AMERICA ON A HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS AN HOUR

I. "If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so."
- André Gide


I've been in help, knee-deep
theory of facing fury
whittled down to whining
run away dim lamps as they run away.

The cards run their mouths like those
shitty little people pretending
they know how to keep a tiny little
bubble
from bursting.

When I look fat, pregnant
giving birth on postcard
tickets punched horizon,

I look for hunger in theory
and in practice you seemed a dream
they railed about in texts
and drooling essays dreaming
of Democracy.



II. "An artist is his own fault."
- John O'Hara

How we rely upon degrees:
How much the lies
love the fuck and the
lies that fuck the love,
one by one,
love the lies.

Didn't you see? So they control
themselves for a little more saliency...
They run the show into the ground,
and love us for watching without comment.

Another for the road. Paydirt is still on the agenda.


III. "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
- Tom Waits

When I said I'd had enought, I was only kidding.
They knew it by my television:
I wasn't taking myself seriously.
So they learned me.

Love My Country Love Me Not.

So when I look crooked,
it's probably how they beat me with pipes
and kicked me into love.
Piece by piece.

And so a smile is sewn.

IV. "Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy."
-Huey Long


When I love, I ask how much flash powder
in the pyrotechnics,
So America hands me her bra and painties
just to trust her,
I know I'm not armed for moving

So I stare at how America
fucks her image in the mirror,
humps the people skin rug against her pussy
and screams out orgasmic names
that neither she nor the camera remembers.

V. The earth belongs to the living, not the dead.
--Thomas Jefferson

Maybe they'll come for her.
It'll be some cartoon street sweepers
with big moustaches
who grap her up in dwarfish arms
and kiss her Africa and her
closest foreigners.

And while her teeth giggle
and her hair tosses greenbacks
into fancy gloves and salads,

It might strike her:

I'm drooping old cement years
getting harder by the hour,
trying to look the American stronger
than a tiny woman tired
of neighbors.