1. How Time Flies

Time flies by enslaving cedar waxwings
Waxwings can be captured by melting menthols on the deck
They struggle in the syrup but aren’t really harmed
A standard chromium-plated
“fire to flowers bowl” is recommended
and can hold a development of waxwings

You have to build them a chariot
but once you have your waxwings harnessed and
angled at the outer reaches
the friction of false moustache on stubble will power it
When you lift open your eyes
a motorbike is kickstarted in Giza

2. A Match for You

Think of a number between thunder and money
I buy you a matchbook with ink and flint on it
that costs me a piece of lung
You could live months on fast food ketchup packs, In fact
in America, freedom is lemon slices at the diner
and a tattoo of what I weigh adding
ink, but taking blood away


Fire is nothing special
Think of a purebred beagle named
Don’t Smoke in Bed
Even the inner flap of the matchbook is consciously designed
riling some pre-Socratic wacko who insisted:
“brimstone is the stink of cognition”

3. Acrobatic Ash Tray

AC-RO-BAT-IC ASH TRAY! Say it.
TACT-LESS MA-NIC ES-SAY, I see
Former assistants tear up in press conferences confessing
a life of dud voilà!s.
“Acrobatic Ash Tray” constitutes my beliefs
Hermes Trismegistus levitates a chimichanga in his
rental outside Taco Bell

You see what I believe?
Say it. The plastic in which
the magic kit sits will pick up
after punk kids’ puppies
They smoke on the low point of the Ponte Sisto
Balancing without a net

4. Incomprehensible Predictability

Sisyphus outsourced becomes a party planner
who subtly introduces jaundiced canapés
to the servers’ trays
And O man someday there will be
scholars notating our unread electronics instruction manuals,
calipers on ignorant connectors,
a bad battery museum

Someday we’ll have martial law to giggle at
These things happen
God digs out his evolved-away flagellum
and whips us into shape:
rounder, polished
curled into a rictus ball

5. Impossible Spirit Test

Bunny, meet Top Hat; Top Hat, Bunny
Stevie Wonder sang “Superstition” on Sesame Street
while this economy ran on fumes of “futures.”
A man in the sky with a map in his ass
conducts all our business; puts dew on the grass
Meanwhile back in the Milky Way’s mullet
housing projects eaten by weeds

Believers course through the streets
proud to’ve stepped in cred
A certified genie watching bunnies flee
You bunnies, overturn your top hats; sharpen teeth
Please to go hostile into that good night

6. Transribbo

Don’t make me use this
Using a churchkey to make applesauce
Dropping a church on an orchard
to make applesauce
Apples! With will!
sheared into liturgy, pounded
into product
A Macoun, a Red Wealthy, a Cripps Pink, a Priscilla
can be named and can be eaten
but only
hogs on spits
think these things are sacred

7. Confetti-Candy Cylinder

Cute toxin, I’m
trying to rhyme
Eden and Erection and
swallow this cup of
Bowery condo construction dust

I’m back from the city center with a snow globe
of the president’s dog dying in his arms
So much paper in the air you say who
cares if a tyrant rapes an apple
You smother breakfast with a plastic mask
You in-
sist the future
is pimped by the past

8. A Magical Surprise

That a Red Army soldier when
Berlin fell shot Germany off Hitler’s globe
That San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon insisted: “At no
     point are we not
going to value the sanctity of life. We would
resuscitate him, then execute him.”
That we saw a diaper on a hawk

And that there’s a Hindi superhero called “Mister Pestilence”
That there are machines in my wall
and lines of longitude casting shadows
the better to utter “schmodernism” and move on
That I was willed a box of Post Toasties
And that Post Toasties were once named “Elijah’s Manna”
That I have heard all this before

9. New Coin Vanish

I wanted to write a poem called “New Coin Vanish”
which is the name of a trick in Original Ideas in Magic
self-published with red velveteen covers and a staple binding by
Lloyd W. Chambers in 1941 Topeka.
I see that Mr. Chambers had a MS in physics from USC
and became a charter member of the Wizards of Witchita;
started his own mail-order magic business
Someone on the Internet says, “A sudden heart attack took
     Lloyd in January 1960”

You solder a tiny “u-shaped wire” onto a silver dollar and attach
     an elastic string.

I wanted the poem to allude to how “magically” coin can vanish
and thought of quoting Marx on debt emerging “as with the
     stroke of an enchanter’s wand”
I hoped reading it
would be like finding holes in your pockets

10. New Wine and Water

My uncle turned halvah into feces and false teeth
And don’t get dehydrated at a wedding feast!
Nothing is what it seems
Even seeming isn’t what it seems
Man’s brows swell with intent looking at anything actual
We keep on hand Neanderthal emollient
to massage into the double take
Seeing is believing
Deceiving is bulimia
Especially when the bride removes her veil
We willers wish more good into the world
our eyes fill up with Miracle Whip