Linger for hours
in swelter and sweat.
Minute to minute,
how much can I stand?
I talk to myself nonstop.
Long drives bring
the cheerleader out in me:
Another hundred, fifty,
twenty-five. Ten, five,
rest stop. Stuck to the seat,
find myself

peeled.  Pisscall,
hot dog. Then,
two hundred,
hunnert-seventy-five…

end in sight? Not in sight:
in scent.  Ocean, oil,
bed in the mix. 

Driving’s about 
tension on a rope
pulled from home.
Love that burn
on my hands from the wheel.
Love that cooling off
once I get out.
Love how I long
for it to return
once I stop.

Insisting you’re a fish
when you stand here on two legs
not
breathing water: listen,
you’re no fish
just because
you jumped into the pool and
you can swim.

In the water
you’re smooth and
shiny.  Swim long ways
under and above.  
We might see that and say
“hey, she’s a fish!” because
we abhor speaking
without comparisons
to ease the talking —

but,
you’re still not a fish.
You don’t know how
to breathe underwater

without drowning.
You can’t swim all the time
surrounded by fishhooks
and harpoons and
fish-hazards we don’t even know.
Don’t know how lovely
gills feel against
your body.  Don’t know
self-fin care.  Don’t understand
milt,
or nests scooped in the bottom.

If you come up on shore
and say,
“I’m a fish, love me
as fish, take me as fish,”

what are we supposed to do —
toss worms? put in 
a line? get you a plastic castle
to live in? No.
Most of us are gonna turn around
and say,

“that’s not a fish.
I know a fish when I see one,”

until (maybe)
you start flopping on the ground
and start drowning in dry air.

Even then, we’ll more likely
say something
about the power
of self-delusion.  Say,

“something smells
fishy here —

no, wait, that’s not it.”

This damn job.
Swear sometimes,
I got a life
like a porno —

perfunctory talk
till the tired obvious
mechanical stuff
takes over. 

Bad soundtrack too,
most of the time.
It’s not like music
as much as it is like

cheap hotel wallpaper.
(And now we’re back
to the boom-chicka wow
action.)

It’s supposed to be 
ecstatic, but
it’s only a 
simulation —

look at us all,
golems hard
at work screwing
and getting screwed.

If I’d half a brain
or a whole heart,
I’d get out and take
a new job — maybe

delivering pizzas 
or cleaning pools.
Something like that.
An honest living

without expectations.
Something clean
for my hands to do.
Something

with a future
that promises
real things.  Yes.
(Boom chicka wow.)

“Every house is a missionary. I don’t build a house without seeing the end of the present social order.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

Each stone a prayer. 
Each beam a hymn.
All the windows, all the glass
stained and unstained
framing rebel scriptures. 

The table in the foyer
holds the tabernacle.
The doors, the moveable walls
of sacristy and nave.

When footsteps
echo in the long hall upstairs,
angels imagine their wings
have unfurled.  Then,

their wings do indeed open
as the kitchen rings with 
sounds of feast.

Outside
the world’s 
functional, 
barely —
inside, 
the palm of paradise
presses the carpets into place,
smooths the tablecloths,
makes straight the way.

If the world is to fail
before it reforms,
let it come through the door
as a beggar
and be reborn
on the warm wooden floors.