They found a dead body in Bayou D’Inde
Said he washed up on Thursday afternoon
That February water was real real cold
When old man drowned
I ‘member hearin’ bout that dead body at school
Same as when they found a lady’s head in Cameron Parish
Reminds me when I found an old ice chest by the pond
Full of dead *****
Nobody notices **** anymore
The world ain’t watchin’
It’s too busy texting and driving on the bridge
To care if anyone jumps

A small black box with gold trim, a serious palm-sized thing. Its leather is the opaque ironic touch of what it stands for: a promise that always gets taken back. You open it and find the roof of its mouth slick white, a velvet tongue below, a strip of fabric like the flat words of forgotten vows. You know that something should be there; that’s what a promise is, right? But it’s empty, and you’re left only imagining the idea of a diamond

God is not in the church
It’s in the sweet warm blush of Spring breeze,
the blue burning up high in the afternoon,
the mattress-soft pinks and cotton whites
blooming along freshly painted porches;

It’s in the bees that buzz zip from petal to petal
as if their lives’ meaning is to bring pollen
to the colors of the rainbow,
to spread the seeds of Summer over everything
like green over a pasture, teeming and bright;

It’s in the reason we come to a park on Sunday
and lie on our backs, float on the cool grass,
gaze up the skirt of a flowering tree,
letting the Sun take a nap on our chest

God is life, and life is all around

In the Kisatchie ocean of pine and oak that shimmers evergreen in the wind, there’s a tree that all the life knows. This tree is a sun in the forest, life in the branches veining up and out to the bright blue. Its throat pillars a canopy above that glistens with beads of sunlight, gold strings that drip down to the earth where pine needles and twigs and leaves and cones come to stitch a wild tapestry of green, teeming dirt, warm browns, colors that smell like soil and clean air. All breathing within and around this tree. Animals of every nation and shrub pass by it—skitter up and about it. Nothing claims it, and it claims nothing. It is as much as all is; a testament to the only Truth: the constant of growth and life. If it only had eyes, it would be witness to a story that never ends, a story of the truest symbols under Moon and Sun, of the turmoil between rainbow and storm, of the purest music that sings from apricot dawn to fire-golden dusk.
in medias res—Tiny things in neon yellow hats and vests arrive, riding larger, mechanical mud-yellow beasts. They stomp over the late summer tapestry on their way Forward, wherever that is? The yellow beasts’ black smoke billows up above the green, suffocating the throats of trees that lived like they held up the heavens. One by one the tiny things mark then behead and uproot and dismember and skin and haul the forest congregation as cargo into trucks, and the trucks plow down the young shrubs in their Way, whatever that is? One tree, however, is too stubborn for the tiny things’ grunts; despite the will of machines, it won’t be usurped and will not fall. So, it stays, and the concrete serpent that comes next just slithers around it. A smooth and efficient scar made from the same stuff as tombstones is carved in to Kisatchie, painted the color of tar with yellow and white lines going along it. The animals know to stay away from it, although sometimes a fawn or some squirrels who know no better will stumble up to it, instantly frightened away when a metal creature with glowing eyes from faraway comes roaring towards them. Sometimes one of those metal things will growl to a stop on soft black feet, and a tiny thing without a neon hat will step out of it and walk up behind the tree that wouldn’t fall and **** on it. Relieved, it scurries back into the thing it came out of and continues on its Way, wherever that is?

Bottles of alcohol squat on the counter, and cigarette butts
like yellow dead June bugs on the floor.
Bottles of shimmering reasons to not care about a hangover,
to leave prom early and rejoice in your parent’s absence.
Glistening necks, elegant glass nubs with no cap
tipped up into mouths screaming proud and hoarse,
We are STUPID! And CONTAGIOUS!
our ***** voices breaking under the radio sound
to a loud song whose generation no longer cares.
But we do, dumb boys and girls in a truck, rolling around town
like Haylee’s bottle of Jack Daniels in the trunk—
aimless, optimistic, and looking for reasons, so
buy a pack at the Chevron and let’s go smoke!
That’s enough, after all, isn’t it?
Reason enough to crack the windows, find a Carlyss backroad,
waste away midnight and half a tank of gas.
Still, as I drive on, a 90s rock station stimulating rotation of the spliff,
that smell puts my mind out of guitar solos and into placid hallways,
Smells Like a night in my dad’s apartment,
the stubbly couch with the nicotine blanket,
the Marlboro tone in the air, concrete crumbs and a lighter’s grating chrrt.
Divorce sounds like alcohol—
a word that burns, something sterilizing and for adults only.
But I don’t care, it’s my turn on the spliff,
and the backseat of my truck sounds more Alive
than the old horror movie rentals he would put on.
And why should I worry about what sobriety means
when we’ve been planning this night for months now?
All stocked up on Bacardi and Smirnoff Ice, Captain Morgan’s, Svedka, Mike’s Hard,
Swisher Sweets wrapped up in the **** bag—
We shoot our ***, soldiers eager to start the war,
that war against a domestic unknown enemy,
an enemy dangerous and subversive, like sober-minded aspirations.
And while Zack rolls the blunt, while Jack finds his Camel pack,
while you ask for a hit of Haylee’s cigarette,
I fill a glass with water, my intention to hydrate
exactly as genuine as my intention to forget about it.

