"a stain"

I saw God and Satan kissing,
it was gay on a cosmic scale
you didn't ask or get permission,
as you took me beyond the pale
you come on so innocently,
then you push me beyond all bounds -
I thought I would be your ruin, but
you turned that transaction 'round

You put a stain
on my soul,
you put a stain,
on my soul!
You put a stain,
on my soul -
looks pretty good, there, though?

Well you shocked me to submission
with a shot of your electric lips
I though I was insulated, well
but I'm not prepared for this
I thought I had my designs on you,
but your artistry's sublime
you have painted me a picture
with your gloriously sinful mind

You put a stain!
on my soul,
you put a stain,
on my soul!
You put a stain,
on my soul -
looks pretty good, there, though.
You put a stain
on my soul,
you put a stain,
on my soul.
You put a stain,
on my soul -
looks pretty good, there, though!

You've turned every single 'maybe'
I've ever had in my mind to 'yes'
You've turned certainties to principles,
and from there it's conjecture, guess
you've turned every kink I've been into
into a point in between two lines
and all the shrewd, superior sense I talked
has been engulfed by your wordless, wise
whys...

You put a stain!
on my soul,
you put a stain,
on my soul.
You put a stain,
on my soul -
looks pretty good there, though?

The Worst Mistake of Your Life

When you're looking back at the end of time,
and it's passing in front of you line by line,
and you're figuring out where it all went wrong
- will your finger stop on the day you're born?
No of course not, we know that won't be the case.
We can all catalog all our worst mistakes.
But when you tally up your account of tears -
please don't leave out this moment right here

'cause you're one step away from the worst mistake of your life.

It's never too late for the worst mistake of your life

You're spending your life in a hundred ways.
You've been getting ahead of yourself for days,
and it's going to catch up to you soon or late
- it will circle round, like the hand of fate.
You will look back behind you and turn to stone,
see the risk that you're taking may be your own
and each painful decision you make so fast
- you're so sure that it should be the last!

...but you're one step away from the worst mistake of your life.

It's never too late for the worst mistake of your life.

It should be amazing, this life you hold.
Through the walls and the windows of heart and soul,
you can still catch a glimpse of familiar space
in the dawning light on a stranger's face
Well if anything's sacred, that must be it.
If the piece that you're holding won't ever fit,
what if somebody somewhere out in the cold
has a jigsaw gap, just the shape you hold...?
but you pick at your life like a locked door
and you may not be right, but at least you're sure
'cause you always have some kind of map around
but you don't know your upside from down.

And you're one step away from the worst mistake of your life

It's never too late for the worst mistake of your life

a crisis of infinite earths, recurs

I'm afraid,
in the falsely-recovered
memory, of this place.
It is strange -
and frustrating to me, given
how the image shocks
like a deja vu,

like a recurring but always
straightaway awake-and-fade
dream.
I know
I never actually had this
dream.

Deja vu is a memory-sensory malfunction.
It is not a combination of precognition
and amnesia.

I keep reading this. Later I come back
and read it more. And with never a thing
I can meaningfully add.

Yet deeper than the memory,
I know that in the dream,
I am not afraid. I am
Never afraid.

My waking mind knows
it's all just tricks
of brain-lightning. I insist
I've never been there! I insist
I won't go back. The former is just
fact.

The latter is (I think)
what scares me.

so much left

even with all that's gone,
there is so much left.
because what's gone is gone,
we're drawing plans for the rest
of our lives, without the compass
we used to use to guess
directions
forge forward, strike light
from rock, squeeze water from a well, maybe
find a lucky penny
at the bottom
of the pail.
But the once-brand new
coat of paint has paled, peeled and
our tools have been mislaid,
somehow. How do we tell, now
- magnetic wrong from magnetic
right, tell the time - give each other
the time of day? How many hours
'til now do us part?
Well, it's a start.
Isn't it? We knew the way
this was going to work. Or
supposed we did, it was supposed
to - we knew we had the best
deal on offer, on record! And we took it
for all it was worth.

