RUSTY CAGE

RUSTY CAGE

I’m going to break, I’m going to break my,
going to ride a pack of dogs, rusty dogs,

broken nails, tureen of panther scat
in the heavy bakery, dogs looking for

their bones. Keep the movie rolling keep
the exits chained. She glides out the car

hips on wheels. In the meth compound
the bandito knows the gig is up but won’t dispense

with his mask. Sinking quick. Butterflies fly
out his mouth the moment he renounces

violence. Power chords suitable for framing
from a stack of Marshalls. Down on my knees

down on my luck she glides out the car,
second skin, interstitial lingerie. Oil, silk.

The ladies of this land, inferior to none in beauty,
would be the apes of none in dress: a new American

style thrust upon us, confirming red as the new
black she glides. Michael, Scottie, Dennis, Toni,

Phil, gliding. Air, Pip, Worm, Waiter, P.J., dealing.
Old fogey Tex sports a Zennish way: Run the triangle

boyz, let the defense name the play. Chain link makes
a mod pattern on her pantherish abs. J.C. and Buddha

playing croquet on a fiery hot day, with Muhammad
officiating sternly from that highchair of his.

Baby goop on linoleum is carpet’s gift horse.
Bun Baby & Barbara Bush Pounce On Our Revolving Stage . . .

We’ve Got The Loosest Slots in Town! Makes the desert
disappear. Against the stinking rusty dogged desert

a herd of roving portfolio managers bay at the poisoned
moon. Tricky time signatures pounce on the unsuspecting

creamy boy, his flannel shirt gaily ripped into a cut-out
of his mother’s face. Stop this now stop it or else . . .

Your grandma’s toaster will spray flames
singeing her already thinning eyebrows. Another black

boy will get the melanin beaten out of him by the flaxen
pasties of a good neighborhood. Those condors into which

we’ve put so much time and love? They’ll fail to re-establish
themselves in native habitat. Indians (real ones) will continue

to mainline gaming profits to the exclusion of sweat
lodge rituals which had always centered them in times

past. Fathers will continue to shove their tongues
down their daughters’ throats (those little monkeys!)

only to show up on best-seller lists years later via
their daughters’ rusty-tongued pens. Cholesterol will be

darted into the moon-faced butts of fat Floridians
sharing a cigarette with negativity. Board whackings

will rash the pleats off habitual Catholic school girls.
Planes carrying beating hearts in Playmate coolers will

crash short of their transplant targets down in the Everglades.
A panther will probe the tasty spilled meat puppets, the black

box keeping the “official” score. Chads! Chads! Chads
For Sale! the official will sing, busking in her ho costume

amid the wreckage televised pretty to a faux rusty Texas
ranch. Out his cage he will glide glide like new damage.