POEM OF THE DAY BY GEORGE CARLIN

MODERN MAN


I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke-free, a diversified multi-cultural post-modern deconstructionist, politcally, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect.

I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputed and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech lowlife, a state-of-the-art bi-coastal multitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

I’m new wave, but I’m old school, and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat-seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice-activated and biodegradeble. I interface with my database, and my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive, and from time to time, I’m radioactive.

Behind the 8-ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave, dodging the bullet, pushing the envelope. I’m on point, on task, on message, and off drugs. I got no need for coke and speed. I have no urge to binge and purge. I’m in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistics missionary. A street-wise smart bomb, a top-gun bottom-feeder.

I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps, I run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing bigfoot slamdunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach. A raging workaholic, a working rageaholic, out of rehab and in denial. I got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up, you can’t dumb me down, ’cause I’m tireless, and I’m wireless. I’m an alpha male on beta blockers.

I’m a non-believer and an overachiever, laid back, but fashion forward, up front, down home, low rent, high maintenance; super size, long lasting, high definition, fast acting, oven ready, and built to last. I’m a hands-on, footloose, kneejerk headcase, prematurly post-traumatic, and I have a love child who sends me hate mail.

But I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing, a supportive, bonding, nurturing, primary caregiver. My output is down, but my income is up. I take a short position on a long bond, and my revenue stream has its own cash flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds, I watch trash sports. I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user friendly, and lactose intolerant.

I like rough sex, I like tough love, I use the F-word in my e-mails, and the software on my hard drive is hardcore, no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a minimall, I bought a minivan at a megastore, I eat fast food in the slow lane. I’m tollfree, bite size, ready to wear, and I come in all sizes. A fully equipped, factory authorized, hospital tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle.

I’ve been prewashed, precooked, preheated, prescreened, preapproved, postdated, freeze dried, double wrapped, vacuum packed, and I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal, lean and mean, cocked, locked, and ready to rock; rough, tough, and hard to bluff.

I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide, I got glide in my stride. Drivin’ and movin’, sailin’ and spinin’, jivin’ and groovin’, wailin’ and winnin’. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hardy, and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin’ in, there ain’t no doubt, and I’m hangin’ tough, over and out.


-George Carlin

POEM OF THE DAY BY DAVE ETTER

DANCING LIKE MONK

Didn’t like the party
didn’t like the people there
tossed down my whiskey
put on my corduroy coat
passed some tacky tycoons
country club bumpkins
double chins double gins
yanked open the thick front door
lit a fresh Cuban cigar
went down white stone steps
went down crooked walk
went spinning round and round
goodbye to Wall Street weirdos
bigoted Republicans
bad hearts sick with greed
glad to be out of there
turning and whirling
dancing dancing like Monk.


-Dave Etter

POEM OF THE DAY BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

Two Scavengers In A Truck,
Two Beautiful People In A Mercedes

At the stoplight waiting for the light
    Nine A.M. downtown San Francisco
 a bright garbage truck
  with two garbage men in red plastic blazers
 standing on the back stoop
      one on each side hanging on
    and looking down into 
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
In a hip three-piece linen suit
With shoulder-length blond hair & sunglasses
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with a short skirt and colored stocking
On his way to his architect's office
And the two scavengers up since Four A.M.
Grungy from their route
On the way home 
The older of the two with grey iron hair
And hunched back
Looking like some
Gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
Also with sunglasses and long hair
About the same age as the Mercedes driver
And both scavengers gazing down
As from a great distance
At the cool couple
As if they were watching some odorless TV ad
In which everything is possible

And the very red light for an instant
Holding all four close together
As if anything at all were possible 
Between them
Across that great gulf
In the high seas
Of this democracy

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

POEM OF THE DAY BY KENNETH PATCHEN

Eve of St. Agony or The Middleclass Was Sitting on Its Fat

Man-dirt and stomachs that the sea unloads; rockets

of quick lice crawling inland, planting their damn flags,   

putting their malethings in any hole that will stand still,

yapping bloody murder while they slice off each other’s heads,   

spewing themselves around, priesting, whoring, lording   

it over little guys, messing their pants, writing gush-notes   

to their grandmas, wanting somebody to do something pronto,   

wanting the good thing right now and the bad stuff for the other boy.

