SlapTake

Tear-Open

What can a spirit tell you about a person?
That a thought once lived in the shed on live
mice and retired laboratory monkeys?
That movements happen in the night without
your ponderous socks weighing in with an opinion?
How does grace have anything to do with amazement
in this 1/72 scale ballpark with functioning lights?
If questions cause you to ask yourself questions
I’ll rephrase the question: I didn’t come here
I was brought. I had a tight head, the metal camera
couldn’t contain the edges, the best ones got left lying
on the Kresge’s floor the year before they opened the first
Kmart in Garden City, Michigan. Early sixties, I think.
Same year my first crop came due and the nurses said
“She must be destined for crazy greatness!”

If you have a facial imperfection that you haven’t mentioned
I’d much prefer you didn’t.

Now I’ll make a face. This one looks much more like me than I do.

(sometimes)

Funka

Did I just catch you thinking something about someone again?
Your layers are beginning to peel away, only the strangled cries
for a slurpy and your plaque that proves an America will remain.
I knew it. And I’ve been trying all along to explore it, like a film.
Jewelry made of actual film, and a teacup labeled “Shatter Me
on your Forehead!” As a student of the unknown my thirst for things
to think about knows some bounds, but after dinner we can
start back at the beginning. The part where you said, “Hey…”.

I stood with one cowboy boot planted firmly in the Suppurater Saloon
and the other on Obama’s neck that night, that special night. The mall
was practically empty, you could shoot off a gun in there.

I was frozen, time passed, I was frozen in time, I was frozen in the past,
Obama was frozen in the past, time was frozen in Obama, the mall was
suddenly crawling.

I swore I would be swifter this time but dinner was all you can eat.
I wanted you but…all you can eat?

Each endless journey begins with a stumble and a mild sprain.

Jawfish

I swear I can order for two and you needn’t even be here.
What do you want tapped out? What occasion risen to?
It’s this effing intrinsic ordering thing, do there have to be deeper
meanings? Can’t it all just amount to a poorly written quick-start manual
that takes years to decipher? Like the story I read on here about a fly;
how it ate its family in three acts then rebelled against cannibalism
but only after discovering the all you can eat buffet.
There it is again.
The occasion rises to itself, you just need to be lying under it.

Joystick

If I'm smiling, I smile. If I’m composed I’m made up of bits.
If a runaway carriage crushes me or at least muddies my bustle
I’ll pirouette to the infirmary. (lots of ballet classes when I was young)
It isn't at all my real body. The traffic that drove the events, that was.
Something in your pants is vibrating now. People also tell me I look
younger than almost everything that’s ever lived. I never know what to do
with my age. Never know what to do with a Sunday and no credit.
Maybe treeless light. Maybe a deafened mountain.
Maybe just another wondermeal.

Or a light in the sky at the end of the tunnel that is the sky.
Feelings, reading, water, air…just ideas. Endlessly better when eating.
The balance of a strike when you wanted a spare.
The universe, as such, sees a movie then goes bodysurfing.