I.

Self-deception police wear red

slippers and yellow suits Comet-gliding

through rain Nodding diplomatically to the dog, never acknowledging

you Hiding parking tickets in side mirrors, bovine

contortions as you chew, the trapeze-like idiocy

of your laugh Arraigning you for existential

exhibitionism: to engage in philosophical despair

II.

publicly. The how of mind

misinterpreted as the what Hypostatizing

why Deleting the unparticular

from the person, the unmotivated act

from matter Green-eyed howling

stranded in the howl Either instinct

or speech inside the un-self-knowing violet-barred

III.

God-cell. The origin of skepticism

in the recurrent sprawled-by-the-heater

dream in which Kafka is the mailman and the mail

is your mother Appears again the slaughterer

of perspective and mood, the categorical

rejection, the eternal human ironed

and exported Hanging like community service

IV.

from your father’s coat hanger. Solitary

suppression of reality, antidoting

mystifications of the girl you used

to know the girl you never knew

the introjected girl picking violets Peering

through chain-link vivisection The girl

converted into self-discipline and logic, metaphorical

V.

God-fearing dogma. The tame in us murders