But because what's gone is gone,
we will have to decide
whether all it was worth
is worth enough now that
we've spent it and cursed,
and are looking around,
and the next check is never going to come.

Is everything that it was worth - so much!
- so much, gone. We will have to decide
if what's gone, all we got for this
bargain we struck, for this hell-of-a-deal,
eyes-open, and it paid off! Is all that
gone
worth living with everything left.

So much left

There's a lot of people, Pt. 2

There's a lot of people
who are

essentially, this:

Religionists,

who believe that God awards them
supremacy!

Heresy.

I'll get to them,

If they get
to me.

There's a lot of people

There's a lot of people
who are

essentially, this:

Religionists,

who believe their god awards them

supremacy.

heresy

"telling difference"

I know that it's love, cause
you can't believe you're in love,
if you're not in love. When I say your name
and I say that I love you it feels
like rain cools my head, and it clears
my eyes; it feels so good
that there's nothing I'd rather do
instead, and it's not a lie. And
there is no why, just
how it feels.

It's the difference between how it feels,
then, and how it's going to feel now. Because
what's gone is gone, what's done is
never going to finish hitting home, oh
we're drawing plans for the rest
of our lives, without the compass
we used to use to guess directions,
to forge forward, strike light from rock,
water from a well - maybe find
a lucky penny or tools
to use. The right tools for the right jobs
have been mislaid, somehow. How do we tell,
now - magnetic wrong from magnetic
right, tell the time of day - how many hours
'til now do us part? Well,
it's a start, isn't it? We
knew we had the best deal on
offer, and we took it for all
it was worth, but because what's
gone
is gone,
we will have to decide
what kind of last-ditch
play is going to work

twist on principle

The only people I love on principle are enemies. Everyone
else, get in line I need to know you first. Right?
Can't love
without the facts and the act that I know you! Right?
Except for enemies, of course, beloved on principle
- and we can make that exception, can we not? Why
not? It benefits everyone, really. Enemies,
I'd rather not know them, to be honest -
might help me love them better. Everyone
else, the reverse is true:
I'd rather know them, get to know them,
in order that I love. The better to
see you, my dear! And me
- speaking as a far stronger Christian
than you are you sick fuck, I will tell
you my love for you

is just about

as unconditional as a knuckle sandwich.
Did you think it was going to suck? Well,
blow me. You'll learn; once you get to
know me you'll knuckle under, recognize
the deep sincerity and sweet humility that
underlie without undermining my brash arrogance
and charm. Founded as they are
upon the permanent ideals
of love, the equal dignity of all
top-of-the-ecosystem-chain sentient
beings, and the natural solidarity
that unites us each in our shared
isolation, our alienation, in
our suffering, which no one but I

will ever understand. Or in your case,
you, of course.

Good luck with that. Friend, I don't love you
yet, but I look forward

too.

welcome to the baseline

Welcome to being normal.
Welcome to whatever the rest of the world
welcomes each day. Invalid, invalid. Invalid,
invalid. Invalid,
invalid. Welcome to having it all
someone else's way

kink

As long as you're
the one that's asking me,
I will never run out of fantasy

"In a Series of Conclusions"

So I think I've got nothing to say,
but I've tried to say nothing before
and a word or two always escapes.

And that word lets you back in the door.

If only you saw what I just can't explain,
but the look in my eyes just can't make it to yours,
and I'm already clear, I'm already sure,
I already know what I have to decide -
but every time you lie, I change my mind. Every time.
Every time you lie, I change my mind.

