Elevator music
The sound of what’s wrong

In small rooms rising and falling
The sound of what’s wrong

In offices 
The sound of what’s wrong

These songs used to be actual songs
Now they’re the sound of what’s wrong

(In the restrooms the workers come and go
humming along to fake Coolio)

Someone likely my age who likely looks like me
takes raw music and polishes the edges off

Puts together a soundtrack
made for maximum uplift

and boost to productivity
or to calm a jittery rider

(man who isn’t a jittery rider right now?)
Isn’t it lovely instead to hear

something soft and pointless
and harmless and clear

(while back in the toilet they come and go
pissing and pooping to something slow)

Sound of something wrong
made comfortable so you don’t have to be 

uncomfortable
rising from street level to penthouse

or falling slowly but certainly
from penthouse to street level

What instruments are being played
Why is no one ever singing

These used to be real songs
They contained real people

Used to be sung now and then at least
Sometimes conveyed real feeling

(while in the hallways the sleepers come and go
stumbling along to Curtis Blow)

Elevator music
the sound of something wrong

No one knows anything about it
Songs used to be

full of fire and bad notes and grit
but in the elevator or the doctor’s chair

we don’t have a second thought 
we lie back and take it

and later we fall from on high
to watered down Clash on invisible speakers

and are not the least bit ashamed
It’s the sound after all of everything wrong

and who would debate that 
everything is wrong

meet the new moss 
same as the old moss

growing on the gangster
paradigm

all we wanna do is have some fun
lost in the supermarket

forgetting the words
as we shop

and the streets that bore it all for us
fall to riot and killing

but thanks to elevator music
we never have to hear about that 

Section One:

In a single essay, explain 
intersectional oppression.
Include the following terms:

a dugout of blood. 
a pitted bone.
a shop of rape. 
a sharpened stone.

Section Two:

If you turn out to be 
a scapegoat,
will you survive
your turn in the wilderness?

Show your work.

Section Three:

What five words
ought to be erased or respelled
in order to lift their magic?  

Defend your choices
without attacking others.

Section Four:

A piece of history
is sticking out of your eye.
Define the process
for removing it.  

Section Five:

Is there any room
for mercy in the new world
that has not already been shown
in the present one?

This world is going to end,
but first will come more rainbows.

The terrible beauty of supervolcanoes
when viewed from space
will likely look like an erupting field
of red and gray poppies.

The best and most startling
sunshine yellow in nature
is found in the dank moist center
of a slime mold.

Enough, enough,
modern prattlers,
supported by your self-referential peers
with affirmation alone
and negation alone;

enough with positivity
and abundance meditation,

enough with pessimistic messiahs
and apocalyptic vision.

Instead, balance your opinion
of the world
on the edge of this well-worn
dagger.

It’s a skilled cutler’s delight,
art made for killing
by someone who
could wring such perfect steel
from earth
and fire,
you just know
he had to be in love
with living
if he could put
such care
into creating this.

My face startles me
as I pass a storefront.

That shadow self
in the window
looks smart as hell
when he’s indistinct.

I know better, of course,
than to listen to him,

trust him even less
when he’s in a mirror
across from me.

Bastard,
I say, I bet Dad
(whoever he was)
broke his own mirror
the first time he caught
a glimpse of that future me
in that image.
He saw the kind of son
he was likely to father,
and that’s why he ran.

You’re not so smart,
I tell my reflection.

It says
the same to me.

Maybe
it’s smarter than it looks,
but it can’t be by much.

So considerate!
He hangs my blue towel
on the correct nail.

We only tango
facing the wall,
our heads snapping about 
as we turn. 

I don’t like your sister watching us,
he says.
And your piano
is in need of tuning.

What I would not give
for a long drive with him
in an MG,

a red MG,
revving up, rolling out
over the long miles of country,

laughing at the signs:
no vacancy,
no vagrancy,

I’d go anywhere with him
though forensics are imminent
and may show soft crumbs of others 

on his knife.

This morning,
I salute the earth.

It should be with tambura,
horns, drums, finger cymbals,
and flutes, I know.
I have none of these.

It should be done with dancing:
heels never touching, a toe-tip reel
grounded but striving upward.
I’m afraid to move too much,
terrified of a last-straw-to-this-body tumble.

I can only do it
with nerve and 
a celebratory shiver
in my stiffening limbs.

I can only do it
with hard-found words
in the one language
I manage to speak.

I may only do it
once well,
and the earth may not catch it
except as a stirring
behind its global back,
once.  

Not to salute the earth
breaks a commandment
that was left out, 
perhaps on purpose,
from the Ten…unless
the one about parents
is supposed to include
this honoring of our source,
but most likely
was not meant that way
so, 

I add it.  New commandment:
“Salute this earth
with whatever you have.
Keep it holy as if every day
were a Sabbath.”  Perhaps
it is? Let us find out:

salute the earth in the morning 
every morning, and let’s see
what if anything
our customary God
does about it.

Him with his flattop cut,
bowtie on short sleeve shirt,
bad pants often plaid pants,
cheap shoes, pocket protector,
lived with his elderly mom
and drove her older Cadillac.  

Him coulda fallen
out of the typecasting folder
of a typecasting agent
but I knew him, he was real,
not at all a bad guy,
an accountant, one of the best,
loan you his money on your word
as to when you’d pay him back,
buy you lunch if you were strapped, 
hard to get started with
but once you were in with him
you were in.

Him unable to use a 
computer, him with his
paper, piles of it, boxes of it, 
him burrowing through
his paper to find fraud, waste,
nuggets of wrong; no one better
at it, all agreed, they handed him
every hard job, impossible error,
stubborn case.  But — 

him?  Him? Inflexible,
they charged.  Not versatile,
they whispered.  Too limited,
they agreed.

On his last day
he cried on my shoulder,
awkwardly, for all of 
ten or fifteen seconds.
He died 
within the year.

I heard a painter
railing against
nine-to-fivers,
a poet railing against 
nine-to-fivers, 
a musician shuddering
at having a nine-to-five
need-to-have, 
all variations of 

how can they go to work each day
and do that with no creativity
or room for play in a schedule?

I want to say,
you should have known him.  
Should have asked him.  
Should have
seen him cry to lose it,
should have
felt him die to not have it.
Should have
had him tell you
how he loved it, how it was like
mining, puzzling,
like a writer finding the pieces
to tell a story.

I want to say
art,
fucker,
is where you find it

and there are more places 
to look
than you, evidently,
have the imagination
to discover.

The Third
turns into the Fourth
over the course
of one dank
fireworked-up night

We the people
are getting
our tricolor freak on

eating after midnight
(shouldn’t be eating this late)

eating something we shouldn’t
(shouldn’t be eating this)

drinking some corporate poison
(shouldn’t be drinking that)

smoking something
(shouldn’t be smoking)

lighting firecrackers
(shouldn’t even have these) 

and thinking
(shouldn’t be thinking this)
it all might be more fun
with a couple of guns
one for dawn 
one to dream on 

On the Fourth Of July
we remember where
the shooting started
feel like we had a hand in it
and resent being ruled
by descendents
of the shooters

but instead of
thinking about it
too much
we stumble about
slightly paralyzed
by our lifestyles
but glad of the day off
and only vaguely troubled
by the Lone Ranger
patting Tonto’s head
while lifting his wallet
to use the cash 
to buy a second home
in Puerto Rico
while standing his ground
(six shooter in hand)
against the terrible increase
in the horrible number
of black teenagers