Gullet, praise God for the gut with the patented zipper;   

sing loud for the lads who sell ice boxes on the burning deck.   

Dear reader, gentle reader, dainty little reader, this is

the way we go round the milktrucks and seamusic, Sike’s trap and Meg’s rib,

the wobbly sparrow with two strikes on the bible, behave   

Alfred, your pokus is out; I used to collect old ladies,   

pickling them in brine and painting mustaches on their bellies,   

later I went in for stripteasing before Save Democracy Clubs;   

when the joint was raided we were all caught with our pants down.

But I will say this: I like butter on both sides of my bread   

and my sister can rape a Hun any time she’s a mind to,

or the Yellow Peril for that matter; Hector, your papa’s in the lobby.

The old days were different; the ball scores meant something then,

two pill in the side pocket and two bits says so; he got up slow see,

shook the water out of his hair, wam, tell me that ain’t a sweet left hand;

I told her what to do and we did it, Jesus I said, is your name McCoy?

Maybe it was the beer or because she was only sixteen but I got hoarse

just thinking about her; married a john who travels in cotton underwear.

Now you take today; I don’t want it. Wessex, who was that with I saw you lady?

Tony gave all his dough to the church; Lizzie believed in feeding her own face;

and that’s why you’ll never meet a worm who isn’t an antichrist, my friend,

I mean when you get down to a brass tack you’ll find some sucker sitting on it.

Whereas. Muckle’s whip and Jessie’s rod, boyo, it sure looks black

in the gut of this particular whale. Hilda, is that a .38 in your handbag?

         Ghosts in packs like dogs grinning at ghosts   

         Pocketless thieves in a city that never sleeps

         Chains clank, warders curse, this world is stark mad

Hey! Fatty, don’t look now but that’s a Revolution breathing down your neck.

 -Kenneth Patchen

POEM OF THE DAY BY ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

I Would Like to Describe
I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass full of water to put it another way I would give all metaphors in return for one word drawn out of my breast like a rib for one word contained within the boundaries of my skin but apparently this is not possible and just to say - I love I run around like mad picking up handfuls of birds and my tenderness which after all is not made of water asks the water for a face and anger different from fire borrows from it a loquacious tongue so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentlemen separated once and for all and said this is the subject and this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and taste the earth with their tiny roots which next morning we tear out painfully -Zbigniew Herbert

POEM OF THE DAY BY TONY HOAGLAND

Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet
At this height, Kansas is just a concept, a checkerboard design of wheat and corn no larger than the foldout section of my neighbor's travel magazine. At this stage of the journey I would estimate the distance between myself and my own feelings is roughly the same as the mileage from Seattle to New York, so I can lean back into the upholstered interval between Muzak and lunch, a little bored, a little old and strange. I remember, as a dreamy backyard kind of kid, tilting up my head to watch those planes engrave the sky in lines so steady and so straight they implied the enormous concentration of good men, but now my eyes flicker from the in-flight movie to the stewardess's pantyline, then back into my book, where men throw harpoons at something much bigger and probably better than themselves, wanting to kill it, wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt to prove that they exist. Imagine being born and growing up, rushing through the world for sixty years at unimaginable speeds. Imagine a century like a room so large, a corridor so long you could travel for a lifetime and never find the door, until you had forgotten that such a thing as doors exist. Better to be on board the Pequod, with a mad one-legged captain living for revenge. Better to feel the salt wind spitting in your face, to hold your sharpened weapon high, to see the glisten of the beast beneath the waves. What a relief it would be to hear someone in the crew cry out like a gull, Oh Captain, Captain! Where are we going now?      -Tony Hoagland

POEM OF THE DAY BY PAUL ROLA

HOT NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE
 

Nights out here this year have been terrible hot,
Kinda’ like hell,
But without havin’ to put up with all the deceased family members.
Tonight is one of those nights when
You wished you only had one leg
So’s it wouldn’t have to lay up against the other one.

