Stop, Drop, Ro, Bot
Stop, Drop, Ro, Bot (“Robocop” poems)
1. OK, OK, OK, IT AIN’T OK, OK, OK
listen no yes yes no no no,
listen like this like like this,
like things are like things
and some things are like gold
goblets and some things are
like megaman and other
objects are like invisible
white staircases trailing off
into walls and other things
are like an orchestra playing
incidental music to me falling
off a skyscraper sweating amethyst,
but not all no no not at all nah nah
that you know things are like
this thing, but all things exist
spinning like two Optimus Primes
pirouetting on a bed of plums,
and each string is just like a pit’s
wrinkly sting nut-cutting my cheeks,
like this no no like that, like how
it happened before for you but it’s
OK, O K, Oh-Kay.
2. OH, YOU’RE KIDDING ME HA HA THAT WAS A GOOD ONE
Ye wants to tell me a joke
while I light a cigarette.
The joke consists of him
slapping the cigarette
out of my mouth
and yelling “WORD?”
with his arms outstretched.
His sweater is expensively
frumpy. He is leaning back
in the white plastic armchair
so I can see it better. I tell him
I’m not in the mood and he
whaps the smoke out of my mouth
with a taupe slipper, no a taupe
opera pump, no a patent-leather
Air-Jordan, and looks at me
as it to say “I’m a man,”
and that he is, staring into
the marbled sky, the teddy
bear lightning rod, waiting for
the space Buddha to crush him
with one giant burning finger.
3. THAT’D TURN MY LIFE TO STEPHEN KING
except the space Buddha is Taylor Swift
and the finger is a billion microscopic
violins leaf-blown through a harp.
A mirror lined with closets. A face
made of tearing blue explosion
after-images. It makes the best
of us dream in Japanese, or
not in Japanese but in metal,
something oily and sweating
filings.
4. STRAIGHT UP OUT THE MOVIE SCENE
Things not to be if you want Kanye’s attention:
Dark-skinned, from L.A., an actual dyke.
Thanks Jon for the Rod stimulus--it's looking slicker by the minute.
ReplyDeleteHot piece--you're dropping mad beats. The rhythm's spot on in the first section--some of the line breaks take me out of that, but it could be a syncopation moment, in which case I rest my case. i.e.-- "some things are/" The bit about sweating amethyst seemed overworked somehow. Image of Optimus Primes, though, man oh man, spot on.
#2. first stanza, last line. Did you mean "as if to say"? I think that last line coupled with the second stanza brings out a shift in tone that's suddenly much less playful than the beginning. It works like a gut punch.
I'm not 100% on "filings" taking up its own line & rounding out that section..the build up's almost too much for it.
The images throughout are making me jealous I didn't think of them first--the violins, the mirror lines with closets, pirouetting on plums!