The Second Sex (3 page)

The great nation of California

shuts out the lights, one by one.

I'm next door in the saguaro.

I must expel the Mexican.

Warren Zevon, Levon Helm

slip into a slippery elm—

fall, gash, crash that gold-

vermillion dollar bash.

Mississippi trinity:

fetus, flag, and F-150.

The bee, a tiny mason, is

expert in fruition.

The honey-drip, the bee-loud buzz

of Jimmy Page's Gibson.

You say that this is all there is:

sweat and piss and blood and jizz.

But I'm from wheat and dust and flat,

and I was born to marvel at

the Jayhawks in 2008.

I don't believe you: God is great.

God bless the midnight bus depot,

the busted guitar case.

God bless diazepam,

its dilatory grace.

God keep Carl Perkins warm

and Jesus Christ erase

my name from all the files in

the county's database.

The dog that bit my leg

the night I left the state,

Lord won't you let

his vaccines be up to date.

West Point to the south of me,

Memphis to the north.

In between is planted with

pinwheels for the Fourth.

Smokestack Lightning, Jesus Christ—

whatever your name is—

bless my fingers on these strings,

I'll make us both famous.

How about that, the new moon,

same as it ever was.

You must've been high as a kite

when you created us.

So hurry, hurry, step right up,

there's something you should see.

The sun shines on the bus depot

like a coat of Creole pink.

God keep the world this clean and bright

and easy to believe in

and let me catch my bus all right,

and then we'll call it even.

The only reason you're not going to hell is you're already in it.

The
Fear Factor
contestant says he's in it to win it.

Science, the opiate of the elite, asks too many questions.

I become tired and sick, till I wander off by myself and listen in perfect silence to
The Sun Sessions
.

Why is there something rather than something else is a question only Southern rock can answer.

The cattle all have brucellosis. Grandma's dead of cancer.

The astronauts of my youth plant the flashing MTV logo on the moon.

I thought of that historic moment on the day Steve Jobs was taken from us too soon.

The artist formerly known as Sting gives back rubs to the war orphans;

Swami Svatmarama distributes copies of the
Hatha Yoga
to boost the orphans' endorphins.

Would you care to make a small donation?

The orphans with remaining limbs give the dharma a standing ovation.

Oh wow, a guy came on your face and you wrote about it? That's so daring.

Let me be among the very first to say thanks for sharing.

If you need a writing tutor, I am programmed to oblige.

Lesson one: metaphor, a kind of bridge.

A blackbird can be looked at in a number of ways, including two.

A man and a woman are the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

My reptile brain sheds its skin.

On its belly it goes supernova.

It got over getting over

that assimilated Jew, Jehovah.

My reptile brain chops off its tail

to watch it grow right back.

The family requests an autopsy.

My brain drops horribly in a pail.

Like a bulwark

breached for the very first time,

dear brain, once more unto!

There's someone bleeding all over you.

Down on all fours, brain.

Brain take a face full of quills.

You're still in love with dark

Satanic Hayley Mills.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking

would give me a lobotomy.

The very thought of me!

Out of the car, long hair, endlessly rocking.

Reptile brains are wasted on the young.

Got an empty shoe box for Xmas.

Every Xmas, same shoe box.

The theater of my dreams

I called it, for I dreamed of shoes.

Its realistic cardboard walls

enclosed a horseless expanse—

no lariat, no corral, no okay. So I

stole six U.S. Army mules,

named 'em Cattle Drive,

Train Job, Bank Job, Blow,

Adios Muchachos, and All

Deserts Have Cacti.

In fact, I also stole

their sires and dams.

A man should have a best-laid plan,

or what's a town dump for?

So mothers, tell your children

I'll need to see some ID.

Work on your looks, ye mighty.

Someday I'll have more shoes

than I know what to do.

Barefoot servants too.

Yeah, I got the bug. Got razzle dazzle,

dazed and refused. I'm with stupid.

Step up, chump. I'm OK, cupid.

Main man on the data dump.

I'm erotic baggage and cholo spit.

I'm the motherfucking
the
.

I
invented
it. I'm a bucket

of Colonel Sanders,

Kentucky Fried Panzer man.

I'm a bare midriff in a sharkskin suit.

I got twenty-seven dollars!

I'm homing in on your boo.

It's all over now, Bobbie Sue.

Yet tarry awhile. Set a spell,

Big Bad Leroy Iffucan.

It takes three miracles to make a saint,

just one mistake to make a man.

Michael Jackson you gave us all and now you're nothing.

Michael Jackson one zillion dollars June 25, 2009.

I don't care if you lightened your skin.

I don't care if a pig in a poke

get out of a poke

and can't get back in.

For a while here an unusual man?

I'll say. The grave is gone and gray

as Gary. Mills shoulder dirty snow.

Let my people go.

Michael's mind out-Heroded stuff.

He lay with many a kid. I don't know

and you shouldn't act

like you know what he did.

And if they say
why
,
why
,

tell 'em that it's human nature.

Some men is an island.

The lighted sidewalk squares fall silent.

I am my twin brother Matthew Robbins.

I know how to light up a room.

I kill one bird with several stones.

Israeli jets light up Khartoum.

A savage servility slides

by on the way we are feeling

from Kabbalah to Kabul,

Daodejing to Darjeeling,

Shiite to Shinola,

Ob-La-Di to
objet
(a),

Ram a Lam to Ding Dong,

Obi-Wan to Ob-La-Da,

from Hopi to IHOP

and Mayan to Ramayana,

Robespierre to RoboCop,

yippee-ki-yay to kumbayah.

