"Princes and Charmers" and "Roach Giant"

Princes and Charmers

we felt fucking great
at the 1984 World’s Fair
 

            When Doves Cry
 

            was one of our main jams
            that summer
 

   & it wasn’t your typical
teenage royalty
on the town     situation
 

  after 10 the rides got cheap
and the loves got piled
onto laps and strapped in
 

for the lights and the music–
 the round and round
still a trip
 

            the city still delightfully shitty
            all by the water where it should be
        defiance in its best playful strain
 

   something about the clouds and us mixed
 

 it never rained
 

                           we did it again and again
                           all summer

Roach Giant

And after I just see the
Are you kidding me? -size
cockroach, somehow not
fleeing the scything foot,
then I see why– he’s a roach
with a fuzzball sidecar!

got a fuzzball sidecar tagalong
anchor weight in nano-ounces
yet enough to lame him
as he ouijas to the corner
behind clawfoot tub
and I’m suddenly sympathetic

I too have started mornings
with kites made of lead
flying off foot, pushing a big
lint racket up the mountain
blowing my own levee
ruining for the hills

I go into the next room
and write these lines down

He appears again!
as I return to the bathroom
& just after I had written
the previous sympathy bit
he now flagrantly forces the kill

I return with paper towel
but when going in for said kill
he goes belly-up
and does the ill-pickle
leg-wiggle thing

so half against my will again
with the towel
I perform a fuzzball-ectomy
(just last week I lost a dog)
and send him on his way

These selections are from Meaningful Poems, a forthcoming collaboration with Christopher Shipman.