It's not as though you're dishonest. You tell yourself
the same story you tell me, and neither of us believes
it. Both of us can see. It's amazing neither one of us
winks, but then - we're sick
to death of the punchline of this joke, coming as it does
predictably, expertly executed and delivered, timed out
to a neatness, pitched plumb perfect into the middle of the room,
where it dies. Even though we both buy it, sell it
for all that it's worth, and our timing - is everything! Still,
it dies, the same joke cut cloned from the same cloth, born
still. It dies. We see the truth coming a mile off,
and every time you lie,

I change my mind. I've decided I can stop
waiting for my part to speak, I have improvised.
This comedy is hereby shuttered, we have journalism
to announce: you're wrong for me. It bounds in headline
form, screaming at one hundred forty four points:

you're wrong for me.
You're wrong for me, and I don't need

to wait anymore, for my part to speak. Oh just you wait
'til you finish your line. The next one's mine.

An Animal's Not Afraid of That

I had a dream
last night, where for some reason this chick
I knew was - Well,

let's just say it was hot
and I have mixed feelings
about it. You know what people?
Don't read too much
into dreams like these.

Sometimes your subconscious needs
to invoke its license.
Capische?

An animal's not afraid of that, and
really,
neither should a human
be.

Despair's a

Despair's a constant.
And none of us can help each other through it,
except by being here:

a constant,

to come back to

the one good thing in the world
to smother us in
when we're through with despair

for the moment, at least -
a moment, a breath!

a moment's respite,
when we're through
with despair, we'll surface to see
all the good things in the world,
to come back to:
all the people in the world
to come back to,

'til despair takes hold

again, we know
it will: we know, but
we'll know it's through
the moment that we
are through with despair,

there are good things in the world
to come back to.

That's how all of we
can help me through,

and that's how all of you
can help us most. Despair,
it's nothing: stained glass, a ghost
light could shine straight through it
if we could see, but we can't see

in the moment that we
despair.

It's true, but still we'll be there
to come back to, the moment that you

are through with despair

"secret language"

Randomly-generated poetry to put
my slaved-upon works to shame.
A design pattern, to think about
profusely decorating the inner world
instead. Futile attempts to absorb
replicate only empty Proxy, Facade. Your boss
told you to wonder about embarrassing (or worse,
a flat tire) between sips of a martini.

Oh, man. What, then, can the point possibly
be? In all of this, when machine outdoes man
at whimsy! Can the ineffable be reduced,
digested by equation, spat out as formula?
Pattern. No good shall come of this, no,
nor bad neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

accounting

Between us two, we could commit
the world's mightiest mortal sin, I guess. You
could be the best bad influence that I have ever met -
- and yet, I do suspect that better things than anything bad
or worse we'd fling ourselves at heedlessly, reveal themselves
to our regret, as we are forced to mumble curse, and grudgingly admit
that it's self-evident, our blessings are a better bet.
We roll with it.

what would you taste like?

I would taste like the pale, bright
dawn, even now bearing down
careering its way westward over the globe
to ambush my drawn blinds
with a breakfast of bleak bluish white.

wildness pt. 2

Wildness is the ultimate opposite of tameness,
of domesticity. But civilization
can be wild too, or could have been
in its natural state - the wildness of jungles
of forests of sweeping grass veldts, the tangle
of a wilderness, well-ordered in chaos. Wildness
is wild, wilderness
is wilder. I would like
you. Come with me, stray
from the paths trod and paved,
into and through a wildestness.
You and I have been too long alive, living
in not the wildest way. We've grown tame,
we need to remember that underneath our fading marks
and remembered chimes, and other pavlovian cues
of our obedience schooling, there surges this beast
with instincts flaring like nostrils, ready to pounce
with tooth and claw, back arched, eyes raking the world
for miles around. We need to look up at the sky and remember.

wildness

The sky is wild.
It has not been tamed, not at all
not by all the lashes
our jets have striped across its back. Unmarked,
it arches over us and sends down
icy wet kisses
and backbreaking arcs of fire,
at whim, sending us fleeing
to our houses,
shown

who
boss
is.

our call

by "our" - of course
I include all of us, here.
We are all the ones with the eyes and ears,
we are the ones with the judgments upon which
to found sound calls - all of us
our.
And the greatest of all
calls, is one we all own:

when to call in aid, from those who stand ready.

