MOMMY HARANGUES POOR RANDAL
Money is self-comprehending,
take a hard look in the mirror,
your brow is brutal, your teeth are for meat,
your eyes are globes and hunched beneath them
is my ghost who blinks them shut, who pulls out
your tears, I’m finished. We’re finished.
Go outside and play, but if you come
knocking on my door when you’re done
don’t be surprised if I say Who’s there?
And if you keep pushing, and dare
name yourself here’s a warning—
they call it a punch line because I punch you
in the fucking face if you step over the line.
TO RANDAL, CROW-STEALER, LORD OF THE GREENHOUSE
I master the technology to make bricks.
I build altars clumped with fire.
I am not afraid to light
a flower and destroy her beauty;
the crispy flower has been taken to a godly feast.
Do you pity my imagination? It will kill you.
My mother will kill you.
She is my imagination.
I am a leather horse, and my mother is riding me.
You are a man: alert, passionate.
You sit in an almond of glossy hair.
You are capable of being persuaded by fine argument.
You even smile eagerly when you’re convinced.
Remember what a great time we had in the first stanza?
and now this: me blubbering to mommy
over your brilliance.
Tell me what it’s like to be you. Well Max,
imagine if you stayed
by your bricks after your sacrifice
until your body warmed them.
It’s called being indoors, and it’s a good first step.
I’d die of thirst!
Imagine prying fingers through the bricks,
making tunnels your mind first saw as ghosts.
Imagine pressing your lips to the pipes
and sipping dew from the outside.
You are exquisitely sensitive.
I imagine defecating over your eyebrows: a unibrow.
And what about my godly flower? You still haven’t accounted for that!
I inhale the flower’s smoke, and it allows me to control every inch of my body,
and a little man emerges: this is called being possessed.
I dance out here, trouserless on the salt-flat, dazzled by hail,
because every gesture perfects my body
into the little man’s happy home.
You have no flowers in your indoor dark, fireless Randal!
Max, I have invented glass, through which the sun may light my flowers.
One of these days you’ll be stable enough to make a woman happy,
and that will go a long way.
*
The secret to making people happy, Randal,
I call at your departing, shiny suit,
is that I am the people!
