Shell Game

The material, a cut on my knuckle.
We go out to the shell game
but it's a liability
dressed up as a pork chop.
I am bleeding from my birthstone.
McGriddle, what's that on the radar
to starboard? Can we just open
and close this vacuum door in peace?
The peanuts go flying.
Money is covered with sad faces.



The presidents walk across the flag.
That's part of my strategy
but the best dream I ever had
waits in a canister, safe from mites.
Capacity to free associate
divorced entirely from will to understand.
Excitement misfired.
Love, covetous love
pouring from my heart
like goo on walls in a movie.
I don't watch that kind of movie.



Yes, that's fine. Just stay awake
and keep talking
until the colors line up on the cube...
The death instinct, "Nobody's going
to tell me what to do" in hot pants.
No. Yes. No. Yes. The opposite
of broken is sex. Maybe.



Everyday life in a poem, a headline—
it proves kidnappers haven't killed it.
My heart just wanted to feel safe
so I created some great drama
based on a movie from before I was born.
I wanted to feel love. Then I did.
I do. I said that in front of a judge.



The bad guy is back in town!
Too late, though—everybody died
of boredom. But you know, a true villain
needs only his own estimation
to thrive. In cartoons
enemies are merely competitive
spoilsports. Here,
in this Père Lachaise de l'Ennui
we toast the Widow Time
and her entirely actualized indifference.

Bless her.



You're wearing your brains
at a jaunty angle, eh, old bean?
Or as a finer maker put it,
your smarts are on your garment.
If I wanted to know how magnets work
I'd reread Lord Jim. Meanwhile
the more gorgeous of the two
tries on a rhetoric
that, like any good television comedian,
consists mainly of shouting.



The corollary to never turn
your back on the ocean is
always size up the opposition
while walking away smiling.
Rod Smith calls it
"the wanting-it tax." Owen Barfield
says it's what's wrong with religion.
Pamela Anderson and I
were voted "Class class"
at my high school. At that time,
the actress who shares her name
had not yet been discovered.



Feeling comes through in writing;
this is what Wilde meant
about bad writing and sincerity—
sincerity and irony are taming influences
both. Feeling is on the move,
arrow on string. When I see
that a reflex remark is about
to strike you, I turn abstract.
You in turn feel my absence
for the submerged aggression it is.
I think Wilde would have gotten a kick
out of Freud, don't you?



Spontaneity and carelessness—
not the same. The teacher
said something about meteorite craters
forming volcanoes. If we have to have
a standard greeting as a culture,
can it be "What up," and not
"All praise to the truth?" Thanks.
Thanks too for bringing
this ultimate crumb cake.
True, I am developing a belly,
but also I feel compassion,
the heft of dough, the shirr
of flour, butter and sugar.



Keep your eye on the bent card.
All the cards are bent, actually.
All right then, keep your eye.
The ball is there then it's not.
My son shows me the plastic cups,
the miniature poms, then starts
stacking. YouTube it: Cup stacking.
It's a sport, like moonwalking
or electioneering.



I don't care about
the general assembly. It has gold leaf
like a church, and two abstract
bacteria flank its unsanitary earphones.
But the things they talk about there!
Those are not things they're people.
Small arms in small hands.
It takes 3,000 hours to tend a paddy.
Whatever you're looking for,
buy it the day after Christmas.
And as for flood insurance, forget it.
The people they talk about, though,
are halfway to thank you. Always with us.



I'm opening a bar called "Liquidity Trap."
A bookstore named "Carpe Diem."
"Vanity, All Is Vanity"—health club.
Actually that'll do for pretty much anything,
pig. No, not you. I meant that language
policeman behind you. Scratch an American,
sniff a cop. Smoke a bowl. Feel a mop.
Scratch an American, win a lifetime
all expenses charged back to you
trip to the front. Scratch an American,
find your way through the smoke.



Oh is it.
Is that so.
Well I never.
You don't say.
On the contrary.
Always a pleasure.
How may I help you.
That's what she said.
It's lovely to see you.
That's not what I heard.



Germany's outline on a map—
a bird or a skull. I'd never
noticed it before, never
imagined it onto stones
or shells on walks as I do
with Nevada, Delaware, Africa.
New York Snoopy. California
telephone. Washington
sideburns. DC diamond.
I just blocked it out.
Now I see it. A bird or a skull.



Baffle baffle baffle, disclose
baffle. Baffle baffle baffle
disclose, baffle baffle. Baffle
disclose, baffle disclose,
baffle baffle baffle disclose
baffle. Baffle. Baffle.




From Shell Game (Edge Books, 2018). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.