radically
Phil Collins can mathematically blow us out of our face
at one of these live performance pieces
that we cannot breathe
or walk afterwards
let alone recognize what we have experienced rightly
and we are left to our dailies
thinking why are we here now
at the Phil Collins crossroad of hair blowing spectaculars?
Is it the angel voice or the Phil Collins?
We cannot distinct them from the other?
Like so many of the suckers of the same age as myself,
I have been to the listening point of the Phil Collins for the decades,
forever fathoming in my peon form
how he is capable
of such revelation-like mastery of surrealist vision,
the very voice of Jah Himself.
It is something of a received wisdom
that In the Air Tonight
is the greatest song ever recorded.
That this intense intimate vision arose
from such a crab-like personality
is perhaps the greatest argument
written on the piece of paper and published
that life on the other planets there is indeed the existence of.
When I am the stargazing
I am looking at the space I think of this time and how the others
up there never hear the Phil Collins unbelievable voice
but instead the silence and darkness and ice,
how they hear the ice
and must find to love enveloped in the chandelier nothing of wherever,
the chandelier nothing of their dailies,
and in my heart, it feel the cold.

Prism Reverie

And then I began loaning books, forgetting about loaning books,
and believing,
when I couldn’t find books,
that owning books in the first place
had only been a dream.
In the dream you asked if I’d rather go to heaven or space.
In the dream we’d met ten years earlier.
In the dream we lived in Guyana.
In the dream we did completely different things during the day
than we do now.
People of the future:
have you found the descendents of our cats and how are they?
Tell them hello for us.
Tell them too many of us are unaware
of our impermanence
as we go about our normal days.
Tell them
with the exception of a few celebrities and political leaders,
most of us spend our normal days doing things
we’ve decided
are acceptable things to do during a normal day
but rarely
do we spend our normal days inspired.
Wake, dress, commute, work, post office, bank, lunch, work,
commute, Happy Foods, dinner,
prepare for tomorrow and fall asleep.
There are, of course, exceptions.
I ate four shrimp, four crackers and four Oreo cookies
for lunch, for example.
What were once simple systems
have developed into elaborate systems that contain
elaborate systems within them.
People of the future:
have things become simple again?
I hope so.
Tell the descendents of our cats
that within these elaborate systems
people interact with each other and only sometimes
does the interaction
yield a positive experience.
Sometimes a prescription medication is approved,
sometimes good news regarding the success of a family member
is relayed,
but most often someone arrives home and cries,
someone is in an altercation with a bunch of mean guys,
someone lies because of love
or someone dies
but I don’t think it should be like this.
We have this thing called music
and often the more people who’ve heard a specific piece of music
the more likely the piece of music is not good
but nonetheless
this may cause others to question their own concept of good.
Do I not understand what good means
or does my interpretation
of good belong in an alternate reality?
And if so,
should I be in that alternate reality instead of here? Sunshine,
you are my sunshine.
People of the future:
I used to feel passionate about lunch
and I used to cry at shoe commercials and rock concerts
but then I began loaning books, forgetting about loaning books,
and believing,
when I couldn’t find books,
that owning books in the first place
had only been a dream. In the dream
you asked if I’d rather go to heaven or space.
In the dream we’d met ten years earlier.
In the dream we lived in Guyana.
In the dream we did completely different things during the day
than we do now. In the dream I thought I understood everything,
but when I woke I realized I’d never understood anything.

Running Away Jam

I wish I could take a microphone everywhere I go so everyone
would hear me
is how I began a letter to my parents
that summer dawns were bursting all around me
all around me all around me
is what I’m thinking as my airplane descends
into America’s taint,
New Jersey,
and I turn to you and say
ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we’ve now
begun our descent into America’s taint
and you sort of laugh
because perhaps for a moment
you’re not thinking about things you were thinking about before
like how our families brought their cultures here decades ago
and those cultures have disintegrated
into the generic
of strip malls and hot dogs
and our identities are thus generic
but if we think about it positively maybe
it’s something that makes us
quintessential Americans
or like how people always tell me I’m lucky when they learn
I have no brothers and sisters and I think
but I’ll never know what it’s like
to have a relationship
with someone close to my own age
who shares so much with me—when my parents die
I’m the only one left
and that’s okay but how is it lucky?
I can only imagine
how it must feel to visit my family for a holiday
and have my brother there
and after our parents have gone to bed
stay up and talk about kids we used to know
or remember
how we used to watch dubbed Hollywood movies on Telemundo
and he’d translate them into English
in really incompetent ways, like,
he’s just saying
he’s going to kill a bunch of guys
and sleep with that girl in the shirt with the triangles
or, um, he’s just saying he’s going to return for the chinchillas
next Tuesday
or how we’d sit around
looking at that picture of an owl Mom hung on the wall, saying
oh dude, that episode of The Owl is on right now,
where the owl sits in a tree?,
it’s a classic
or how we produced an installation of the Last Supper using only
life-sized Chewbaccas for our high school art class
and how once school ended
I decided I couldn’t take it anymore,
no one understood me no one understood me no one understood
I didn’t belong here I didn’t belong here
and I ran away and left only this letter
that began
I wish I could take a microphone
everywhere I go so everyone
would hear me
is what I’m thinking about when I hear the captain say
ladies and gentlemen,
this is your captain speaking,
we’ve now begun our descent into America’s taint
and you turn to me and ask
if I’m thinking I could die right now on this airplane
or if I’m thinking I’m not ready to die right now on this airplane
I’m not ready to die right now on this airplane
I’m not ready to die right now on this airplane.