You almost hate to try to go to sleep
Cause when you close your eyes
It makes your eyeballs sweat.

The humidity is truly hangin’ heavy in the air,
Makes your clothes heavy.
Hell it makes everything heavy.
Even Willie’s singin’ seems to be about a half a tone low
By the time the sound gets to me.

That coyote has developed a sinus cough,
Kinda’ gurgles when he howls.
Why even the cattle have been beggin’ us to skin ‘em
So they can get some relief
From them fur coats.

The only thing that keeps me a goin’ through the night
Is that I know it will be day break soon
And even though we’ll have to face the full force of that sun
It gives me a certain kinda’ relief to know
I can bitch and cuss out loud
Without wakin’ anybody up.


-Paul Rola

POEM OF THE DAY BY GEORGE WALLACE

WAIST DEEP IN THE DOO WHA DIDDY
protect the rich -- join the party!
come on out it’s the fourth of july
it's pioneer days & a mighty fine
country we live in, why yes it is!
-- took it from the indians & the
old cistern of capitalism is doing
its thing -- boys we live in a good
damn country, boomerangers &
misadventurers start your engines
of opportunity -- cruise the streets
drink your poison -- we’re waist deep
in the doo wha diddy -- all night long
all axe-handle night -- why you're
looking ram tough tonight, darling!
sing it out while the people of color
smoke their angry cigarettes & hang
around outside the county courthouse --
sing it out with kate smith belt it out
people! hands over your god bless
america hearts! it’s the seventh inning
the home team’s alive & the home team’s
winning -- poppa drink your beer -- momma
dish out some more of that good green stuff.
freedom’s for the taking! easy opportunity!
why listen to filthy protestors on wall street
when you can vote for the smiling man
who robs you over and over again in
the name of freedom? the good stuff
trickles down boys & girls the oil wells
pump magic into your veins o let the
rowdies have their fun let the good
times roll laissez les old folks scoop
their cat food dinner tin cans -- let
the children & grandchildren of
immigrants take their place on
the wrong side of the picket line.
cross the line, serve thirty days in jail.
o beat down the suckers & the cop-baiters
let the troublemakers & the infiltrators
the provocateurs & bible beating shotgun
wielding cowboys run wild in the land of
the free -- & who among us’ll blame them?
who? who’s that waiting in the dangerous
shadows of the rio grande? who's that guy
jimmy-jamming the voting booth? why it’s
just me, folks -- another good american
trying to protect the american way!
fuck that boy stuck waist deep
in the doo-wha-diddy.


-George Wallace

POEM OF THE DAY BY DEZ TENHAM

A Reason Not To Love

Satisfied with understanding the general gist of things
there is so much to look into, stars suns and faces
how could you expect the trauma of sentience
to not come with the anxious powers of observation
so inclined to attempt to take on the import of
more, the universe coax-pushing
the body
the self,
ground against pavement-synthesis
steamroller that does not crush but drives
pressed by the gravity of organic-magnetism
Scrape-shaven into road-rash dust and debris
Less than a blink-becoming of basic chemical compounds again
Building blocks for mushrooms and echoes of thought.


-Dez Tenham

A HESITANT ODE TO A BUMBLE BEE

You there,

ya big, fat grumblin’
bumble bee,

you sound to me
like the chronically fuzzed-out
electro-static feedback
of a beat-up ’62 Fender Strat
(or maybe a ’63).

I see ya, there,
buzzin’ around the shimmering,
glistening early morning air,

sniffin’ about, here and there,
bobbin’ and weavin’, in and out
like a Mexican or South Korean
featherweight, in and out
and all around the newly blooming
Marigolds and Hyacinths
and those incessantly perfuming
Mimosas and Spearmints
and eros-inducing Linden trees…

Now, don’t you be
stingin’ on me!

