My Spam Box

My spam box is empty,
Is it something I said? I sigh.
I’m sorry if I don’t believe
In your deathly dating cults.
I’m sorry if I’m sickened
By your language of the damned.
Maybe if you offered me
A fleet of limousines
And a dozen violent drones,
Darting into town.
Maybe if you spiked me with
A subtle oozing drug
To ease my online dread,
Then I’d stroke your fragile screen
And heave my bleeding wrists
Across your dark domains.


Call Me When You Get a Life

Listen to me, man,
Splash your chops with icy water
Then set yourself on fire—
I’m a changing man
And you’re as smug as circus clowns.
Call my lonesome brother and sell him all your wares,
He’s broken and infirm—
An array of gushing scars.
Here’s his name and number,
And his list of sleazy crimes.
Now, I’m putting down the phone
To weep with my mother;
Her body’s soaking in the tub.


Why I Cried at the Boxing Match

Not that the boxers sloshed through blood in their canvas espadrilles.
Or that the mothers in the crowd dashed their babies to the ground.
Or that large screen televisions played movies from my youth, where I stalked a horde of rats in a
desolate motel.
Or that my wife ambushed the ring, pulling out her teeth, high on LSD.
Or that the sky crashed like ice and pinned me to my chair.
No, it was the strange, strangled landscape, horrific and confined.
It was the sickly yellow bile seeping from my lips.
It was the beasts selling tickets, gunning for the poor.
So, I wiped away my tears as they swamped my moonlit cheeks, feasting like the tides.
Then I trekked the whole world home, singing for the fighters lost without their names.
Finally, I was free.