CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED DIPLOMAT

I don’t know when exactly your hand slipped from mine

Your arm and body no longer clinging to mine

Falling back into the sea

I caught a glimpse of your head slipping beneath the water

Where were you when negotiations broke down?

Now I live off the earnings of an older woman

And tell my story to anyone who will listen

Global postings form the material for a gifted raconteur

Tales from the bargaining table

She said “what do you have to offer?”

And I said “nothing”

Shot off a flare for a rescue party that’s not coming

There will be celebrations across this regressing country

Victorious hands tearing down all the posters and banners

While the expelled former leaders hide in basements and the country

The two sides couldn’t agree on any of the original points

I broke every truce with the one I love 

AMERICAN MONSTERS

I fear it’s my turn for the stick again

In every home an outrage, in every dream a frantic escape from reality

I fear it’s my guide that puts me on the path leading away from happiness

The puppet-minded grinding souls into something as empty and puny as mankind

I fear it’s my burden to grab hold of money terrorism

Eagerly strapping 120 pounds of debt to my body

This is not by any definition life

But we take it as a generically produced substitute that goes with everything

I must make this visual so I can see a face

A system, a government – It’s too abstract for identification

Monster sighting at the bank and by the water cooler

A looming shadow falls across East/West old money family connections

I am going to win the race for a father and a mother

I’ll consume and scurry into a corner when the light is turned on

I’ll do what it takes and cry like a lost girl later in the privacy of my home

And something happened

No one ever knew me or wanted to

Desperation on the third floor

Hey, I make my payments on time

But all the while the stranger in my clothes disgusted me

And something happened

I fear my lifetime will never be synonymous with triumph

All I’m good for is the next colossal failure

But at least on the other side of the world

I see that people are people

THE STAMP COLLECTOR’S ROUTE TO GREATNESS

Why do I always have to sit with you?

Why can’t you be alone for a few moments?

Genius and silence and solitude irreparably entwined

But you want to separate them

It’s more terrifying that anything you’ll ever realize

Staying indoors on a sunny day

Preventing urgency from becoming idleness

“The key to greatness is the ownership of a valuable commodity”

For all your time alone, is this the best you could come up with?

Qualifying disjointed ramblings

Qualifying spastic achievements

Qualifying the desire to own, own, own

EDISON’S DREAM SPOILED BY COMMERCE

You’d better head north to grab the last vestiges of cold

Science and art had more in common than we realized

Prevented from pursuing a further relationship by the rise of the corporation

When success comes along

In a cowboy hat

Make sure to read the small print

I wasn’t in it for the money

I only wanted to share my stadium-sized mind

And patents by the thousands

We could all share technology that would save the lives of peoples all over the globe

Instead, multi-national Midases pack the fate of millions into little boxes

And bury them in their backyards

Like dogs with bones or squirrels with nuts

A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD AT A COPY STORE I WORKED AT IN 1988

Two months was all I was able to stick it out

Despite needing the money

The last guy only lasted two months too

“I didn’t want ten reams of goldenrod”

“I only ordered five”

“Why would I order so much goldenrod?”

“It only gets used for band flyers”

“And brochures for pyramid schemes”

They instructed me to keep track of numbers on the counter

And that’s the number of copies we would bill them for

But I lost track of the numbers on the counter

However, at the end of two months, I found the individual right where he had been left