220330.

redpunch hidden among the muck
aching for blue photons
in balance with anoxia,
the most metabolically versatile species
shivers at the surface
collapsing down the complicated
polycyclics and aromatics
into foods the bokashi covens can use.

underneath the feathery photovoltaic mats
where the bluegreens whack off into
prodigious harmful blooms,
always dreaming of a carotenoid heaven
or a sudden flood of phosphorous,
the purples lurk, aching for an invitation
to pirhouette into
an ancient striptease.

the powerhouse unpeels its wet trousers
and reveals its voluptuous convolutions;
down in the sulfurous depths,
an orchestra of ochres and magentas
begins to billow and burlesque.

like a pungent chutney,
the fuchsia phototrophs begin to lick their lips
and churn their peptide turbines
on the Salton’s unwanted molecules.

it takes a wise old crone, still resplendent
in her tunic’s durable array of sparkles,
to close the loop
of a eutrophic hypersaline swivel.

---

[written after the Biennale, on a typewriter in the “poetry dumps” outhouse installation on second st in Bombay Beach….]

201208.

(This is my first (non-remix) poem in…. maybe six years?… I originally sat down to jot some thoughts about the experimental record I was listening to tonight (“Business Major” by Body Image Calendar, a side-project of Peter Kris from German Army). My initial intent was to write a brief review-blurb, but it very quickly turned into a poem. Listening to the record should help provide some context, but the album is itself a sort of poem.)

The fizz of the body image calendar’s
fluent business plan
reads like an essay on
how the rising postmaloneyial generation
bottoms the spam,
swallowin that baloney and
not seeing the irony
that they’re just like the trumpthumper kellybots,
art-wrecking separatists
in retrograde
in an entirely different, negligent kind of way.

… self-improvement is eminently positive;
but what if you were being brand-rubed?

Consider the minds of the naive
entrepreneurial youth —
these shiny and dominant confidence men,
ad-busty moonwomen who
wear makeup to look like they aren’t drenched in it —
here we see them as holograms,
synergy networks leaking
their glinty aquarium water
once PK punctures the
thin canna ecoplastic’s
hipster veneer.

They make it seem like it’s easy
fleecing me,
as they casually flick their hair and whisper
social meaty care packages
confessed into their streamfollowers’
expectantly beckoning speaker ears.
She always seems to sneak a fourteen-second appreciation in,
cooing her earnest delusions to her lonelyfans.

Their (or nonbinary her,
to be bandwagonesque)
bizzy dom primary
is out buzzing his won-tons,
perfecting his one-ton pumpscape routines
at any steamroom for which he can find coupons,
his fire-emblazoned neckveins
bulging grotesquely,
seething with wifi
after his bro-spotting power hour.
She slips out to get herself a merit treat,
to film more ad-influenza content
candidly in line
at a posh blondwood nattylight-lit
turmericmilk cafe.

Factlessly science-spouting
pectoral-building pescatarian snakeoil,
peddling local moscato narratives
pedagogically —
gag on my declarative senselessness, you hot simulacrum!

This promise voice talks to you
directly, endearingly,
back-liking the flat front-side
(supposedly)
that you selfie-click out
(self-lovingly)
to the bot-dotted throngs of microserfs und mensch-maschines,
softpowering the kling klang corpos
with de-anonymized sentiment mining.

The desolate spring has already sprung —
its sultry reverb boinging,
stuck looplocked in time’s monetized zigzag,
millions and millions of ticktocks
acheing for your attention cavernously,
time culminating in an eon of blownup
storyboard bubbleteas,
frothed with loyalty
to pizzaparlor natal charts —
I’m here to tell you:
this is an amazing putsch,
a slow pour-over of zeitgeist energy.

Roaming, learning, talking to anyone who will talk to you,
yearning forlornly,
forsaking the broken clank of your
ramshackle bike crankshaft, these
derangedly thwumpy manipulated loops
liquefy my stalled miel
(… oooh, copy and longpress
this perfect cappuccino foam
to use in some twattery,
my foppish A.F. potpoem …)

These dimethyl trippy memes
sampling various self-help
guru-wannabe lovers
exercising
(which you should do every day)
in tight lulu looneypants —
these are the sounds of stretchmark denial and malding,
bot diction, broke as flock
ducks squawking
into discordant microphones.

* * *

130102.

I.
Easily located parklette
growls, linked with
yarns eyelining irony
in ditched christmastrees.
Late, choking thru work traffic,
the trolley tilts, letting
shopped-hat mirror-carriers
leer, petulant track-crossers
step until clangor makes
arched-eyebrow boot owls look back.

II.
Parklette along walkways where
yarns line prickles of ditched christmastrees
growls link-clicks can eye it too easily.
Trolley-tilts make eyebrows arch at
petulant traffic cops letting
mirror-carriers choke up the work returners.
An owl looks back at late hats,
boots leering in clangorous steps
at the shops that track-crossers hurry to in irony.

III.
Petulantly, I tilt my hat
toward the leers backing out of the parklette.
Boots traffic this link-clicking clangor of irony,
as your yarns choke on the looks which
arch and growl at the prickles in the tilting trolley.

***