slow poem

let the grease and sebum build
until they tip the scales of your wayward impulses
in whatever direction and blunt the pin
of your once innervating quick till it
can serve as a sponge;

then a vision will peel open like a tin can wherein all is mustard
green — drone news, chock pool, fork pricking young belly —,
and youll stay low, close to what has been collectively declared
the surface, its indiscernible cack repaired by a pair of arms
that jerk into view from under the black
binocular-shaped mask to smash whatever
is there and stop the organs floating off
on the oceanic welter of the hangover
that regrettably had to be tubbed then tugged back over the golden
bare plains to the strewn ballast of the city. urgh.

leaves and concordances grew. the game hall stayed open.
the engine era galloped on to the rhythm
of a hand-cranked baton pounding
an unwitting head from out of a prop wireless.
so then what are all husbands so fuming about, whats
this lividity averting. itd be presumptuous to think
they were laughing at you, but they are looking at you
and pointing at you and calling out your name even
though they dont know it. so look the other way and

try to read them by the shadows cast
on the fluid seeping out of the mysterious canisters
marked უაღრესად ტოქსიკური,¹ the ones
our extraterrestrial friends are straining to breathe from.
soon itll be time to hoard fruit for the protein-rich flies
that breed in it. a better bait there never was, though
nor was there a prey that would take them
ever found in these tomahawked lands,
and so they pullulate.

¹ uaghresad t’oksik’uri.