Rodrigo Toscano - Five Poems
Blank Pad
Just lines
Landing on lines
With whatever
What comes next
(Guess this comes next)
Is what came next
But about North Korea
And the Glacier Breaks
And the T-Man and P-Man
Just lines
Incandescent lamps
In deep sea wreckage
Darkness on darkness
A clamorous silence
Freakazoid creatures
No literary trove here
No metaphors, no metonyms
No jingling career trinkets
What comes next?
A fuller pad
Fuller than before
But about Real Talks
And Real Solutions
And Stick-Throwing Apes
The pad is five by ten
With - let's count: fifty pages
Forty-nine blank, alright.
Gas powered blower
All that went into it
Its separate components
The human work involved
How the thing works
Each and every time
As designed to
All of those folks assembled
Standing in a ring
Two hundred? Several thousand?
I wanna see them all
Right now, as they are
As I prime the starter ten times
The roar and howl is a chorus
With me at the center
Purpose being multifold and fluid
Lawn Mower
Strange trail of cut grass
Lawn chair propped up next to fence
Mower tarp flapping, empty
Now the spikes go up
Now the cameras are firing up
No, not getting a gun
This is trying
This is too routine
This requires effective procedures
Hope the mower's broke
Wish the re-sale owner the best?
No, not getting a gun
Now the lawn's poppin' up
Big party around the corner
This requires effective procedures
Strange trail of cut grass
Strange bag of feelings
And still - no, but thanks
Security Cams
Left/right corridors monitored
Front flanks covered
Back area secured
There, all three perimeters
Viewed continuously
By feats of engineering
Things that can't be easily tracked:
Sudden puffs of malevolent smoke
Meandering miasmas of filth
What kind of equipment
Can be deployed for vying ideologies
Gliding in through walls and floors?
Course I don't believe in specters
Consumer solutions to
Primate Clusterfucks
Crammed Pad
Trade war with China looming
My front door ringer's on the fritz
Call your senator first thing in the morning
An idea to get something fixed
I just found - just now - awesome
A solution to this crooked table
North Korea can't help this drooping hibiscus
Syria knocking at my door - just poetry (for now)
Iraq sitting up all night in some other's bedroom
GFC circuit, reset properly, often works
Damn griddle not supposed to rust like this
Mexico Mexico Mexico - Russia!
You oughtta - or I oughtta - or someone oughtta
Wait, somebody's answering - for real, "hey"