Green fluid drools from my shoulder.
I can’t carry the tray I’m supposed to
and you know what they do to broken
robots, don’t you? They pop their heads.
They yank out their uranium and belts.
They donate parts to art schools so
bug-brained sculptors can spot-weld
awful stupid things left to rust
in the backyards of houses where only
art students have lived so long,
the houses have forgotten everything
but the drunk names nicked into
their hardwood. The stars over such houses
don’t bother. A crow made of the husks
of crows, police cruisers’ mechanical
fins flicking out of the dark. You sleep
on rubber sheets because big genitalia
keep coming to get you, grasshoppers
clinging to the screens like transmitters,
you can hear the owls lying to you,
the brake factory releasing green steam,
the beautiful rhetoric pouring from
the conquerors’ porcelain mouths.
They lied to you about what they knew
and they lied to you about what they didn’t.
They told you to put down your sword
and welcomed you into the city. They said
you’d get used to the subterranean din,
the chalky residue, suspicious meats,
suspicious glues. And when what they told you
you wanted you got and stopped wanting?
And what they told you you needed
you didn’t want to need? Which
of the swallowed poisons do you try
to bring back up, which best left
to pass through? There’s the truth-sounding
lie and the lie that makes no sound,
dropped to depths unilluminable.
My father lied to me about the reward.
My mother lied to me for my own good.
At least turn me over so I can see the sky.