5/30: Broken Boards

As cloth, as thread, as mothfood
folded in a mother's closet, the white
tae kwon do uniform and a year's procession
of belts,
white
         yellow
                   green
                           brown.

a paper-route, as income, as check, as responsibilits,
short of another year's tuition. one photo, as proof, as marker,
of the tail end of puberty, the awkward lip-open gape
and curls parted down the middle. It was just one
year, the last one for years, I ever got in a fight.

It was at church camp, with a much bigger camper, a football
player, I hit him over the head with a broom and a counselor
broke it up. As resolution, handshakes by campfire.

As time went, it  dawned it was a fight I
would have lost, but continued anyway. As
middle school honor dictates, as fear and bravado
lead in equal measure, as I'd not yet learned to
joke my way out of things.

Fight or flight never leaves,
just takes different paths.

As memento, as reminder of my own fists,
of splinters I never caught, of the black belt
I was a month and a tournament away
from, two halves of a board,
tucked with keepsakes, marked with
sharpie, in thirteen year old
handwriting.

9/30! Going Cronenberg! Going Scott!

Give me an Existenz afterlife, so I can plug, unplug eternally.

That squirming, spirting tentacle, all ooze and grit and
eventually just wanting to be put down. Of course we want
masks here, of course.

I saw a TV show where people got their make up done,
piercings shrined and implants to look like cats, or dragons,
or the devil. They called it extreme, I call it trying too hard when

all anyone needs to do for assassination
is program a GPS in question into oncoming traffic
like that episode of The Office

we all laughed at for being
unrealistic.

Give me a car crash orgasm, so I can sync with explosions.

Somewhere between the caveman and the
robot porn, there is
a caveman jerking off to robot porn.

I'm no expert on these things,
vast expanse of flesh,
and plugs, and re-routes.

Laying on my collapsed futon
late night, falling asleep to sirens,
waking up to jackhammers,
reading a friends panicked e-mail about
more
bill boards
more drones

I'm too entrenched in Blade Runner's LA; it was a lot of things,
but never boring.