Desire

The incense man disappears leaving the towel of burning smells.

In another life I might have gone there just to wait.

Whatever a real job is, this probably isn’t it.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t drink a beer at the end.

Desire is realizing that the sun dips below the 99 cent store

Earlier than the week before, and being glad that it’s

Not in your eyes any longer.

Staple Gun

Sirens don’t mean anything — they’re a displaced signifier

But only to me. Here, in the world, eggs cook through,

There’s something strange about water. The way it is.

I was thinking about the way that trees are in bed

And I couldn’t fall asleep. That’s fine I guess.

It’s something to feel fine about, no point in sleeping over that.

By the time this line reaches the bottom of the world

I’ll have finished the next one. Sometimes I’ll read a book

That is actually bad, so that I can remember what good

Sentences taste like.

Omnipresent Surveillance

We have to examine even the urges

That we prefer to forget we have.

The in-grown hairs of desire.

To be the things we’ve never even liked.

Give me a jet-ski and a merciful god.

Give me enough money to furnish my home

In my questionable but undeniably bourgeois taste.

I’ll never ask for anything again.

Here in the cell we have to stamp out these

Oppressive urges and fill the holes they’ve left

with cold hard determination.

There are ducks that have been bred to kill.

There are children that have never seen a ball pit.

There’s no way out of this abandoned theme park.

But we can still dream of serious faces.