from More Dangerous Than Dying
How late we came into the story
not as protagonists but as props
But to be an extra
adds an angle to these lives
"Alouah Alouah Alouah"
*
The plant delves into degenerative cosmetics
the cause of more than one argument
a month of frenzied staff meetings
I pursue my own line
of logic to the end
neighbors and nay-sayers be damned
Across the table
fallacious conclusions and unencumbered assumptions
mark their method of attack
It all ends up at the landfill
pots and barrels and cans
our invention near completion
The plant reshifts priorities
returns to shredding trees
*
A top-down directive
requires a shuffling of cubicles
Farewell faithful smokestack!
Farewell tower of the freshly cut!
Air redolent of pulp and death!
Farewell farewell farewell!
Eleven rows of cars my new vista
their gleam and window glare
their histories laid bare to me
my Daily Journal of Heretofore Unknown Events
ready to be filled
No one to ignore me
once I’m through
*
The day that anaconda
twists through the motions
8 to 5 then back again
A huge day swollen
with what it swallows
400 people on the premises
mouth broken open
a manhole without its cover
Those depths hide more than one rat
*
We strive for the effluvium
but lack all requisite lightness
find ourselves squarely placed
in the fluorescence of the feebly salaried
No lack of glory will redeem
this tendency toward failure
wayward intentions insinuations
lives we circle and occasionally probe
Stasis action guilt
a common scene a game almost
in its three-stepness its crisp order
Would trade it for nothing
not an office with walls
not a callipygian receptionist
This motion subsumes all the rest
*
Seeming to be a part of things
this talking around the subject
a refusal to acknowledge
the supremacy of the subject
we lilt and caper around the plant
each cubicle a vessel no a draft
that lifts our words to the ceiling tiles
not like smoke no movement visible
not spiritual or even emotional
but they're up there blending
long after we release them
acting the parts we refuse to play