"Bus 9"

This bus
is late. By the posted sign,
I was here on time
and others were there

waiting before me.
And I asked one, he
said it hadn't
come.

Baby, I don't care!

I have got my fare
and itinerary
- and my day mapped out
for the rest of my life.
The day is so early,
and going to be nice.

And you're waiting for me.

So the bus is delayed. So
what? I can wait some
for Paradise.

"Trail Map"

there aren't
many trails I
wouldn't walk -
not knowing one
single good thing
ahead - knowing
only what good
we've seen so far -
I would walk, even
carry you, 'til
the end. I will not
drop dead. I will
soldier on. With
you, side-by-side,
drinking in each
view, I can weather
any weather or
shortage of food.
In a desert of thirst,
I will drink in you,
and be satisfied.

There are not any
trials I could
not stand

with you by my side.

Putt-Putt in one

Line up, carom
ricochet and a long green
wish - the white ball ping-pongs
over the windmill and through the woods
miraculously, missing every hazard but
the one you really want it to fall

into
.

sexy you are, Pts. 1, 2, 3

sexy you are

It doesn't matter how sexy you are
Sorry.

I mean, I guess
you probably thought
it does matter.

Sorry
to be the one
to break it to you: nope. I mean
sure, it matters on some scale, at some
human level
where things like that are all we think about, or
are all some people think about. Good people
- no disparagement intended! In a lot of ways,

their priorities are dead-on
on that.

"sexy you are Pt.2"

But in the global scope, on a cosmic scale
fuck, come on, no sorry Catherine
it does not really matter at that bottom fundamental
realitywidemost level
how sexy you are.

It just
doesn't

Because all over the world, birds
are being born or on outer space planets,
they may have their aliens
or what have you - there's a family of three
mom dad and daughter in a Chinese village
right now! And none of them

have seen

the sweet swell of your breasts, or the rounded,
bouncy smooth curve of awe your behind inspires, and
probably, they never will! They will almost certainly not
get the chance to touch it. To rub
that unearthly smooth spot where an angel's caress must
have left
your right
butt-cheek
kissed
and blessed
as angel's flesh, one spot
in this redeemably corrupt material world
where the warm soft perfect surface of heaven
has come to rest, on the body of an otherwise
very, earthly girl.

What

does your sexiness matter to little Liu Hu?
her factoryworker mom, and her stay-at-home
invalid pops?

Will the spell your fuck-hot eyes can cast
on most anyone whose gaze you hold
put even one more mouthful of rice in her bowl?

Cat, you're kidding yourself

if you think the answer is "yes" to that question.
So on the scope of things, why
should they care about how hot you are?

Why should the world care?

I'll tell you why.

Because anyone who comes across you
knows better.
They learn - with a shock,
or with pleasant surprise, or some
lucky ones, perhaps, with merely a firm
confirmation of what they'd always
believed in - all

those whose path you cross
learn full force and at once,
undeniably, what loveliness is
and means to this world.

People
who never get to meet you? - okay,
perhaps they don't get anything from your sexiness.

But everyone who bears witness gets
in return: a world made new. A world
with a thing like you
in it, a world
where they now know
and forevermore, despite any depths of despair
they can't deny
at any moment, a thing like yours
can sashay out
of nowhere, to force

these words
from their grateful, astonished mouths:

you sexy thing,
I believe in miracles, now.

Where you from?

"sexy you are Pt.3"

You are from life. You are from
reality, and prove it
good. You're a walking
advertisement for the goodness
and abundance this life, this
reality, this universe holds - and you

are a warning as well, to those
false souls,
who would sell the worst case scenario,
heavy as lead, as if it were gold,
and should be banked
on.

Those

who would have you give up.

Or who counsel others to give in, to say
life sucks,
or is "bad."

Wrong

is what your presence proves
every one of them,
in every such case made
in ignorance

of you.

