ÜberGames

On Japanese television it’s not unreasonable
for contestants to agree to be shot from cannons or
outrun the Cyclops for fabulous resort packages.

One man I saw bungee from an overpass and,
with his head inches above speeding cars,
grabbed at a sixty-five-mile-per-hour waffle cone.

They raised him back up, covered in pink splatter—
he had won the car that had dirtied him. Stuck
to himself he bowed & gracefully as the kiwi landing

took his booty & for some time I lost myself
in thought, staring, replaying his near loss
in that dim bar in Nara where I knew no one.

love is a speckled beast that makes food of us all

He’s not any kind of man;
he works & bends not too far;

belt of canned oils for dead quiet
bolts—but from the window a voice

calls out sides, they line up each
believing fully in where he stands,

pines as idle, not swaying, still
they are capable of great heights

and also great depths of nothing—
only the ass of this worry

soaks through walls and into paint
and lie / staining

the real feel of sinking without arms.

conversation with young jewish girl b.1930

It is sideways
my eyes adjust to plate’s glow
and you are lit up in the display

I cannot see what goes in the periphery—
With no reference
black spots are inferred as staring eyes

He does better in things
I’ve no idea about,

with imminence;
the search closes,

the eyes,
the small room, enclose

the plate’s frozen glow—
streams flow and then stop—

leaving empty cartons of juice
and whatever else could not be taken.

return of the cannibal

The mail brought a package from
my in-laws; apparently for Easter.
A small card read Enjoy.

Inside the package were eggs. A dozen.
They were hardboiled and had painted
on them small red fruits.

I like eggs but not so much the idea.
They now decorate the finest houses
of the neighborhood:

The Joneses’ The Millers’ The Cokers’
The backyard wedding at my brother’s
where they rained down.

I was told I am never allowed back
after the pelting between picnics
and simultaneous wakes

both of which resembled rat pack’s.
But by then I was out of eggs and
my holiness also trickled.

I left for good when the week ended,
and as I moved further away
I laughed to myself

thinking I’d have been much better
off in the majors instead of here
as the league’s #1 asshole.

self-portrait [experiment in mirrors]

A man is sitting alone at this café;
take a moment to find him fulfilling the part in which he must eye passers;

so he is sipping on coffee and it is the best thing he’s got going
until his cigarettes run out but before he can light his last luck
he notices a small child, old enough to walk but not enough
to know where to go—he is standing on a curb across the street—

There is no hand attached to an adult
who would in turn be attached to
some form of self-preservation, no,
there is a child, an infantile
and the green man is nowhere here
when he steps into traffic,
swaying and a few times
stumbling in between
every single car—unable to grasp,
but somehow still courageous / oblivious,
he makes it all the way to our side
completely intact and walks off.

This moves not one person on this sidewalk.
We are confounded.  We are out-ranged.

But if you will look back
under the awning, the man is so much
more aware and more pleased
with the freakish that he’ll forget
to tip the bill and the waitress will refuse
to let him sign for it on her chest;
nothing could make more sense today.

to my friend on the anniversary...

what is time but the fleeting
I could never see, but hear it burn
into every other’s fore- arm or head

with your sound coming through them;
what would be mist
for a year, un- / set in this clay kiln;

with that we wipe our brows;
the blood still
chasing the mercury.

[RIP Raj – 1985-2005]