Co-Sign

 

Saw Dean Young crossing the street.

He was awful at it, like a chicken flying,

like a movie star with no idea

he’s in a cartoon, a stack of out-

of-order signs, two bucks each.

Makes you feel better about yourself,

how you aren’t doing push-ups

on top of the mountain instead of

looking back at the party you just left

at everyone dancing in devil masks.

What did you expect from a cellophane wizard

anyway, cyborg of wussy cogs? The new

queen first eats her wings for strength

if she’s lucky enough to find substrate

for her nest. The rock gets a new face

if it’s lucky enough to be tumbled

in the tide’s grind. Exfoliated,

meaning all the flowers yanked out.

But who thought you’d get this high anyway,

slurry of counter-sighs, nauseous astronaut?

From here on in let’s let the speaker

of  this poem be a dog. Woof! No, dog.

Woof Woof! Okay, have it your way, a wolf.

 

After Molting, Eat Your Own Skin for Strength

 

I’m from wax. I’m always out.

My respirator’s warranty might last

through another crisis but even a rose

is a crisis when called on

to give a systematic accounting

of experience. Only a flood can do that.

I wish things didn’t always turn out

so cow-in-a-tree mud-fugued.

Rerouted traffic: what a joke.

Divine intervention: who you kidding?

Some days it’s impossible to sit in a chair

and withstand the demystification.

Every angel is an angel of demystification

no matter their cookie recipes,

canisters of laughing gas.

I can’t bear the disappointment either

of the girl with her botched tattoos,

the boy with his laptop lap-dance.

Thank god they keep changing the music,

anymore rockabilly and I garrote myself

with this blue bootlace. Just what

you’d expect from a scarecrow

on a see-saw. When not wiping oil

off ducks, I like to be in love.

When in love, stunt training sure helps.

Still it hurts. Even fake and flimsy walls

take a toll crashing through.

________________________________________

Dean Young's most recent book is The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction (Greywolf, 2010). He's been awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Currently, he is the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas-Austin.