BEFORE THE GAME
Shut one eye then the other
Peek into every corner of yourself
See that there are no nails no thieves
See that there are cuckoo’s eggs
Shut then the other eye
Squat and jump
Jump jump high high
On top of yourself
Fall then with all your weight
Fall for days on end deep deep deep
To the bottom of your abyss
Who [...]

“Unable as yet to walk, or even to stand up. . . he nevertheless overcomes the obstructions. . . and, fixing his attitude in a slightly leaning-forward position, in order to hold it in his gaze, brings back an instantaneous aspect of the image.”
- Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage
/
My baby rolled over and squirmed back [...]

Early morning. Trash day. Haul cart to street.
Boxers. Button fly. Neighbor smiles, then eyes
grow wide. Noticing then, a new day’s breeze.

Dear Big Jesus,
Please don’t bleed tears tomorrow.
I’m just helping St Jenny w/the girls.
We’re cool. You’re a hero
who didn’t get back up.
Regards,
Some man’s son

Lucia, my distant love
You predict me, as ever. Yes, the woods again were where I found myself, wolves singing their hungry sleep songs, but returned to our home, a half empty shell of what we haven’t built, but abide there on our finest days. Fuel for my fires was depleted in days and another week [...]

A piece of a man had broken off in a road. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
As he stooped to pick up another piece he came apart at the waist.
His bottom half was still standing. He walked over on his elbows and grabbed the seat of his pants and said, legs [...]

There are no camels in this combo crèche,
assembled in Malaysia, cooked in Singapore.
Pieces of play, each in place, dominate the living
room, diverting our path to where we cleanse
and empty and brush the store-bought teeth,
neither sneer nor smile from their snap-tight hold.
The lone cow’s head is broken, decapitated
last season, lost in the vacuum or the latest
attempt [...]

© 1997 by Peter Johnson.
from Pretty Happy! White Pine Press, New York, 1997.
Hell
“If you want to understand the social and political history of modern man, study hell.” – Thomas Merton
It’s probably like the excitement of your first cigarette, but it lasts forever, that dizzying nausea — the Unknown: with imitation human heads on their [...]

Ape
You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father, who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.
I’ve had enough monkey, cried father.
You didn’t eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.
I’ll just nibble on its forehead, and then I’ve had enough, said father.
I [...]

The Man Rock
A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits a longtime to be over.
It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when he got outside.
A rock asks only what is a rock.
A rock waits to be a [...]