-Jason Ryberg, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOHN MACKER

Diego

 

We buried my old dog Diego

on St. Patrick's day, next to the arroyo
one of the driest of devil winters. he
looked like any other dog in New Mexico,
like the Santo Domingo pueblo dogs,
asleep on the dusty earth in the shade,
dreamy respite
from the Corn Dance heat.
I wanted to write:
I wept tears of Irish whisky on his grave but
all I kept thinking was the Great Spirit must've
discovered that placing his soul on earth
for a spell
during my life,
beat
having to answer for all the sorrows
of the world, if only for a moment,
any day.

 

-John Macker

PABLO CONTEMPLATES THE PARADOX OF THE HARVEST MOON

Hey you.

Yes, you.

Tell me how it is
that the moon
can be both
rose and blue,

this strangely luminescent
night-blooming fruit,
suspended so serenely, there,
in the sweaty, swampy,
nearly-liquid
midnight air,

there, just above
the darkly churning
blue-green
broccoli-stalk
horizon of trees.

And, what with the ghostly
tangerine glow of streetlamps
and the invisible ocean
of oregano, mimosa and mint,
basil, lemon and hyacinth

(and of course
all these dangerously tart
and ripe tomatoes
lolling about
the scene)…

well, the world tonight,
must truly be
a veritable
vegetable garden

of urgent
and earthy
delights.

-Jason Ryberg, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY EZHNO MARTIN

What Now, Turkey?!

 

I'd like to whisper into your gaping neck-hole
a reminder
that my mother
the insufferable suburbanite
who fisted you full of breadcrumbs,


is in her bedroom
on the phone with her squirrel voiced sister on Long Island
screeching at the top of her lungs

and now it's just you
and me
with a bottle of scotch
the bible
and this box full of power tools

Don't you try and hide in the oven...
this is an inquisition
and I know where you been!!!

What you got to say for yourself?

Answer me, damn't

Who sent you?

Was it Obama?!
I bet it was Obama
that faggot loving socialist


You're lucky you're already dead,


but damn't
if you don't start talking,
I'm going to make you ever deader!

Maybe you won't talk to me...
but what do you have to say...

TO MISTER SAUDERING IRON?

I'm gonna do you like you were a Beauty Queen
and I was Mike Tyson if...

Stay back Bitch!
This is between me and the Communist Turkey!

Hit me with that harpoon full of face-plant if you must
but don't think a syringe of sedatives
is gonna put a dent in my holy patriotic investigation
(owww, shit)
into the satanic and subversive goals of this flightless mole
and his obvious collusion with the queers
the mexicans
and...
and the little green men from outer-space
who want to take our jobs
and ruin our families...
and make tax evasion
and forcing your secretary
to have sex with you illegal
and free healthcare
adequate public education
blood money
Ronald Reagan...

Ronald
Reagan

Ronald..
Reeeaaaaaaa....

(SPLAT)

 

 -Ezhno Martin

POEM OF THE DAY BY HARLEY ELLIOTT

REPORT ON THE FOURTH

Alone in the house on
the fourth of july bang
one hundred and five all around

no shade the orioles bang and
sparrows droop panting in the trees
and the bang and the beer
marches bang bang from the refrigerator

a dripping line of bottles
along the living room floor
bang the policemen doze like sweating birds

one man bang bang one man
is arrested in drunken slow motion
while trying to get a bang

a drink of water from a
filling station air hose
bang on the fourth of july.

-Harley Elliott

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSH RIZER

=locker room=
 

i’m training in a restaurant
for some extra holiday dough.
i’m the only male.
all the servers are women.
by the end of one shift
a girl comes out of the bathroom
admitting the onset of
party butt.
another is throwing up
from the previous night’s drinking.
they are tweaking tits,
grabbing ass
and cupping one another’s cookie.
they are rating men as men
enter the establishment.
one says
he has little hands and little feet
and i don’t wanna’ know what else.
they are crop dusting tables.
(the act of walking intestinal gas past eating patrons.)
they are burping like
hung over bullfrogs.
they are tearing off hunks of foccacia
as if the bread were medieval boar
on the bone.
they are drinking water and it’s running down their shirts.
one of them tells another
she’s violating health code.
the other fires back with a knowing eye
so are you when you pick your ass and handle bread.
there’s two in the kitchen,
locked into pelvic doggy-style
replete with ass-slapping
and here’s this solitary man
corn fed and kansas raised,
trying not to get his panties
in a bunch.

