It's not people

How long must I sit here

Hearing through the wall

Watching the clock

Observing the bucket of slurpie melting,

Waiting,

Just waiting

For you to finish behind the door.

Body of Work. historyb

Fidel Castro sits and gestures mildly,
Tongue wagging with Israeli crude oil prices,
Suited with British lapels protruding from a revolution-weary jacket.
A Che Guevara grin pushes and tightens lips,
pointing fingers at the existential crisis’ of President Nixon,
holding bananas behind his back as
the shares for the UFC go down and down and down.
I am kneeling. Faced toward the homeland,
toward Haile Selassie, [the not quite god],
and my phone is ringing, ringing as threat or opportune moment
that only calls once.

In This Room

In this room,
you are here,
and I am here,
and your son is here too.

A clipboard and a man enter. In that order.
The clipboard knows. Knows you better than all of us.
And the man clings to it, as if it will throw him off the edge if he were to re-adjust his grip; oh
I want to hold on too.

In this room,
you are here,
and you stay here,
and we run to different houses.
And the walls come down around us like articles of clothing, torn off madly in a drunkenly
suggested round of strip poker and tequila.

In this room,
where exhaling is sinful
and sneezing is banned
and smiling contorts from well-meant to ghastly

In this room,
where your son stands
and your wife sits
and I wait outside the door
In this room,
we have so little ti/What was the answer to 32 again?


Are you sure?

TEETH

Flung from her mouth in horror
or in fit (I am still unsure)
(and white beneath my sheets)
a gleam catches, fluorescent,
on the polish of her rounding ivories.
Moulded substitutes of bone and latching gum
now sit unsure
perched on the counter
as if ready for second flight.

Given gladly to her
whilst between wars and men
the release of her natural fixtures
an afterthought
of trend (that ugly cow).

Her teeth
(or are they?)
await return on the tabletop.
She is slow to claim them.

Pantoum One: As a last resort we'll fix the plumbing.

Dear Mister Minister of the Ministry of Defence
As a last resort we'll fix the plumbing.
Oh! The hum drum of tied shoe laces and national conquest,
it's just not getting me hot and bothered like it used to.

"As a last resort we'll fix the plumbing"
a military man called upon the doorstep.
It's just not getting me hot and bothered like it used to,
thinking of those long legs, explosions ringing in ears.

A military man called upon the doorstep.
He held out a note.
"Thinking of those long legs," explosions ringing in ears.
A death drum sounds from a radio in the kitchen.

He held out a note.
=We're open for business folks, God Bless!=
A death drum sounds from a radio in the kitchen
We will fight them on the beaches, fill our pockets full of sand.

We're open for business folks, God Bless
Dear Mister Minister of the Ministry of Defence
We will fight them on the beaches, fill our pockets full of sand,
Oh! The Hum Drum of Tied Shoe Laces and National Conquest!


No I told you before, only as a very, very last resort. Good day.

Over

The children have been assigned the task of measuring the depths of several objects. I personally find this appalling. A shovel to the head in order to achieve mathematical competence.
As my child raises it's hand and exclaims it's knowledge of a depth's boundaries,
you create a blindside to its place in rhetoric, it's esoteric expanse over volumes and volumes of mass.
As you wield intellect over a crass class of questioning,
you bludgeon perception to perfection over
and over.
Whether that water is one cup or four does not matter.
It does not matter if it is a litre or a hundred,
as you fill and fill that cup because it will not be full
until
there is no wrong answer
because the question has expanded.
There is depth in children.
I am Over,

depth.

Callow

I am callow and I am butter. I am spread, or perhaps more aptly, scraped across so much toast that I have FINALLY become thin. But not the thin we've been waiting for, not the revitalizing thin, not the bouncing with energy, keen for life thin, but thin lipped. Thin and almost tasteless like your butter, but with just enough to coat your mouth with that un-refrigerated, slightly rancid, slightly still good enough to not buy a new one flavour. That's the thing when it goes un-refrigerated. Gets spots. Gets you too. With consumer guilts, or family guilts, or moral guilts, or the paper-weight guilts that come as that slightly rancid, slightly still good butter is used (in it's container, naturally) as a placeholder for a note. You're not going to put it back in the fridge, because you're not sure if everybody's had lunch yet from two days before but it is getting spots.

I guess butter economy comes with experience.