The Report

How’s it like
out there?

says the chief
from behind a big desk
in a vault of an office

Well, Chief…

everyone’s wearing
plastic identity tags
at their waists and necks

and their faces are bad

grim
anxious
abstracted in worlds of their own

while the world they walk in
is blurred with noise

huge rattletrap buses
booming through the streets
and smudging the air
with burned fuel

cars screeching through the maze
under choppers
gouging the sky with the planes

and it’s HOT out there, Chief!
too hot to eat
even though you’re hungry

but when you see hot vendors
selling hot food
from hot stalls on the street

you feel disgusted
and tricked

and you stamp though the crowds
trying to stay in the shade
made by big blank buildings
with air-conditioned guts
AND EVERYONE’S IN YOUR WAY!

I admit it, Chief,
I hid in the library

it was cool in there
and quiet
(except for a few
cellphones sometimes)

and I lost myself
in books for a while…

But instead
you say fine

and he says fine

and you’re free
to go back to your desk
and type a report



.

Big Kissy Lips

Beneath the Ballyhoo! and Hype!
of spectacular anxiety
electrifying every night
with a money-bright circuitry

Beneath the magical ploy
of big kissy lips of chicks
selling Black Jack At Big Dick’s!
like prescriptions for raw joy

Beneath the dazzling strategies
that blur our brains with fantasies
of mad gods in some mad dream

remains a sigh of a stream



.

Million Dollar Sad

“Daaamn!” he groaned,
and locked the car.

He trudged through a tundra parking lot
into a building he didn’t see.

Blew it with Mister Shabooba!
And now the guillotine.

He touched the top button
and steel doors sealed him in.

Sick sinking feeling as he rose
to the boss’s office.

Who knew Shabooba was a cool dude?
Should have been looser!

Tense face on a stiff neck.
Some commercial for success.

Through the yawning doors
on the last floor.

Digits boiling in the heads
that glanced away.

He leaned his own head
in the boss’s open door.

Eyes like flashing darts looked up
and then back down.

“Siddown.”



.

City of Progress

Who knows why it's hot
all fall? The streets blaze
with sunlight and the glare
off buildings blinds. The capital

is crammed with lives
(since the country joined
a global trade union).

So much striving in so
many directions. Stern stone faces
drifting by on weary bodies.

Choked and fitful traffic.
Gagging smog that sears
the lungs. Constant construction

covering the government's former face
with fresh clean gleaming gloss.



.