(no subject)

[tinhips]

A RAT IN THE ICE CREAM

 

 

(SUBTRACTION)

 

It wouldn’t be so fair or kind to my children

To leave behind me this trail of clothing

mountains of flannel & denim

Rayon nylon cotton wool or pure silk

“worth his weight in clothes, he was, too lazy

To throw them away or give them away

Or wish them away or lose them in airports”

 

It’s one thing if you’ve lived an interesting life

To leave behind your thousands of books

Your music saved on obsolete formats

The weird & even weirder contents of your top

Dresser drawers called personal effects

 

But your clothes your shedded snake skins of fabric:

Ties to talk to bankers in: turtle necks to hide tattoos

The naugahyde beneath the jaw The nooses & the love beads

Not to mention the claustrophobia of pants

By the time you get to the Emerald City

Your clothes are your bandages

 

 

(LONG DIVISION)

 

 

It’s a tunnel in a cave somewhere

Metaphysically speaking

Let’s say the doctor refused, refused to

Do the operation or prescribe you any

Viagra no Viagra for you

& the last escape clause you imagined it limped

In via the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic

Church Salvation postage due

Please remit So you crawl & you keep crawling

You’re looking for questions No way

Are you looking for answers

 

Tonight in video-enhanced fog you start to

Wonder whatever happened to everybody

You used to hang with decades

Ago (before the extinction of the Perry Mastodon)

Before they invented the handshake

But after the rocks cooled

After the boy scouts trained you in the fine art

Of identifying venomous snakes

There’s one now Spotted Abacus

Swimming upstream Upstream

In what happens to be the River of Life

Rio de la Vida Careful not to

Stick your tongue in her mouth

Multiplying factors (& what the hell are factors?)

 

It’s Lent happens every year

We fast during the season of scarcity

Nuns and muggers lurk in the shadows

 

I am hopelessly addicted to myself

Can’t go do the Stations

I’m too ashamed

 

How do Protestants handle these things?

Once a Protestant handed me a pamphlet

It told me things about hell

 

Protestant Jesus obsessed with our

Bodily fluids returning here pretty damn soon

Eastern Orthodox Jesus looking pretty

 

Foreign like somebody’s dead uncle from

The old old country & not one of those

Where tourists congregate

 

But it’s loaves & fishes not bodily fluids

I care about Where are the loaves

& where are the fishes? I’ve heard

 

About the leftovers Lenten food