you get in our dish, you better defend all your

self-righteous bullshit or we’ll slap you upside

the head with our soaked Depends

or strangle you with our catheters, or with a rope

braided of the weird hairs

now growing from strange places on our bodies–

ears, eyebrows, elbows, nipples–

and if that doesn’t work, we’ll tie you spread-eagled on

that desk of yours bigger than most of our kitchens

and beat on you with our colostomy bags

(and if we don’t have half the energy we did

in our youth,

refinement, I assure you, has tripled the efficiency

of its application

in whipping ass on soul-killing systems);

and if nothing else works we’ll call a General Strike

and then stage a massive occupation of your

headquarters’ suites

where we’ll make you listen to our every bodily woe,

how our hearts and livers are wearing out

and our patience already worn thin–

yes we’ll force you to listen to endless shifts of us

old farts

describe in interminable detail our rising bile levels,

EKGs, EEGs, CAT scans,

blood panels, liver function, ingrown toenails,

and every bowel movement for the last two weeks,

and generally bore you into madness unless you

change your ways.

Three Ways to Get the Carrot on the Stick

A sudden magnificent leap.

Eliminate hunger.

Break the stick.

Eurydice Ascending

She’d always been a sucker for musicians.

And Orpheus was magnificent:

his songs had enchanted

both birds and arrows from the sky.

But like all of them

he was a child.

The eager need, the boyish charm,

the endless innocence of his singing.

He moved her, yes,

he was sweet, playful, attentive, there;

but he didn’t take her away.

Hades was different.

He didn’t confuse

his power with the power

of her surrender.

He held nothing back,

not even his fear,

and everything that wasn’t answered

in the one flesh of their body

was obliterated.

When Orpheus came down for her,

silencing the underworld

with his desolate song,

Hades listened, and was moved.

He had no honorable choice

except to permit her return,

but he wisely made provision:

Orpheus couldn’t look back.

She knew he would.

He was a poet, probably

already writing his triumph in his head.

She knew he would

if he heard her weeping,

and as she followed him up toward the light of the world

she began crying softly.

Orpheus stopped,

his hair crowned in the honeyed light spilling from above,

and for a long time stared straight ahead

before he turned.

It was the first time she could remember

he didn’t say anything. Not a word.

Just nodded, looking sad,

a flicker of pout,

then, as she faded, turned

and continued his journey,

or whatever that dream-babble song was

he believed was his journey.

The Drought of ’76

Lungworm and pig shit,

heat-shimmered tin,

steel ringing on steel,

musk of deer flesh,

sweet rot of apples,

peeled paint, peeled skin,