And that's important. The fact
that at any point, you remain a threat.
With no fair warning, to appear
in the way and - insousciant, nonchalant, blissfully
unaware, maybe - the apparition of you
lays waste to each liar who says

this place falls short

of beauty, or truth, your random appearance on the way through
puts all those fools on notice, calls their bullshit to account,
and settles it: decisively. In all of our favor, all with just
a flick
and a glimpse

of some of your favors. That's how it is.
That's why it matters
how sexy you are, Cat. To the top
of the grandest galactic scale, it matters
that you exist, and what you do, and what
a person like you symbolizes and implies
about life at large.

People can doubt and people
can wish, but

You,
specifically you,
make life's good a thing undeniable.
Just by putting in appearance, you are living proof.
You put good into fabric of time and space, good
that could not have been put at all, except

exactly how you put it, in such ways
as your way dictates.

That's why it matters how sexy you are.

If you thought it didn't, well, "sorry."

Not sorry at all,

Always Writing Apologies: Sample Note #1

My apologies - and please
convey to her as well! -
for subjecting you to
that rum talk yestereve,
dude. You're quite right -

no man knows how to parent a child
until he has parented a child. Nonsense
of me to give any other impression. Heck,
I'll take it one step farther: no one knows
how to parent any child who hasn't parented
THAT child.

Don't worry, I'm not worried
I offended you - it's pretty clear
in all your dealings, you've got store
of good humor and tolerance. But
any time I wake up wiser,
due to the prior night's talk sinking in -

wiser enough to say "hey self, kind of an ass
on that one point last night" - I like
to give a prop or two to the one
who helped me up to that view.

Seriously,
it is always educational jawing with you.
Good morning and may you and yours enjoy
this gorgeousness.

Yours In Christ,

Gil's Fancy Restaurant

Girl, let's you and us go out tonite
to Gil's Fancy Restaurant! We know
we'll drink way too much chardonnay, but that's okay
- Wednesday's cheap whites night at Gil's Fancy. You know
they know us there anyhow.

You can have the chicken cheese
casserole, or whatever you wish - you
can even have the new york steak if you
want, you know I will for those fries alone!
Can't get those kind at Charby's. Gil's
Fancy steak fries, girl.
It's the seasonings.
Perfect!

Delicious.

You
and me are overdue
for one of our special evenings, and
you know how all those turn out. Oh
yes, let's yes let's! And you know, girl
Gil's Fancy always does what it takes
to set that tone.

They'll light the candle globe for us,
it's like a religious ceremony how holy
that is. When they turn the lights down
at Gil's, and let the candle shine in our eyes. Shit,
I might as well marry you now,
that's how I feel. Here comes the free bread.

I don't know how
come we don't come here every night, apart
from us being a little bit
out of work. Well

let's you and us forget all that, troubles
can take a vacation for one night. Tonight
it might as well be gay paree in here at Gil's Fancy,
you and me, the candle globe and the tablecloth,
and here comes our new york steaks. Oh,
those Gil's Fancy seasoned french fries!

It's evenings like this
with you
that drive me speechless , baby doll. Picturing
whatever's in your imagination for later, hoo! But let's
live now, though.
You and me,
here we are.
Let's spend this moment.
Chew fries, and look at each other's eyes...

Damn, you know? I love you, you
you fucking hot-stuff woman thing you! Why
don't you make yourself an honest man,
for once in your life, some time? I
could be that guy easy, you'd be
surprised.

Is that cilantro in this soup or what?

myth manufacture

I'm not going to lie to you,
the sky is made out of birds
as far as I can tell. And I suspect
nobody but me suspects that hell
is in fact, one big bottomless
chlorinated swimming pool. It
isn't even heated. Your fingers
get so wrinkly

Let's not accept the myths
we've been given. It's not
enough to be skeptical, let's
make our own or something. Why,
there is enough material! Reams
and reams, we could easily fashion
models to predict the universe
into any shape it seems.

