Internet vs. Television: The showdown

Ten rounds in,
the referee has been impaled.

Half the audience is dead.
The other half is deaf.

Television throws a right hook
of evangelism. Internet counters

with a photo of a kitten wearing
a watermelon. The audience
screams and screams about
this media-fuled massacre.

Television goes below the belt
with Elvis Presley's legs,
Internet strikes back with
fourteen lesbians in a monster truck.
Right hook, haymaker, uppercut
pornography, illiteracy, Coldplay.

The fight lasts fifteen rounds,
unanimously decided by both fighters
to be a draw. They are both champions.

The deaf half hears none of this.
The other half hears none of this.

"I am the head, and she the heart"

O Lord, it was difficult
to be blessed with sight
while my wife beat
below our ribcage children

Toilet Poetry

I want to use an analogy about how taking a shit
feels like other things do. Here's a list:
good break-ups, fruit roll-ups, toilet paper
music, fucking, drugs, computers, words.
It's hard not to laugh though because
it's funny and it feels rewarding. Flush

Moderation

Six-hundred pounds and maybe eleven feet between them,
the couple holds plastic sacks from the grocer downtown.
I've been strutting the sidewalk, moving fast, trying
to kill time. And there they are, bouncing from right foot
to left, shifting the mass of their hips, those spare tires
made only for a semi-truck on a long, long road.

The plastic strips for handles must be digging
into the potato-dense fingers of the husband while
the wife carries only two, both on her right hand.
The walk continues for blocks, the struggle
protruding a foot from their bellies, those bellies!
I look down at my feet and jump a dying puddle

while the wife's trapeze act shadows her husband.
We are directly across from each other, a sign
framing the horizontal space between us.
They pause at the curb where water laps
upward towards the sidewalk. He steps,
into the refuse, dampening his sweatpants

and reaches a busy hand, motioning her across.
She steps far enough to make a small splash
with the heel of her flip-flop. Down the street
their see-saw bodies wave goodbye.
I walk a straight line to Savages, counting
the calories I saved watching them dance.

Consumer

He had been stacking dominoes for hours. For two hours he sat in his only chair and arranged black plastic rectangles in a circle, a pattern spiraling into itself. The lightbulb swung overhead. When he flicked a switch it would turn on. When he pressed the bulb it would sway. He cast a shadow on the sink and oven. He cast a shadow on the refrigerator. Inside the refrigerator was milk and cheese and juice and condiments. The dominoes did not move. He grabbed milk and a glass. The milk was full of lumps and chunks of milk. It was old milk. This made sense. He poured the glass and drank it. The lumps grazed over his teeth and under his tongue. The smell was worse. The cheese was green on the edges, soft and pliable in the center. He bit into the cheese and swallowed. The gap between his front teeth filled. The dominoes did not move. He poured orange juice into the same glass. The orange juice was fresh. He poured mustard and mayonnaise and relish into the glass and drank that too. These flavors were not complimentary. His stomach flared and gasped. It tried to make sense of its contents, and failed. He threw away the milk and cheese and condiments. The orange juice was still fresh. He vomited. The light reflected off the regurgitated rotten contents. He was on his knees when his elbow bumped the table. The dominoes began to fall. They came to lay flat in a circle, a pattern spiraling into itself. He stood up and saw the dominoes. The pattern was simple. He cleaned up the vomit. When he pressed a switch the light turned off. The bulb did not move.