Coxcomb

Image is a game we play, and too often, we gladly allow ourselves to be played as fools.

Paper television

i.
Men in their pressed three-piece suits
sprinting like gazelles in the moist wet heat,
tearing at their ties, their vests,
their gold-plated watch chains rattling in the wind.

ii.
I would like to offer you sanctuary
against the tempest.
Only it is tainted by this salt-splattered weather.

iii.
The problem of parity.
Products and brands in a basket
that are similar in defect.
Would you buy a bird in a cage
that is lost if it were set free?

iv.
Angry voices in a bottlenecked crowd.
A lone woman pounding the gravel
with a floral piece, selling dreams
a penny a piece.

v.
The wild-haired woman from Queens
has decided to barcode her heart,
market it at Walmart.
“Love Fool For Sale”,
the sales pitch read.
All she does is sit by the aisle,
contemplating her cellphone,
reorchestrating the shrill of its preset tone
over and over, from the panic rooms in her head.

vi.
Moving the needle to the left of the decimal.
Not by tenths, or fractions,
but by exponential lengths. One’s, Two’s, Three’s.

vii.
When in doubt, laugh it off.
Pretend that pain is rolling off the veins
like raindrops off oilsilk. Or moisture off shampoo.

viii.
I would like to offer you sanctuary,
but it is already stained by fears.
Can you hear the c-r-a-ccck of a breaking heart,
functioning still by the functions of Krazy Glue?
Sprinkling glitter was a spurious second thought.

ix
Either/or is a choiceless choice
strung on the equidistant lattices
of a unwelcomed triangle. Easy peasy
like the hypnoptic whirl of a yo-yo.
No one catches the debilitating catch
of friction as it wears away the axis
from downswing to upswing.

x.
The bossa nova beat
stirs like a fledgling seedling,
trying to raise the bar.
Anything is a free-for-all,
just as long as the bill is chargeable to regret.