The Pages Are Rickety As Matchbooks

Relationships with people
are the same old jokes.
The same old bath
moving around in the same gray tub,
the same laughter
sinking to the bottom.

The same bowl, washed again and again,

stupid like a circle,

the asshole of a seashell that
goes round and round
into itself
and so do you and I--

that’s what it is:
boueyed, beaten, ping-
ponged by waves
in houses, apartments, bathrooms, jobs
earths, oceans.

I am here, I say,
and so are all of you.

So what if the ocean’s stopped moving?
It’s just like a fish or a frog

it died.
There are no fish, there are no fish or
frogs, there is no rain.

So what if we’ve lost track of time?

I am here
and so are all of you.

We’re eating food, celebrating holidays, making
phone calls.
Drinking that wine,
watching that purple flame
Ok

Chinatown expands like a love note
and so do the universes,
the universities, corporations
commerce and cancer.

Roads cover most of it
like time.

Everything is capable of being watched.

I am here
and so are all of you,
so how do we like
the big kill?

Cool as plaid foxes, we are, pond water
single-celled organisms
moving their cilia.

Goons a-rockin’ the ground,

I hear sounds.
The screaming in the nights
of
their dogs at the ends of chains,
their refrigerators full of food,
TVs on.

Guns loaded with shot.

I am here

and so are all of you:

the young man there with half his jaw gone,
the cheerleader, the fake, the producer,
the virgin masturbator, the homeless
atheist,
the boiled chef, the theater
goer,

masters of race, creativity, economy, media:

clients are our main criteria,
and music…

Populations emerge
every day
like invertebrates from the water

and I do not hear them
and I do not want to.

I rest in the wilderness of myself.
Lose them in my own sort of matrimony.

It is the only kind of love I worship.

I am here
and so are all of you
and still, I do not tell a joke.