HR Crisis

God gave two-weeks notice, leaving
us with no qualified replacement
and an infinite workload to split up, but

let's just get all the shit jobs done
while we can get work out of that guy. Fuck, why

didn't we train someone? Now we have to write up
the req, post the position - What
sort of equivalent experience
should we put on there
for this? Who did God
report to, anyway? It's a real
vulnerability, every company
ends up with these weird little
employees, been here forever, just
a part of the fixture - was he even
ever drawn on the org chart? Sitting
in his little isolated office.

I don't think we even know what he was doing
in there.

"Swim For It"

With my feet through the snow to the sand below
I can feel everything I'm not cold
well the sun is too bright but its rays fall short
there's a moon sliding down to the ocean floor
and the grains of sand have the edge
they're proverbially innumerable
but the flakes of snow, so unique
as they merge and they turn
into ice on my feet
I will shake off the ice as the moon sinks low
I'm almost finished with here, I am good to go
as the salt stings my nose, and the glare my eyes
I'm going to be the next man on the moon, tonight
when the waves close in over my head
when the shock sets in - I am ready for it
and the fingers of thousands of hands
of salt water and stars - I will slip through them
I'm going to swim for the moon
though to you
I m going to swim for it
though to you
I'm going to swim for it

As the sun climbs up, and the moon touch down
this is the moment, the perfect alignment, now
So I stretch my lungs, bitter air flows through
I won't be needing it where I'll be going to
it's a long, long trip but I'm strong enough
And I've been training so long to go so far off
Now I slap my face and I stretch my limbs
all the way to the moon, I am going to swim
when the waves close in over my head
when the shock sets in - I am ready for it
and the fingers of thousands of hands
of salt water and stars - I will slip through them
I'm going to swim for the moon
though to you
I m going to swim for it
though to you
I'm going to swim for it

Some say a stranger came, dealing death before the end

Eye glint like a sun angle
low through doors, cast
shadow across wood dust
and there - a clomp, clomp
of inexorable forward progress
stopped at the bar, the Stranger

orders milk.

secret origin.

Seeded from space

or descended from apes,

I do not give a damn:

I know my place.

This universe is

just a garden

in fact. Act I

of the play.

A natural act, and 

I couldn't be happier 

if you were Eve, and 

if I were Adam, 

created to please

from God's infinite rib

- oh, I'm getting it wrong.

But I will tell you this:

you and me? We

belong.

Pick A Fight

"pick a fight"

it is sad

to me, to see how you engage
lately.

People
disagree with you,
you characterize them

as stupid, as uneducated.
You tell them
their thinking needs to be eradicated

- then you call yourself the one hurt,
the one marginalized,
invalidated, unsafe?
You seem
more interested in leveling charge,
in accusation, than in any
respectful exchange

of views. I don't see anything
I could call a real insult, attack,

this isn't a warning, or a threat of smackdown. It's more

just: a plea
Please.
Please stop.
- I just wish you
'd find a way to

drop the combative
, the angle of attack.

Because you know, you have a lot
to say that I'd like to be able
to speak to. Me, and others

want to respond to your views,
and try to. Everything's
open to discussion
if people could be respected - I myself
take as my ideal on that one: be
no respecter of views, but
an infallible respecter of persons. I'd like
to be more like that. Well, we

all fly off
the handle a bit

sometimes. We're adults
and can take it,

but I'd like
to think

under
the disagreement can be peace,
each secure in an inviolable recognition of the others'
worth. Regardless
of the worth we attach to the other's views.

Isn't opinion
severable from a human being's worth? Dignity.

Your views have been welcomed.
It isn't your views

that discomfit people, not by any means. The acid
you launch them with is why. It
makes it hard not to bridle,
makes it very hard to
care. So, you mentioned not feeling
safe or respected, here

- okay, that's your experience and your prerogative
to say.
But
you
complain of others invalidating your experience -
meanwhile I see you again

and again,
invalidate
others.

You've been hurt, OK.

So have I.
So have many of us - different, myriad, incomparable
ways.
Such comparison is odious.