-Joshua Rizer

POEM OF THE DAY BY PETER MICHELSON

In Her Seventh Decade the Priestess of the Dreams

“The news from everywhere’s a gone bad deal
And the Priestess of the Dreams says
It ain’t kabuki Babe, they’re losing it for real…”

Dreams the agonistes of the age
that she’s an antique
doll her face of porcelain but eyes
her eyes are all too real
Her ragged heart pumps plasma
plasma by the barrel
The price is right  She sees it trickle down
“We are Americans
the patriotic people
The Civil War the Spanish War the World War
Korea Granada Vietnam
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The workers work  It trickles down
The workers fast  It trickles down
The great bell tolls


E Coli walks the streets
Muslims eating watermelon in the yard
Patriotic fervor fills the Fourth
Kim Jong Il invites the children in
Their eyes are huge and dark
The mosque explodes all hell erupts
Nada Nada  It trickles down
“We’re still at war”
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The great bell tolls

The Priestess gathers infants in her arms
“I saved hundreds but
what of those who died  I think of that”
It trickles down
She commandeers a train
She fills the cars with children
She leads them through this world
At every checkpoint she declares
her orders from on high
You will not compute these ones
their calculus beyond your profit margin

In each hand a stone
a stone to place upon the bier
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“My drive is to revise Regression’s Law”
Open the gates  Install the orchid beds
the carousels with hyenas gaily lacquered
I think of that
the young one with the baleful eyes
innocent mustache and marginal IQ
He’s out of work
and understandably annoyed
with the hungry child’s squall
slamming her in the manner of
rural women slapping
wet muslin against the stones
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“These are the sympathetic cases”
Nada Nada the Priestess says
Open up the gates
Install the orchid beds
The gaily lacquered carousel
The pools with golden carp
And blossoms bright above the lily pads
In the iris of her eyes the sight
Of children slammed
In the manner of rural women
Slapping wet muslin against the stones
Nada Nada the Priestess moans
She gathers infants in her arms
She commandeers a train
In the iris of her eyes the sight
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls.


-Peter Michelson

(ANOTHER) POEM OF THE DAY BY PABLO NERUDA

ODE TO SUMMER

Summer, red violin,

clear cloud,
the hum

of a saw

or cicadas

announce your arrival.

The heavens

arch

to a smoothness,

lucent as an eye,

and below your gaze,

summer, you are

an infinite sky-fish,

shameless messenger

of praise,

lazy,

sleepy-eyed one,

little bee belly,

mischievous

sun,

terrible paternal sun,

sweaty as a toiling ox,

and the scorching sun

in one’s head

is like a

sudden blow,

sun of thirst

crossing the sand,

summer,

desert sea.

The sulfur

miner

drips

yellow sweat,

the aviator

maps,

ray by ray,

the celestial sun,

darkened

sweat

slips

down a forehead

into the eyes;

at Lota,

the miner

scrubs

his blackened forehead.

Seed beds

burn,

wheat

rustles

blue insects

seek

shade,

touch

refreshment,

dive

headlong

into diamonds.

Oh lush

summer,

ripe

apple

cart,

verdant

strawberry

mouth,

lips of wild plum,

roads

of tender

dust on dust,

midday

coppery red

drum.

In the afternoon,

fire

rests,

air

makes clover

dance; it enters

the deserted factory:

a fresh star

rises

in

the cloudy

sky.

A summer night

sizzles

without

burning.

