Don’t you wish you could plane away

your ass, your thighs, half your nose,

until you looked right?

And people who don’t get your jokes

or literary references, I mean

when you deliver the perfect line

from A Streetcar Named Desire

that absolutely fits the occasion

and your companion only looks

at you blankly—you want

to strangle him, don’t you?

Just take his tie—

people who wear ties

deserve what they get—

and loop it around his neck

the way a junkie takes a thin

rubber tube and squeezes it

around the arm so the veins pop?

Can’t we rid ourselves of junkies

while we’re at it, shoot them full

of that contaminated heroin from Mexico

that eats through flesh?

All the blacks and Italians, the Asians

and natural blondes,

wouldn’t it be better to round them up

and ship them all someplace

like Texas and surround them

with a big electric fence,

and don’t try to tell me that a redwood

or a zygote or a lever-pulling monkey

in a lab is more important

than a human being, because then

I’m going to want to fuck you up really bad.

Reckless freeway drivers, I know

we’re on the same page there.

Lane-changers, tailgaters, swervy

Indy 500 wanna-bes, they should just

be lined up and shot, execution-style.

And speaking of executions. How many

have there been lately? Not nearly enough.

We’ve got problems in this country I tell you.

If thy right eye offend thee

you know what to do.

And thy left eye, too.

Chicken

CHICKEN

Why did she cross the road?

She should have stayed in her little cage,

shat upon by her sisters above her,

shitting on her sisters below her.

God knows how she got out.

God sees everything. God has his eye

on the chicken, making her break

like the convict headed for the river,

sloshing his way through the water

to throw off the dogs, raising

his arms to starlight to praise

whatever isn’t locked in a cell.

He’ll make it to a farmhouse

where kind people will feed him.

They’ll bring green beans and bread,

home-brewed hops. They’ll bring

the chicken the farmer found

by the side of the road, dazed

from being clipped by a pickup,

whose delicate brain stem

he snapped with a twist,

whose asshole his wife stuffed

with rosemary and a lemon wedge.

Everything has its fate,

but only God knows what that is.

The spirit of the chicken will enter the convict.

Sometimes, in his boxy apartment,

listening to his neighbors above him,

annoying his neighbors below him,

he’ll feel a terrible hunger

and an overwhelming urge

to jab his head at the television over and over.

Missing Boy Blues

MISSING BOY BLUES

I’m lying in a field, hope you find me pretty soon.

Lying in a field, hope you find me pretty soon.