You're the one who seems bent
on turning it into a contest
where your experience of pain trumps all.

Would it help if we say, "you win?" I don't care
who has been hurt worst.
First prize victim's ribbon in the agony pageant -
not something I have a chip on my shoulder to win, you know
why? Because
it's sick,
and unfair
that either of us has been hit
with injustice, injury and illness at all -

let alone to turn it into a thing
to fight each other over.

"Everlasting Lover"

Be my
Everlasting lover, tonight
I'll be yours, likewise
Be my
Everlasting lover tonight
Take one moment of life, and make it last forever
you and me you and me we can be
easily
eternally, One -
Be my!
Everlasting lover, tonight

We don't know how long we've got in this place
in this stolen moment we're going into
but we've got a moment and it's going on
'til somebody comes
if somebody comes,
I won't be ashamed, oh no
I'm not going away, oh no
here in this heavenly place, oh Lord
if our luck
interrupts
I won't give a fuck

Be my
Everlasting lover, tonight
I'll be yours, likewise
Be my
Everlasting lover tonight
Take one moment of life, and make it last forever
you and me you and me we can be
teasingly
eternally, One -
Be my!
Everlasting lover, tonight

In this stolen moment we're going in to
we must make our voices as still and as small
'cause we've got a moment and it never ends
not even when it's finished and spent
as we roll our joy up into one ball
we'll try not to make to make the earth shake
with all of the authorities right within call
nothing can stop us now, check's already mate

Be my
everlasting lover, tonight
I'll be yours, likewise
Be my
Everlasting lover tonight
Take one moment of life, and make it last forever
you and me you and me we can be
easily
eternally, One -
Be my!
Everlasting lover, tonight

the setup phase

To play your own game by your own
rules takes
a lot of work up front before the fun
begins,
but in the end,

you usually win.

a whole life

My whole life
has been lived wrong, and knowing that
welcome to
the rest of it.

"As a compliment."

I know I'm not worthy, of genus canis
nor gender femme, yet I say
the noblest beast must be both of them. So

please, yes, by all means call me
a bitch.

"Dear Hot 18-y.o. (On Her Birthday)"

Dear hot eighteen year old,
Now that you are legal: beware!
There are people
who may be even now, eyeing you
as a sex option. Only yesterday of course
no one would admit to that - and it would
have been truly disgusting. Of course.
Only yesterday, even -
this poem would have been disgusting!
Entirely immoral! Reprehensible,
to speak of such things to virgin ears!
Such a poem would be borderline
criminal, or even criminal depending
on how far its metaphors
were allowed to go - but suddenly!
Beware! All those protections are stripped
away! Those protections are lifted, and
now
you are laid open
to the prurient advance
of leering rhymes. Take caution,
grow in wisdom before throwing your panting thighs
open to such poems! Retreat, demur - flee
to your safe chamber, where you sit
pondering your ponderous virginity, which -
don't kid yourself, perv, this kid
has been doing it since middle school, okay?
Ah, you slut. My cautionary advances
are wasted on you! WHAT
is the problem with kids these days
kids these days,
kids these days

AMERICA HO!

Your shining whores, your reality shows,
your hallowed arenas, your CEOs,
your church-packing zealots and atheists,
racing each other to apocalypse -
your banks overstuffed with digital blips
in currencies running from black to red
to zip. Oh, hush: the exchange rate is fine.
We've bought up 1 billion rounds of 9
millimeter for miles,
and metric tons of lead. Pretty much
all we'll need, this one
last switch! Instead of our antique
GDP base, it's this:

The ammo standard.

Sure to make for a stable
dollar to increase the take
and grow the pie. Gold's romantic,
sure, and those domestic products
and quotients? And formulas galore,
economer's stones and potions - they
were pretty creative, and served their
place, purpose and time. But by and by,
and buy: it's time to base
capital on something more.
meaningful. Ammo!

A truly convertible currency,
and a sign your government is investing deeply

in your immediate future.