A savage serves me a slider.

Grease is the word for his face.

Michael Robbins, cute as a button.

My alibi, my donkey, my master race!

Turns out I never made a lampshade

from, Jew or gentile, human skin.

I mean the Nazis didn't. Sometimes

I feel so evil, I get us confused.

Colonel Klink on his way to masseuse.

God is a spider, the moon's made of barf.

Wait—how did
I
get so smart?

Reading Foxe's
Martyrs
, its famous quote:

“Be of good comfort, Naomi Wolf.”

Covering the election from the Persian Gulf,

it's Harold Bloom. I am the canon, hear me roar.

In the name of
Bush v. Gore
,

I plant my fat on the land.

I am woman. You wouldn't understand.

This is a poem for President Drone.

It was written by a camel.

Can I borrow your phone?

This is for President Mark Hamill.

Newtown sounds a red alert.

Mark Hamill asks if Ernie's burnt.

Every camel's a first-person shooter.

The Prez's fez is haute couture.

It seems strange that he should be offended.

The same orders are given by him.

Paging Pakistan and Yemen.

Calling all the drone-dead children.

The camel can't come to the phone.

This is for the drone-in-chief.

Mumbai used to be Bombay.

The bomb bay opens with a queef.

I got a letter from the government.

It said let there be night.

I went through your trash.

There was night, all right.

I consider how your light is spent.

I have butterflies a little bit.

I have some pills I take for it.

I've been up since four the day before.

Agony's a cinch to sham.

Don't worry about the environment.

Let it kill us if it can.

I give a tiny tinker's damn.

I put the ox behind the cart.

Consume away my snowblind heart.

Fastened to a service animal

it is waiting for the beep.

It is waiting for the right to change.

Hello, I know you're there, pick up.

I practice Velcro mind,

tar baby mind. I stick

to my guns. I'm a major find.

Stick to my loo, my darling.

Stick to your own kind.

Stately, plump Wayne Manor!

Mattel, Adele, Adorno—

O DeLorean

on extended wings!

I know a guy who knows a guy.

The octopus of glam rock

shoplifting Tide. Ed Dorn,

Isadora Duncan, defend us!

Yes, Virginia, there is a.

Captain Kitty Pryde

of the
Exxon Valdez
,

sorry I missed your call. The wall

I pass through passes through

me and out the other side.

Fiddle no further, Führer. Rome is built.

It took all day. Now let us so

love the world. I'm just thinking out loud.

My stigmata bring out my eyes.

The smallpox uses every part of the blanket,

and the forest is a lady's purse.

The Indian is a pink Chihuahua peeking

his head from the designer zipper.

Out here it's mostly light from the fifteenth

century slamming into the planet.

I can't see the forest for the burn unit.

All the planet does is bitch bitch bitch.

I know it's last minute but could you put

out my eyes? At the subatomic level,

helmeted gods help themselves to gold.

Up here? The body's an isolation ward.

Out here in the fields

a technician dims the light.

Too soon to say for sure

if this coheres all right.

You ask what time the elephant

sat upon the fence.

Sounds to me like time to get

a few new elephants.

I dress up like a razor blade

and hide inside an orange.

Petition, little children, one

who finds you less annoying.

No orange can be compelled

to self-incriminate.

The jury will disregard

the thirty-seventh state.

Longshoremen and long shores,

short piers and ships in port.

Third planet from the sun, I'm told.

It won't stand up in court.

You got moxie, kid, mixing

ricin in the suburbs.

I'm gonna be a nicer person

and emulate the lovebirds

with night-lights in their hips

and UC Davis eyes.

We'll sing the
Mary Hartman
theme

until the great assize.

Anna Wintour's discontented.

I'm bathing in the nude.

I'm erring on the side.

I'm pretty sure we're screwed.

This is rocket science

in the Desert Father style.

Those weirdos in their caves—

man, you should read their file.

They made war upon their privates.

They had insects in their beards.

Once you got 'em talking,

they'd prattle on for years.

And I'd be more like them

if I were less like this,

a billion points of glitter

in a fathomless abyss.

Some of these ditties first appeared in
Commonweal
,
The Economy
,
The Hat
,
Hazlitt
,
Lemon Hound
,
Los Angeles Review of Books
,
Mississippi Review
,
The New Yorker
,
Poetry
,
Prelude
,
and
The Walrus
. One love to the editors.

Overnight shipping thanks: Paul Slovak, Anthony Madrid, Steven Critelli.

Priority shipping thanks: Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Robert Archambeau, Zach Baron, Paul-Jon Benson, Mark Z. Danielewski (RIP Carl), Mark Fletcher, Virginia Heffernan, Ilya Kaminsky, Anahid Nersessian, Christa Robbins, Rose Schapiro, Dana Snitzky, Amber Tamblyn, Jen Vafidis.

“To the Drone Vaguely Realizing Eastward”: See my essay “A Poem for President Drone” in
Los Angeles Review of Books
at http://lareviewof books.org/essay/a-poem-for-president-drone.

Photo: Clayton Hauck

Michael Robbins
was born in Kansas during the Nixon administration. Sometime later, he received his PhD in English from the University of Chicago. His poetry and criticism have appeared in
The
New Yorker
,
Poetry
,
Harper's
, and many other publications. He lives in America with the best cat in the world.