Look at this Mess the Messiah made
You’d think He’d have kept up with things
But all he’s good for is bringing good honest people together
In a place where it’s easy to ******* shoot them

We’re under threat of domestication
And survival means the end of our species—
We’ve house-trained ourselves ,
Throats caught on leashes of security ,
Willingly slipped into the same noose-collar
We used to catch lions and wolves .
Submissive pets of our own dogma ,
Our only hope against oppressive prosperity
Is to **** on the rug

I just want pink—

**** blacks
**** whites
**** blues
**** browns
**** green paper
**** gray music
**** yellow jewelry
**** red sports cars
**** your friends and **** your family and
**** the colors they spill on you
**** the color of your phone
**** the color of your flag
**** the color of your people
**** the color of your paycheck
**** the idea of rainbows , ‘cause they
**** with the idea of libido
**** the makers of rainbows , ‘cause they
**** things they don’t love
**** the protection of rainbows , ‘cause they
**** with our hormones
**** the beauty of a rainbow , ‘cause
rainbows aren’t beautiful at all
**** anyone who worships a color’s name and not its smell
**** anyone who doesn’t want a color put to ****

I just want pink—
Your wet , sensitive flesh : pink

They call me the Adam bomb ,
like I’m to be dropped over Eden ,
make flames of the birds in the sky
and name all of the wild beasts ash .
I am built of war and steel ,
still , stoic power ,
tucked up under this giant winged-thing ,
an egg ready to burst uranium yolk .

Hear the mechanic buzz of annihilation
as I’m carried to my glorified purpose .
From heaven , earth is gone ;
there’s only the dark and the loud machines ,
then the click ,
and then the floor opens .
I hover above white cloud-smears ,
feeling like Icarus : the power of the sun .
My cold creators with flat eyes and gloved hands
exchange a look
then I’m falling —

Sky screams , going down ,
I am neither Judgement nor Redemption .
I am not Grace; I am not the Fall ;
I am both the End and the Means ,
the “what Men stood for” , plummeting ,
wailing , ******—
the sound of the end .

I don’t know what this is , I don’t know why it’s here ,
But it has a name and it’s feeling shame
And it measures things in years

We feel the *** drive in teasing procreation ,
pulling out
of our biological commitment to reproduce

It’s the purpose of life , repurposed for our pleasure

If Jesus comes back ;
we’ll probably crawl to his sandals
and weep , “Where have you been ? Why haven’t you come for us ?”
That is , if we don’t **** him on sight .

The way history just happened in a way to give these words meaning —


We grew up to believe in a Jesus ,
Were raised to want somebody , something to save us ,
To need that more than the confidence to save ourselves

And then bombs killed the sun ,
And radio filled the sky with waves ,
God’s old realm become a vast ocean of voices and other sounds

And we listened to the static for something with faith ,
Something like a Jesus , somebody to save us from a modern **** nation ,
Some note of some harmony in static

And when some people started to sing and dance ,
We made them do a Jesus, spit cameras in Their faces and committed Them to celebrity ,
Painted Their faces on cities like graffiti written on the wall

And then we made a box like a church to frame Their living image ,
Put it in our living rooms, arranged our thrones around it ,
Worked overtime at the pollution office so we could see Their faces in color

And that box just got better , got sharper in vision ,
And we worshipped it like we’d finally found faith with a remote and a bag of potato chips ,
Always upgrading the box with Pandora trademarked on plastic

And now we have that box in our ******* pockets ,
All the Jesus , facts , vileness , and worthlessness of life ,
All that is bad and maybe good for our species , the size of our palm

And it recognizes our ******* face

And we wanted it this way ,
We asked for it , voted for it , fought for it
******* paid for it

I was at dinner once, and I really liked how my fork looked, so I wanted to take a picture of it.
I was so proud of myself trying to center that fork in camera’s frame, proud of my ability to recognize something that I wanted for myself, and proud of my ability to do something about it, to literally capture what I wanted in my hand.
Then my friend leaned over from her side of the table and asked if I was taking a picture of the meal, and I said I wasn’t. She told me you should, since what I ordered just looked so appetizing. I didn’t want to seem disagreeable, and she meant well by it, so I put down my fork and aimed at the plate.
Then my other friend beside me who happened to be in the frame leaned in to be featured in my picture, saying with a friendly voice that I should get him in it too. I just wanted a picture of the food, but I didn’t want to seem disagreeable, so I readjusted the camera to include my friend.
When I did that, my other friends sitting beside me must’ve thought that I was inviting them, because a few of them began to lean in towards my friend that was leaning towards the food, one of them laughing that I should tag them if I post this. By this point I was trying to capture more than what I had wanted, but I didn’t want to seem disagreeable, so to make room for everyone in the picture, I stood up and leaned back.
That movement on my part must’ve meant something important to the rest of the table, because soon they all agreed that I should take a group picture and began arranging themselves for it. Turning away from the plate now to an entirely new subject, one of my friends asked a waiter if he could take our picture, since I should be in it too. I didn’t want to bother the busy worker, and in all honesty I just wanted to go back to eating, but I didn’t want to seem disagreeable, so I handed my phone to the waiter and met my friends on the other side of the table.
Posing for my own picture, I caught a glimpse of that fork that I had first found so interesting, and looking back at it, I think I blinked when the flash blinded me.