-Pablo Neruda

POEM OF THE DAY BY PABLO NERUDA

Ode to the Watermelon

The tree of intense

summer,

hard,

is all blue sky,

yellow sun,

fatigue in drops,

a sword

above the highways,

a scorched shoe

in the cities:

the brightness and the world

weigh us down,

hit us

in the eyes

with clouds of dust,

with sudden golden blows,

they torture

our feet

with tiny thorns,

with hot stones,

and the mouth

suffers

more than all the toes:

the throat

becomes thirsty,

the teeth,

the lips, the tounge:

we want to drink

waterfalls,

the dark blue night,

the South Pole,

and then

the coolest of all

the planets crosses

the sky,

the round, magnificent,

star-filled watermelon.

It's a fruit from the thirst-tree.

It's the green whale of the summer.

The dry universe

all at once

given dark stars

by this firmament of coolness

lets the swelling

fruit

come down:

its hemispheres open

showing a flag

green, white, red,

that dissolves into

wild rivers, sugar,

delight!

Jewel box of water, phlegmatic

queen

of the fruitshops,

warehouse

of profundity, moon

on earth!

You are pure,

rubies fall apart

in your abundance,

and we

want

to bite into you,

to bury our

face

in you, and

our hair, and

the soul!

When we're thirsty

we glimpse you

like

a mine or a mountain

of fantastic food,

but

among our longings and our teeth

you change

simply

into cool light

that slips in turn into

spring water

that touched us once

singing.

And that is why

you don't weigh us down

in the siesta hour

that's like an oven,

you don't weigh us down,

you just

go by

and your heart, some cold ember,

turned itself into a single

drop of water.


-Pablo Neruda

POEM OF THE DAY BY PAUL CORMAN ROBERTS

THE LAST POEM I WILL EVER WRITE ABOUT POETRY
OR POETZ FOR REALZ I SWEAR THIS TIME

Contrary to popular belief
The poets are the last
To be killed or driven out
When the various gurgling pockets of
White/educated/liberal/entitlement
Begin to fracture, shrink, divide and multiply
Into a foamy disaffectation
Beneath the economic pressure
That makes a liar out of everyone
Who claimed they had faith
In civilization.

Poets used to be the elite of course;
In the days when only the elite
Were allowed to read and write.

Since then, no practice or profession
Has so sycophantically embedded itself
Into the columns of society
Than that of “poet.”

And this is because genuine poets
Are genuine slaves to words.
And words have always been used
To divide and fracture and
Separate and segregate.
And there is none of this
That is new.

But what the liberal white intellectuals
Tend to forget
Is that while Western Civilization
Faces many humiliating and degrading mileposts
On its slide down history’s timeline
There is still actually quite a long way to go.

But make no mistake about it
And let’s be perfectly clear on this

When the authorities
Begin rounding up the poets
And incarcerating them
En masse,
You can be sure that
It is not the beginning of the end

But a sure sign
That the whole shithouse
Has already gone up in flames.

-Paul Corman Roberts

POEM OF THE DAY BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass"

Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers

Thru the back streets
of all my memories

Somewhere a man laments
upon a violin

A doorstep baby cries
and cries again
like
a
ball
bounced
down steps

Which helps the afternoon arise again
to a moment of remembered hysteria

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass"

Kids chase him.

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

POEM OF THE DAY BY KEVIN RABAS

Fall Up

Gunkle and I had this big mirror between us, hefting it
into the back of his blue pick up truck. Gunkle’s part retarded,

a giant in blue jeans and green Crocs, wearing a white t-shirt
with battery acid on it. His glasses are thicker than my thumb.

So, we grab hold of this monster mirror, and it glints,
and we both look into that mirror, noticing the clarity
of that blue sky and those green sycamore leaves reflected
so perfectly that is appears you could just dive on into that mirror
and sink into the sky, and we think the same thing.

“You could fall up,” Gunkle says, “and just keep on falling.
Nothing would stop you.” And that was the way of it.

Gunkle’s mind was now my mind, and I was in that mirror
falling on up through those white smoke clouds

headed towards an orange sun.

Gunkle and I stacked box bed springs on top the mirror,
and some branches from out front, and I could hear that large mirror crack,
but I think Gunkle and I could still see it—
that vision of sinking into sky, drowning

with only the sun to hold us up.

-Kevin Rabas