Three Poems

One holds one or one holds none, however you suss out meaning. There is a lone albatross circling the parking lot. Again I find myself in the kitchen holding my stomach in disgust, ignoring the want echoing up from deep.  Is lust greater than hunger?                                  I don’t want to know. I often find myself saying that all I want is to be seen, to be held, stellated in a pretty mirror, or whatever mirror I can afford. Outside my window oil derricks bob erotically, ceaselessly. There is banging on the walls but I am alone. Closed.

Again the rumble. Never any regard for my sidereal wants. My refrigerator asks for impossible things, to be filled and then shut, like a pelican’s bill, or mitral valve; to have enough energy to burn away the darkness when saying hello. And still I am grumbling from the bedroom, teething cigarettes and spreading the last crumbs on the sheets with palmless hands. Dogs bark at no one, neighbors go unseen, these tireless bellyaches continue. Still I pilot this scow of trash through late capitalism, sallying forth, in search of an antagonist to color my books white, give meaning to my suffering. Am I that different from you? Is it wrong to want enough bread for fingers to tread on? A woman who hits me—writes me missives on stationery crowned with rosettes of blood? Is this too much to ask? All I want is to have enough to want more, more than attendant needs, condiment sandwiches. To not be gulled by the chyrons scrolling across my windows. Again I return to grievance, as if the powers that govern my life ask for justification. Heavy is the gut that eats the crown. All this privilege squandered on a vista of paint boiling on tar. There is much I elide, but I am too hungry, and we are tragically hurtling towards the future. Do any of these seabirds mean anything? Do I? Do you? I don’t want to know. I just want to be held, seen. The tired gull finally descends, alights on a­ lamppost, a sea of asphalt abound. Pumpjacks thrust deep into night. The neon flickers:                                                                                                                  OPEN