They Don't Kill You Because They're Hungry, They Kill You Because They're Full. Mark Bibbins
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Copyright
Special Thanks
Breakout Session
Before we say anything else I’d like
to point out that this coverage
is favorable to the user. I mean
I’m already a fan so I trust
the instructions, which seem
to tell us to reject a strutting self.
I’m able to choose that too.
*
Am I wrong or did the user leave
us lots of little choices. If we’re
being led in wrong directions
in service of larger truths,
so be it: I will happily call a whole
school of red herrings my family.
*
Soon enough something pulls
me back to a photo of myself.
I don’t remember who took it,
but it implies a phantom twin,
the kind of presence you reach
out to when you die.
Autobiography is still
the sincerest form of flattery.
*
There were things I couldn’t say
before because I knew the group
would agree, one of which is that
I’m quite sure I’ve uncovered
the source of this terrible light,
not quite lethal, but the user
has given us a permission again,
and no matter how compelling
the light might be it has some
serious potential to degrade us.
*
In the end it’s one of the user’s
favorite solutions—water to water
to water to sex—but I don’t mind
in the way I never do. He’s drawn
a bath for everyone, and it’s almost
as though I’m no longer afraid
there won’t be enough room.
You’ll Get Better Attention When You Die
We lived in a puddle before the wave.
If you remember either, the latter wasn’t big enough.
We hurtle down the Grand Canyon
with our pet chimp
in a punctured raft:
Can you believe this is only 4000 years old!
he exclaims
or seems to,
hard to tell over the roar.
Give me better priorities
or come insult me
if I make it to the riverbank
so I won’t want them as much.
Plants are lyric, animals epic,
depending on numbers of either—
send my best to the underground
fungus in the Northwest, the biggest
one we’ve met.
The number of everyone I lost to AIDS in my 20S
is small compared to what.
Go on,
wax beautiful
above what makes the world,
glorious bastard years.
I Can Explain
We were upset
after the demons crashed our airplanes into us
We started hearing a lot about how they do things
in Afghanistan because that was one
of the places we were supposed to want to kill
because they had killed us
and one of the things they have there
is like a version of polo with a headless goat
instead of a ball
Polo is what
riding around on horses
and using long mallets to knock an object into a goal
on a playing field
And you said oh how awful savage people poor goat
dragging a headless goat carcass around
and then of course here we like football
!pigskin!
and you said oh how awful savage people poor pig
Unity, Utility, Ubiquity
if you’re going to carry your gorgeous head around
in a sack
let it be
this beige plastic one
wait, that’s no good, it even says as much
on the bag
right there
next to the message
about Jesus
what we learn from this is
FAITH FIRST
SAFETY SECOND
the bag washed up on the beach
like some beautiful gift from an ocean that loves us back
so I thought it fitting to recruit it
what a load of damage these gulls love
doing to loot we leave unattended
as we work the water—
good for them
and their sideways eyes, I say—let’s run ads on bags
for their avian religion
that calls it kosher
to disinter and circumcise
Mormons with their beaks
unless it’s rude to bring up faith again
I’ll close this beach and start a cornfield
then I’m going to burn
down that cornfield
and build a bank
I can swim to save my own life at least
then swim back
to whatever’s left of you
Evacuate the Premise