Hadouken

After Street Fighter II
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Japanese schoolgirls on fire –
Red bean squid pork bun
Into the yawning inferno.

~

Run a finger along ’em –
Those green turgid abs,
That shock of coarse red hair.

~

Helicopter kick
The shit out of onlookers
With misplaced white thigh.

~

You never hear about the
Boxes of heartburn
Drugs – fireballs fuck up sphincters.

~

Of course, the American
Is called Guile — we’re liars,
Japan. But who’s Pearl Harbor?

Seeping Biji

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She’s got the petroleum seeps. Woke up last night, covered in motor oil. Had to buy a carton of rags to wipe her down. My big toe touched that tar pit, she said, and now I got all this seepage. I am seeping, and I don’t know how to stop. Had to burn her off, only way to stop the oil bubbling from her insides, blackening the boxspring. That’s the only way to stop it. The seepage’s gotta burn.

–

I kept my crawdads on the grass and waited for the water table seep. They soaked. They woke. She would fry them in hot oil. For days, I felt hot shellfish percolating in my skin.
–

I’ve got the cold seeps. Frozen brine rips up my pores. I wear gauze.

–

I’ve got the cold seep and the blood seep. I wrap myself in Neosporin, pray for particulate immolation. I stare at the Bible, wait for gravity to render it moot. Nothing answers from inside.

–

I kept my hands on her while she burned. Wanted her to know I was there. Now skin pillows of gray-water-body-seepage fill my finger tips, the bloody brine blocks on my arms chipping off like salt-bricks.

–

For example, he was cross-checked mid-ice. His helmet flew off, his teeth slammed together, his skull whip-lashed back and smacked the centerline. The ice warmed. The red lines tinted deeper. Blood mixed with ice melt, permeated the rink. But nothing seeped. Unless you look at everything upside down.

–

She is the tube worms, visits me in the late seeps. She thanks me. She likes the extreme. The blocks surround my body. Her wriggling hive sisters seep through the surface of the brine ice. I call to them to burn me. They don’t respond. I grow old.

–

They burn the chicory for the coffee. Slip it inside the can, mix it with cane sugar and steamed milk, serve it with beignets and a shaker of confectioner’s sugar. They granulate the corn starch, crush it with a large metal press, apply it into the sugar so it doesn’t cake. I add it to myself in the French Quarter, feel the adrenaline boil around my briney heart, feel the endorphin moisture rise to the surface of my skin.

–

Seeping isn’t penetrating. Nothing seeps without gravity. Because when gravity leaves us in the end, we won’t have words to call it anything. Everything will be damp. Water will win.
–
Praying to the Higgs-Boson, I sleep in the Collider. Nothing can seep in. All there is, is inside.

skanking

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Keep them words jostling, like two rolls of quarters
dropped in a sock, akimbo. Keep the crosstalk in,
it keeps the mix popping. Keep the old dude in the back
Charlie-Browning. Keep your hands on glass and vinyl.

Keep sweat rolling down backs, up arms raised in the air.
Keep the knock, keep the single men in the back bouncing —
they’re more critical. Keep skanking behind the wheels,
because if you don’t move, who will? Keep beer bottles

high, lasers bouncing amber, temporary Technicolor stalagmites.
Keep the girl in the center of the floor saying “Oh Shit!”
every three minutes. Make sure the break dancers never get
an opening. Keep skanking. Skank so hard

those $90 headphones fall to the floor. Spin by touch.
Skank till the record skips till the needle
breaks. Keep your hands on skin and vinyl. Never take requests,
play it before they know they want it. Keep playing it,

unless it’s German, and then sample it. But keep
them words skanking down rush hour. Make
’em day-glo and blurry, keep your hands on plastic
and paper, make everyone move before they figure it out.