1. Politics

Today the words of my prose peered past their parasol and plum painted lashes and said to me,

You dress us up too tall. We keep overreaching everytime you stack us together to build an image.

I said, O really? Did you read the news today?

I said, Captain America got deported for unpatriotic activities.

He never posed for a passport.

He never passed for Social Security.

Got passed over when they doled out pensions for contributions to neighborhood safety,

Potbellies on a committee said,

Sorry, but never dialed you on purpose. Looks bad to have vigilantes run amock in unitards and fanfare. Makes our guys look like coffee beans - unprepared, but meant to grind down on the the hard and bitter. Instead, they roast themselves over donuts and coffee

(plus the free beer from dark-skinned bodega men, 'cause, god knows what they could report about us if we skimp them on a beef patty, friend. Like, fuck, look what they did to Capt. America. Think what'd they do to us?)

All this took place in the Capt.'s article printed in the West Is Best News.

That America, I heard he had to get a job at Kinko's just to pay his rent before buzzing over to his trial, like a W.A.S.P. that got into trouble.

He slurps Nomshin noodles and sips the broth,

But he only has a fork,

so he uses his unparalleled strength to curve the parallels of his fork and learns to eat the hard way: a guy who bleeds blue has got to get around corners somehow, right?

Or so I read.

I said to my words, How's that for imagery?

They said, too many torches and steely street tricks between letters. Not when neon's better, and more like kryptonite. You get a D-, for Damn, That's Negative.

2. Sex

I said, Ah man. 'Cause I opened my mouth to argue, but my prose peered inside with a laser. Made me say Ah, like a kindergartener smearing sand on his teacher's tongue.

I said to my stanzas, You sweep any streets today?

I said, You clean, you purge, you synchronize swim in antiseptic today? You're maidens, but ail-slugging sluts at the same time - you'll curve for anyone who holds you in a lap, pooling warmth in a flock of legs, winging their way toward the pointed V-shape in the center,

to caramelize a sugar stick that's dipped in wilted peppermint leaves, plucked off a plant on the side of the interstate.

Stemmed from the lap is a bite of smoky clove that performs at being a lotus. It's a clove, not even a clover, and I light the stage on fire when I light the end of a cancer cell stick. It tastes like caramelized sugar made from cane burnt brown, and if I blow black breath onto black ceiling I can purge my blood of its phantasmagorical thorns (like it wishes, right?)

I said to my notes, How's that?

They said, You try too hard, we're going to walk the dog.

I said, Don't come back the way you came. I'm going to live on a submarine.

O please, they said.

A league or more, I said. Deep ocean trenches fill the missing spaces over muted sea-green hills.

You try too hard, they said.

I packed my coffee mug and packaged the day, leaving the office door wagging behind me.