temporary arrangements

i can keep a job,
pay attention to you once, twice a week,
do the groceries
& keep the heater going,
the silence hovering over what you say,
what’s in play

i can close my eyes & count to ten,
giving you the chance to run away,
to seize the day without a scene,
without needing to be nice, to be mean

i can recycle & make a yard sale
out of useless knowledge, private moments,
air the place out
& make room for your bag of tricks,
your collection of shoes,
assortment of moods

i can make you less insecure,
less dependent on love, on foreign hope,
become more willing
to do more with less on your tour,
on your shopping experience

i can help you compare & contrast,
weigh the pros & cons of your heart,
of my laundry list,
make an educated guess
about which goods haven’t expired

i can read me from the comfort of my chair
the miranda rights,
help you study for the future,
share with you what i’ve found out
about attitude & solitude,
about honesty & privacy

c. a. campos, 2012

glitch

a stretch to call it a battle…

i stare at the window
& question marks stand at attention,
& answers, with no punctuation marks of their own,
at a loss for words
shrug their shoulders, scratch their heads

i stare at natural, far off light,
& at trees, shadows, things alive,
& in dismay exclamation marks look at each other,
say to themselves: what’s the point?
all this dreaming, all this screaming
is making us lose our voice,
all it’s doing is giving us a headache—
the hell with grammar,
with calling attention to ourselves

i stare with false mirrors & get lost in thought,
in a series of ellipses, of caesuras,
of alternate takes not originally part of the LP

instead of, initially, going for the remote control,
of staring at the tv screen & not minding the glitch,
the ditch or the fill in the blanks

you have to be stupid enough
to give things a value,
give them the significance they don’t possess

you don’t go to see a musician,
you go to hear him play,
go to hear him browse & bruise himself

it’s important to have someone in your vicinity
to hate, foster wallace recommends,
does it count when that someone is you yourself?

on the highway you see the world in its hot new ride
pass you by,
like state troopers & ambulances
the rules, regulations of traffic don’t apply to it:
don’t know why, don’t know whether to wave
or give it your middle finger

i stare with scarce, exhausted resources
& i barter with myself,
a stretch to call it a battle, self-improvement

c. a. campos, 2012

spam

anthrax, salmonella, breakbone fever,
there’s enough threat, enough viruses going around,
enough cans of worms opened already

i put mask & gloves on—drawing a line in the sand,
& pick the words hate, love, with forceps
so as not to intervene, not to interfere in their war & peace,
so as not to be touched, contaminated

odorless, flammable, regretable material,
i read out loud out of the box the words came in,
keep out of reach of children:
if swallowed, call immediately poison control

someone gregarious might have forwarded the words
to somebody he hates or that he loves,
or someone with nothing better to do
might have taken the trouble of returning the favor,
the spam to the ominous, anonymous sender

instead, with fingers crossed,
i reel love, hate, in & seal them in a plastic container:
hoping the lack of air
does to them what the lack of water does to fish,
does to known heavenly bodies

anthrax, salmonella, breakbone fever,
there’s enough threat, enough viruses going around,
enough cans of worms opened already

c. a. campos, 2012