The Best Salesman On Earth

         He knew they wouldn’t want to be publicly embarrassed
         After he sold them a tower in Paris
         They desperately needed to have waterworks installed
         And he casually sold them Niagara Falls
         With the infinite grace of one destined from birth
         To be the best salesman on earth

         He appeared in commercials knowing just how they yearned
         To wage war on obesity and crucify heartburn
         And needed their curiosities piqued
         While reality television was voting off the weak
         That their hunger for something exhilarating and free
         Could be sated with cold beer and pizza delivery
         Thanks to the best salesman on earth,
         They could just stay home and take on girth

         He scurried away to his palatial retreat
         And the servants who waited to anoint his feet
         And while regular people were taking for granted
         He was slowly but surely acquiring this planet
         That’s how much his hide was worth,

         As the best salesman on earth.

Long Day, Hot Shower

Today I was muted by the infinitely surd.

Today I sat motionless and couldn’t say a word.

Today was another gray, planetary herd.

Today I’d rather be a migratory bird.

Today I slaved at the construction site.

Today I created another good fight.

Today I accepted the dying of the light.

Today I don’t know wrong from right.

Today I came home with cauterized wounds,

Only to be deafened by a deluge of sound.

Hot water hit me and lifted this doom.

Déjà vu, a pattern of distorted womb dreams,

Freed my soul,

And enabled me to grow wings.

Big Trampoline

            I miss our sundays at the park by the lake

            With the motherly banyans in more than one place

            The indigenous palms that could bend and not break

            And the ones that had trunks like papiermâché

            It would come unglued when they started to flake

            And the baby manatees that swam there by mistake 

            Swimming right up to the sad little shoreline of clay

            Considering their options and then swimming away

            Afraid of the tangled ladies laying in wait

            They were just some old mangroves, and nothing to hate

            I miss these beauties like the leaves and their sway

            And the people who lived there like humorless gods

            I don’t miss them or their shimmering façades

            The towering fortresses that kept us at odds

            Purveyors of solitude, a circle of frauds

           

            They decided that the trees were obstructing their view

            So through much litigation and reddening hues

            They changed how the word “preservation” was used

            The bulldozers came and made everything new

            I hate new things when the motives aren’t true

            So the next time we have our sundays together

            We should go back to the park where the beauties were gathered

            And return something old to the glistening water

            And honor the ghosts of arboreal mothers

            We’ll fly in the face of the powers unseen

            And then we’ll make love on their big trampoline