Enjoy Being Human

Smoking Banana Peels in the Circle K Parking Lot

When we heard that smoking banana peels could get you high,
Pauly and I bought every single banana at our neighborhood Circle K.
We stripped 'em and left the naked bananas piled up
on top of a handicapped parking spot.
We were crazy enough to smoke Circle K bananas,
but not crazy enough to actually eat them.

For half an hour we breathed in the banana smoke,
asking each other "Do you feel anything yet?” over & over again.
After awhile I looked at my reflection in a windshield
and it turned me on —I looked like Carmen Miranda!
The streetlight overhead
was my fruit hat.

I tried to tell Pauly but he was too busy jamming a straw
into a payphone coin slot;
he thought it was a giant coconut.
Pauly kept shaking his right hand because it had turned into a maraca.
I got into our car and flipped on the radio. Every song on every station
was Harry Belafonte singing "six foot seven foot eight foot bunch"

When we came down,
Pauly and I decided to experiment with other produce.
We snorted carrot shavings;
held pulped grapes beneath our tongues until our lips were purple and stiff;
we injected pineapple juice between our toes;
burnt cubes of cantaloupes on our spoons until they were black puddles;
and rolled fat joints packed
with shredded ginger and papaya.

Eventually,
our photos went up at all the supermarkets
and we couldn't buy a pear in this town without a court order.
We tried getting underage kids to buy the fruit for us,
but they got wise to just how trippy a bag full of kiwis could be
and kept the good shit for themselves.

Sometimes we would drive to Mexico and buy oranges on the side of the road,
rubbing our faces into the slices until the citrus fumes made us
dream of Aztec gods dancing on our cheekbones.

None of those fruits, though, ever got us as high
as those Circle K bananas.

Notes From A Foreign Correspondent, Found At The Blast Site

Such a strange people!

They paint their faces
with such beautiful filters;

and only listen to truths
through layers of smart-glass
that are always spider-webbing
from obsolescence.

Sometimes I pin them
and they take me home,
like obedient butterflies.

Tandem Harbors

ceremonies anchor us in bliss
until time & regret
rust the chain.

If we unmoor
towards separate horizons,
I’ll always remember the way
our tongues knotted into the shape of flowers
beneath an arch draped in handmade lace
the color of gold and frost.

How your fingers scattered bird seed across your chest
so doves could tattoo our names
on your heart
with their beaks.

The two of us savoring bonbons in the chapel,
confectionaries dancing in our mouths,
while they hung cigarette girls from the chandeliers;
Your drunk father,
drooling under the table,
singing 'Bette Davis Eyes'
while Stevie Nicks read your palm.

And I’ll never forget,
years later,
driving to the pawn shop
with a gold promise heavy in my hands.
I saw platinum sirens in fishnets outside the shop
building skyscrapers out of smoke.
It made me think about the first time I saw you:
Coughing up a lung at dawn’s grand opening,
waiting for the 51 bus to punch through the
early morning’s grapefruit light.
And all I wanted to do,
at that moment,
was give you all the air in my lungs
so you’d never go another day
without breathing easy.

Laika at the Edge of the Known Universe

Laika runs her tongue
across the arm of the galaxy.

Somewhere,
her ball is rolling
up the dust of dead stars,
sailing towards the void’s open jaw.
One of those black holes
tore a patch of her fur away
during the last game of fetch.
Gravity’s teeth,
sharp and implacable,
punching through cosmonaut skin
to draw a line of blood down her right leg.

Sometimes,
she sees fellow travellers
in the quiet black:

Monkeys in orange,
trying in vain to play a golden Chuck Berry LP
on a jury-rigged turntable;
American dogs,
chasing after the approval
of owners who died light-years ago;
A bored cat,
searching for another species to worship it.

Laika can barely remember the face of Mother Russia.
She remembers Mother’s gnarled hands,
gripped around the rubber ball—
hurling her ball upwards and upwards
until the ball caught fire and screamed past the moon,
a red dot urging Laika to follow.

Floating in her capsule,
Laika dreams of soft hands petting her head.
Voices murmuring her name across the chasm
of space and time:
Such a good girl, you were always such a good girl, please come home.