with sam cooke on st. valentine's day

light a cigarette & uncork the wine

let's see how cupid's aim is true

while i write love poems to my girl

& you sing on the chain gang

that burnished plaintive yearning

of the heart's sting 

the head of the pin 

& how many angels can dance on it

as we both stare into the middle distance

thinking too far is never far away

yin & yang

 

hola!

 

why i am not a videogame designer

i text my friend tom

& ask him how his work is going

he tells me that it is hard going

that he can't get the details right

he texts me a screenshot of a scene in the game

which looks like a photograph of a sexy woman 

with a sword in one hand & a grenade in the other

see, tom says, what can i do with that!

but see, i work in words, i think in language

when i walk the streets of my city 

the streets are paved with poems

tom, i say, it looks perfect to me

unlike my poems which are always 

under threat of incoherence

& i would indeed if it weren't for my cats

who force me to go to work everyday 

to keep them in kibble 

besides what can one poet do 

when everything seems to

be made out of pixels

city at nite

 

grow old:be punk:antipoetry

 

--nicanor parra

this is philip fucking levine giving us the hard truths of life in central ca.

'your flying saucer was stolen?'