DON'T FETISHIZE MY BUCKET.
OKAY, YOU CAN A LITTLE.
If you are the guide,
who am I? If I want
to lay in the sun like
a dog with a smooth belly
knowing well that my belly
is not smooth though it is
distended, you will be
unfortunately abandoned. And
if I want to be the new dog
on the roof—higher than perennial love
though I piss in the corner of
the lowest part of the roof—
you unfortunately will be
abandoned. If I say
'You are now in me,' but I
want to live on the roof
at night and during the day,
but with access to the stairs
so I can do my business when
I want, outside—but I am loyal,
I only want to be in the cool bushes
at night (this is not semantic)—
you will be unfortunately
abandoned. And If I say 'Here
is my obsession, scarves and
strangers, ' even though my dog
dandruff perfumes deep into
the strings, sand and salt, you
will be unfortunately abandoned.
Where am I? I am on the roof,
in the sun in the corner on my side,
in the dirt in shadow; under the
palm tree shitting; sleeping in
a swarm of scarves and strangers
watching with closed eyes
gummed with salt and spit the
welded together buses.
AGAINST THE SURPLUS OF BIRD
Dogs and strangers and glances
fill the riverbank, come to
abandon esthetic longings. Not the
dogs but the strangers. And the
glances. Fallow delusion takes
more scrubbing at the river,
barks until hoarse in the dog throats.
Strangers find strangeness in other
strangers, but the thing about
making money is. In the river tossing
away no one is waiting; its opposite.
Ruins sit back over there. They
are the were that makes the will be,
the dogs and glances for the still-
starved strangers in the what is left.
Scott Inguito lives in San Francisco and is the author of the chapbook Dear Jack, published by Momotombo Press.