Random YouTube Ad Mashup After Watching Koyaanisquatsi at 4am

“Meet the real woman behind the voice of Siri.
My computer’s possessed!
Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.

You’re not a dish, you’re a man.
Can I show you some really disturbing math?
There’s never been a better time than now to focus.

Being a person is complicated.
Hey there, got a little misfit inside of you?
Do you want more clarity and empathy?
There are situations when you need a serious power supply…”

A Thanksgiving

“…Tonight I’m connecting the stars on my own
in a house the color of midnight.
I was experimenting with electricity
and found a rip in the galaxy—
an open circuit, a breach in polarity
where the mysteries of trinities glow

Is it too much just to be happy?
I don’t need to invent the microwave
or write a symphony.
I just want the simple pleasures
of photosynthesis.
I’m waiting, and waiting is a sentient life-form
you can feed snacks…”

A Harder Rain (Bob Dylan Cento)

Oh, what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
In your sleep, listen
to the hum of latent sunrise—
the crickets of dawn receding
as dreams trickle
down the celestial bolus
like fireflies into your open veins.

Nebulas strain
against the edges of blackout curtains.
The entire universe is trying to trespass
with all its available light,
and you’ve mistaken it for a burglar.
Mars is insistent: this isn’t a joke.
Will the sound of glass breaking awaken you?…”

Grime

(with random reflections on the pantoum form, flash poem writing, writing as therapy, and Bob Ross)

I’ve stuck my hand down the drain.
Reached around the spinning blades.
Pulled things out from the grime
the likes you’ve never seen.

I’ve reached around the spinning blades
and seen my face shining in them
like you’ve never seen
before. The bones. The eyes…

Exodus

You know you can’t stay here.
Every heaven on earth has its fall from grace.
Every rhythm eventually breaks.
Someday, you too
will get that deployment call,

maybe in the night, when the kids are still sleeping.
You’ll pack your belongings, but not all of them.
You’ll leave behind memories and a history
and start off in some unknown land,
where no amount of explaining
will unveil your stranger’s cloak of invisibility…

Ink

…He drew a line in black ink,
squiggling around shapes
of buildings, people, trees.
I followed it around the corner,
curious where it would lead.

I followed it all the way into the subway.
Sometimes I drew things back.
The city opened around me
like the glass teeth of a mosaic dragon
breathing smoke and the fires of sunsets
between buildings. their underground organs
pumping and hissing with hydraulic precision.

I was so young…

Dusk

The fluorescent lights in Rite-Aid
cheerfully pummel my senses. It’s 4pm
in the Quabbin milltown, in this January where the sky
holds tightly to its snow-stash.
I’m here buying laxatives, because it’s come to that:
everything is backed up. The government’s shut down,
my spinal cord’s frozen, peristalsis is a memory.
Even the clouds are stingy now…

Silver

The world outside this room is buzzing
with fireflies and summer, and a thousand problems
hover in the heat outside our window.
I’m not listening tonight.
I’m locked in this soap bubble some nebula blew
that somehow sealed around us, mirrored and shifting.
We’re safe here. For now, until the rainbows turn silver,
and time’s up. I hold you, lying still—
not wanting it to burst…

Bauxite

…Aeons.
Asleep in an amethyst cave
under a canopy of stars:
a struck geode, my skull’s soft cockle forms.
The shore evolves —
rhythm wet, slowed and cooled,
water — salt — moon —
shroud.
The pointillist smile of stars.
On the black shore,
bauxite — giant crystals,
opaque, white, and sandstone —
cacti of calculus,
tall mothers of the tide,
pale in the moonlight…

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