Four Poems

PAPER ATROCITIES

These days it’s not enough simply to be
good in bed.  Afterward you have to get
up & try to be good essentially
everywhere else too.  Good, essentially,
is the new bad.  Yesterday, for instance,

I was taking pot shots with my pellet
rifle at some hippies loafing behind
the BK, chuckling as they hopped & chirped
like filthy Birkenstock-wearing magpies,
feeling-dare I say it-suffused with pride,

because last week I would’ve been using
a shotgun, which is my way of saying
the mango fruit smoothies and dumbbell curls
have been largely curative.  & ladies:
I’ve always been startled by panty lines,

nothing new there.  Don’t make me run screaming
for the escape hatch.  A groupie wondered
aloud the other day why I commit
such atrocities to paper, & I
said (a) because it’s fun & (b) easy

to do, only notebook & pen required,
a means to pass the time while absconding
from cops bent on collaring the senseless
abuser of some hippies offensive
only for their underarm vapors.  I’m

90% sure the girl who questioned
me was a groupie.  Did I say groupie?
I meant student.  Did I say student?  I
meant imaginary friend, panty lines
invisible, just like the rest of her.

TUESDAY MORNING IN THE HIMALAYAS

The sherpas foraged for empty Coors cans.
One leftover angel from last night’s base
camp writhed on the ground making debased snow
people or maybe merely withering.

On the decampment from an otherwise
heavenly ascension, the angel had
begun to shrivel, wings listing badly.
We had not glimpsed the snow leopard making

snow sherpas, dithering on the hillside.
The sherpas figured after cashing in
cans they’d screen-print some snow leopard t-shirts.
Anymore one had to sidestep the beer

cans and metalliferous lodes, the freeze-
dried corpses, in order to attain the
summit.  Sherpas are inscrutable, some
alpinists maintain.  Of course they can lug

ungodly quantities of swill uphill
but can also stop on their way home from
work to pick up bok choy and a decent
seasonal ale and, after dinner, toss

ideas around for the fundraiser
as the sun grows enflamed and evening
spreads over it like verdigris over
copper.  Don’t let them sway you with their cloak

of domesticity.  Sherpas, after
a climber has lost a chunk of his face
to frostbite, have been known to swoop down like
snow angels and steal away his girlfriend.

OCTOGENARIAN NUDES

Imagine the octogenarian
nudes, markings of the lower parallels
rampant on them, entering a swimming
hole of Arizonian proportions,

torches bathing the periphery.  They
lopped off their gun barrels.  They requested
a third DNA sample.  With torches
they pursued darkness into the desert,

then a strong wind extinguished the torches
and they found themselves assailed by darkness
in turn.  Some afterward reported bites
or slaps, and closer inspection revealed

physical wounds, the tooth imprints of an
unknown attacker.  Villagers also
long ago vanquished the occasional
charlatan, torches aloft, and engaged

in fire-lit raids on neighboring mead halls.
Technology has changed a lot since then
but torches remain pretty much the same,
sort of like the old-person smell at rest

homes.  What sort of musk is that?  In estrus,
what velvety passion must the elders
scrape from their antlers?  On a whim I swabbed
a truck stop urinal for DNA

and solved three crimes.  My past fuck-ups were sawed
off like shotguns or antlers.  The police
warned me how forced marches often end in
waterless pools lined with leather and bones.

STONEHENGE AFTER HOURS

Imagine my dismay when I showed up
at Stonehenge for the “Fun Midnight Orgy”
oiled to a high gloss in my edible
underwear only to discover the

fliers a hoax.  I hate to admit it,
but Pliny the Elder was right: druids
spend too much time in their rooms, listening
to Bauhaus while cutting themselves.  Of course

I’m paraphrasing.  I’ve been reduced by
my last OWI to biking
to the video store, where the Action-
and-Adventure section is in urgent

need of an organizing principle.
This is not my “last hurrah,” though how does
one ever truly know?  Nor will this be
my last “Fun Midnight Orgy” if I have

anything to say on the matter!  The
video clerk/druid says “Everything
this side of the Euphrates is used up
and obscene, excluding my vagina.”

I think she’s coming on to me, but she’s
marked up as a term paper, the kohl has
swallowed her eyes, and that robe with the weird
runes-I know what Pliny the Elder would

say.  Last week the druid-clerk sacrificed
a ewe over by the new releases.
I didn’t take part but did stay to watch,
tolerant that way, also unemployed.