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

      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.

      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.

      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

      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

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