I Knew Lisa Jarnot Couldn't Save You

"From the burning I've learned burning"
-- Lisa Jarnot

I knew one poem by Lisa Jarnot couldn't save you
and I decided to try and tell you even though
you have known yourself. This quagmire situation.
There's more to life than this. Time immemorial.

There on the sidewalk more strands of hair.
They call them extensions. Why extend cells?
Why extend dead matter? Warmth and language.
I have never seen Lisa Jarnot's hairstyles.

One woman yesterday used the word "boombox."
Her name is Elizabeth Alexander and she wrote
the poem for the 44th Presidential Inaugeration.
The boombox died in the 80s, ceased in the 90s.

If this is the year 2008 time is moving on by,
time is, time is moving on by-- slowly--too--
I'll write: "fin de siecle is or is not dead
but most likely it is, so you know what that means--"

and you'll all move like giant squid in packs.
Squid are solitary beings though, celestial madhouses
when their veils get dispersed, all of them, but
that never happens. Scientists are lying--its atomic.

I will go to work today and it will be just like
any other day except today I will pretend to care.
This is the just once day that every employer
deserves because they feel like a wound sometimes.

At work I won't read fantastical authors on the clock,
I won't spend my day eating peanut butter truffles
and questioning how fat I am even though my ribs show
lots, and I won't text you. Then again, I am a god damn liar.

The school yard behind my home where I live now
has a giant bell. It's actually a stimulated bell.
When recess is over electricity surges--it rings
and rings. Everyone runs in except the problem child.

Beneath the surface of the skin there is a thought
running up and down our bodies; the difference
between us and the problem child is that we have
caught on to what's going on--we know the verses well.

Just like the new words I never have known but
maybe you have--we must pandiculate these withered
words--take each letter and pull it apart like tack,
take it to the end without tearing it--it's not Lisa Jarnot.

Jarnot may be a oomerang child beneath new shattered gold--
she may be a time-exposed wind chill greeting giants--
she may be what unknown to today's most famous bodyguards--
she may give me a lift, my car's door was recently removed--