Two Poems

Internet Porn

There should be a word
to describe the kind of people
that use the computers
at a library, I said,
and everyone chimed in
with a series of jokes.
But, honestly, when
was the last time you
went to the library?
Was it to check out
a book? Or to use a
computer? To flirt
with a librarian? I’ll be
honest with you, they
aren’t as sexy
as typically fetishized
in librarian fantasies.
But you knew that.
That said, there’s some
cute ones. They’ll
maybe even wear
glasses for you, if you
ask nice. They’ll definitely
give you a tutorial on Excel
or Power Point. Open
a new presentation,
she’ll say. You might want
to dim your screen,
because people around you
can be nosy, I’ll remind you.
Keep it under
the table. Keep it
like a secret.

It’s Your Tomorrow

If Jane don’t know what love is,
is that why such great resentment
among veterans? Why she started going
by Janie and got a gun?

What if David Lee Roth’s Van Halen
was Goliath, and Sammy Hagar
was David? Would that make “Right Now”
the rock? Or the slingshot

my friend and I used to try to
shoot down birds or, more likely really,
shoot out the bulb in the streetlight
from his backyard? Admittedly,

I have some troubles with metaphor
and analogy. Actually, I couldn’t remember,
just now, the word “analogy.”
Had to look up “SAT this is to that.”

Do you ever, even secretly,
think maybe Hagar was better?
Why was there a girl on a stripper pole
in the middle of the grocery story,

in “Been Caught Stealing”? Did you
have that friend, in high school,
who wrote in your yearbook, “Guns N’
Fuckin’ Roses”? I wanted to cross out
fuckin’ so my parents wouldn’t see,
but also didn’t want anyone else to see
the crossed out fuckin’. I think

I would have felt bad if we’d ever hit a bird,
or even just that light, but damn if we didn’t try.

The story’s been told so many times,
for so long, everyone always knowing
David is going to win, hasn’t Goliath,
even a little, become the underdog?