Take the questionnaire.
I have problems existing
the way you want
Council Bluffs.
An opera,
just what the world needs right now,
our post-traumatic show,
and I can’t do anything to stop you.
You’re the stupid muse.

Who’s to listen to?
I’m talkin’ storybook Earth.
Are you wrapped around the axle with it?
My God it’s got me by the balls.
I’m in Nithish’s pan.
Other than that I’m free.
You would not stage this.

I’m too honest for broad noon,
and I’ve got some big thoughts Earth don’t wanna look at,
I mean in your society room.
Have you ever seen an Earth poet?
You’re supposed to.
That’s what we’re all made of.
We’re speakin’ to all mankind.
Earth today,
we get mad at the word man,
but it farms poetry, you know?

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,
I’m in a limousine,
but let me get more Tennyson on yah
and Marilyn Monroe.
You think poetry’s got to have capital letters
and sing about verses and stuff.
Emily Dickinson would agree
poetry comes from the inner voice.
Slipped into you a mind swell
the beautiful rose of poetry,
even if it’s not a football field
of the huddle of verses
that high sound poetry to you.
I give you an inner lunch.

Okay we’ve brightened our books today.
I give you an inner sound,
tryin’ to find your head.
It’s all Madagascar.
Have I opened a movie on the showroom’s floor?
Train’s coimin’.
It’s all about them dice
watch your hedge podge in
where you put your blinders on.
Cute animals, eh?
And everybody’s longing to be free.

Be not normal men and women,
but reach above our kind
and show how it’s done,
ain’t that the anthem?
Movie after movie
of the greatest stories on Earth
get by our living room with this.
Would you believe they keep you in line,
even in your underwear?
Ask the surveillance movie Drop from start to ticket
or Seven Veils,
and I’m sorry I’m giving them credit,
but I can’t watch every movie in time
that littles us,
I mean like right now as we’re havin’ lunch.

So many lies are told
to manipulate your mind
and bring all the bad country to bad men
so demon they shine
with the impossibilities of human nature
taken to that degree.
They’re demon bad.
My mother sucked me when I was three,
and my step-mother terrorized my mind,
and I had to hide from her in the woods
until my father got home.
Teacher after teacher put me in the corner,
the kind that hate little boys all over the globe
for bein’ who they are,
and they had a score to settle with men.
Give a world this schoolin’,
and let’s see how she acts.
You can’t trust nobody.

Now I’ve got a little boy in the lurch
taken from me and reamed,
who grew up with me since he was five,
but I was there from birth
his daddy.
It makes you all nervous inside
that I’m speaking about him in this poem.
Exactly.
Can I show you the hurtin’ in the machine?
You think it’s child abuse
or a host of other ills,
men bad to women,
or a sudden and frank genocide,
or tumultuous war.
It’s our wrong seeing that causes harm,
how we bake bread
willfully and ignorantly
with the guardians of the universe resistant to change.

I love my little boy,
and that’s right and proper,
but I’m a White man and he’s a Tamil boy
in a red flag zone.
Surely his parents must be right
in beating him,
slapping him across the face,
not letting him go out of their sight
or surveillance system
or visit friends
so he will not contact me.
Do you know what this does to a child?
He doesn’t write poetry.
Now buy him anything he wants
and wine and dine him.
Surely he’ll stay on our side.

What’s the beef you reckon?
I made better miles with him,
and he preferred me to them.
It’s all in the menagerie.
Parents got rights over their children’s lives.
Just ask Child Welfare.
The mother gave them a bribe
and the police
and paid my lawyer more than I was paying him.
This is India and this stinks,
but who gives a damn?

Is anybody listenin’ to this poem?
I mean he’s got to go with us,
how you make a child today
serious
to produce that child
the staple of the machine.
Now let’s give ‘im bright airs
and promise him the moon
when he’s older
if he complies now.
Study hard kid.
Your worth is in those grades,
and your future depends on them,
and we will ignore your dyslexia by ignoring it,
you lazy little bastard.
We’re smart can’t you see?

Now what’s a boy worth?
I’ll tell you in this poem.
He wrote some miracles
that transcend time,
all in anticipation of being taken from me.
His parents hate those poems
and don’t let ‘im read ‘em.
I’ve put ‘em out in a blog
I’m addin’ to now.
A few more posts and it’s complete,
the body of his work now.

Now this has been shut off,
squeezed out of him
in a parental vice par none.
You like that?
That’s okay with you?
Who the hell are you anyway,
ordinary people?
I heard you.
The Indian consulate the Indian dear,
kick ‘em
to give this boy what he needs.
For fruit to work
tell ‘em read this boy.