Michael Robbins

By the sparklet of certain ciliates cesium practices its cricket song. Am I supposed to be impressed? My smoothie comes with gps . Take a left at that crustacean. You—yes, you, with the crisis Isis eyes. By Odin’s beard, this is snowier than usual. We can always burn the first folio. Go bug a dandelion. You’ll have the elephant of surprise.

I will pull an airplane with my teeth and I will pull an airplane with my hair. I write about cats. Cats, when you read this, write about me. Be the change you want to see. I’ve legally changed my name to Whites Only. Changed it back, I should say. DO NOT  TRY THIS AT HOME made me the man I am today. That, and the University of  Phoenix. Old man, take a look at my life. Charles Simic, in the gloaming, with a roach, take a look at my life. I’m a lot like you. A man stands up and says I will catch a bullet in my teeth!That’s incredible! He eats a sword, hilt first, and spits up a million people persons. A dolphin pulls an airplane with its blowhole and keeps the black box for itself. Bottleneck dolphins don’t even have bones, yet here we are, giving them medals ... This is my ass. And that is a hole in ground zero. I know which is which. It’s the one with the smoke pouring out. This is my handle; this is my spout.

I got a letter from the government. It said let there be night. I went through your trash. There was night, all right. I consider how your light is spent. I have butterflies a little bit. I have some pills I take for it. I’ve been up since four the day before. Agony’s a cinch to sham. Don’t worry about the environment. Let it kill us if  it can. I give a tiny tinker’s damn. I put the ox behind the cart. Consume away my snow-blind heart. Fastened to a service animal it is waiting for the beep. It is waiting for the right to change. Hello, I know you’re there, pick up.

After the first sex, there is no other. I stick my gender in a blender and click send. Voilà! Your new ex-girlfriend. You cuckold me with your husband. I move a box with Ludacris. The captain turns on, we begin our descent. Be gentle with me, I’m new to this. I say the wrong thing. I have OCD. My obsessive compulsions are disorderly. I say the wrong thing, did I already say? I drive my dominatrix away. The coyote drives her in a false-bottomed van. He drops her in the desert. The bluffs are tan. She’ll get a job at Chili’s picking up butts. I feel ya, Ophelia, I say to my nuts. And there is pansies. That’s for thoughts.

Half of the Beatles have fallen and half are yet to fall. Keith Moon has set. Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet. Children sing for Alex Chilton. Whitney Houston’s left the Hilton. Hendrix, Guru, Bonham, Janis. They have a tendency to vanish. Bolan, Bell, and Boon by car. How I wonder where they are. Hell is now Jeff Hanneman’s. Adam Yauch and three Ramones. [This space held in reserve for Zimmerman and Osterberg, for Bruce and Neil and Keith, that sere and yellow leaf.] Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, Stinson, Sterling, Otis Redding. Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer, Ronnie Dio, Donna Summer. Randy Rhoads and Kurt Cobain, Patsy Cline and Ronnie Lane. Poly Styrene, Teena Marie. Timor mortis conturbat me.

I act like I know it all. But you, you act like you know it all. We can’t both be wrong. Still, neither of us should have children. Your head’s in a sack. In a sack with a snake with two heads. And my head is even older than our initial calculations implied. I know many names for sitting cross-legged, none for never getting up again. You, you speak as if you just checked, but it’s not even up to you. Fox pulls a rabbit out of a duck and keeps the wound-up hounds upwind. Hedgehog carries one trick around like a small booth atop an elephant. And both of us, elephant and booth, carry from birth what can’t be cast off by dying. How can we corrupt the young? The young don’t even know we exist.

The moon is my alibi. My tenders throw hissy fits. My scalp’s at the foot of the precipice. My lume is spento, there’s a creep in my cellar. You can stand under my umbrella, Ella. Who put pubic hair on my headphones? Who put the ram in Ramallah? I’m just sitting here spinning my spinning wheels— where are the snow tires of tomorrow? The llama is burning! My heart is an ovary! Let’s chase dawn’s tail across state lines, sing “Crimson and Clover” over and overy, till wonders are taken for road signs. My fish, fast and loose, shoot fish in a kettle. The boys like the girls who like heavy metal. On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom, on Motörhead, Leppard, and Zeppelin, and Mayhem . . .

You had a woodchuck and an opium ball. The one ate through the furniture, the other sat in its cage depressing me. Now the woodchuck sheds its skin. I have a cow behind the Dollar Bin. You shouldn’t drink diarrhea unless you bring enough for everybody. Turn it into a teaching moment. Asian-American Students for Christ have the room until 2:30. Rumi says no donkey is a virgin, no, nor any beast that bites the grass. Maybe it sounds better in Persian. An unseen force propels the carts across the Whole Foods parking lot. The woodchuck hasn’t been born yet I’d rather keep than you as a pet. You’ll sleep on wood shavings, I’ll comb your pelt. That animal loved you, his captor, whom he hated. I know just how he felt.

Fiddle no further, Führer. Rome is built. It took all day. Now let us so love the world. I’m just thinking out loud. My stigmata bring out my eyes. The smallpox uses every part of  the blanket, and the forest is a lady’s purse. The Indian is a pink Chihuahua peeking his head from the designer zipper. Out here it’s mostly light from the fifteenth century slamming into the planet. I can’t see the forest for the burn unit. All the planet does is bitch bitch bitch. I know it’s last minute but could you put out my eyes? At the subatomic level, helmeted gods help themselves to gold. Up here? The body’s an isolation ward.

I took back the night. Wrested it from the Chinese, many of  whom were shorter than me. Two billion outstretched Chinese hands, give or take a few thousand amputees. A cheap knockoff, the night proved to be —Nokla not Nokia on the touchscreen. Well, even Old Peng gotta eat, Confucius say. Or maybe that was Cassius Clay. In me, folks, a movable object meets a resistible force. I haven’t worked a day since the accident of   birth. Born of  woman, my father the same. Make love then war. I’ll bring round the car. These children that I spit on are immune to my consultations. I’ll have none myself. It isn’t (Write it!) a fiasco. I am small, I contain platitudes.