Bootleg Labubus and Other Poems
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by Brian Duran-Fuentes
Bootleg Labubus ship me bootleg labubus midnight market talismans ward off global recession I can afford luxury just a little luxury clipped to hip jean posh fashion I want bootleg labubus form a scarecrow of goblins with rainbow teeth in prayer ship me bootleg labubus from the virtual shopping carts sinking slowly in the sea I want all the labubus their plush made one with my flesh desire commodified blind box challenge labubus fake dire wolf labubu watermelon labubu panopticon labubu scorched earth bitcoin labubu grilled Santa Fe labubu white City Pop labubu deportation labubu dead Hollywood labubu A.I. grey goo labubu ship me all the labubus Regigigas Trumpet by the steel pipe jazz lick by the steel pipe echo as a rival shadow as a rival city drains are empty working hours are empty trumpet by the steel pipe old sax by the steel pipe and yellow brick landscape dead factory landscape crimson mustang fire lawyer billboard fire old sax by the steel pipe swing dance by the steel pipe and winners left unnamed and losers left unnamed just a mirror blood bond just a twin tone blood bond Armin Küpper pipeline clap echo jam pipeline in the footage daylight in approaching daylight I don’t want sacred sleep but I need sacred sleep old sax by the steel pipe drone doom by the steel pipe went to see my father dreamt I had a father beyond the strip mall doors swimming pool strip mall doors museums for the French mild salsa for the French blonde man said you can’t cross the bus you take can’t cross but here once stood my home Monsanto took my home old sax by the steel pipe cellphone by the steel pipe your paycheck has gone up your mortgage has gone up blood pressure has gone up ocean tides have gone up these lines of text digress to wonder if in verse the mind finds bastion the horses hear trumpets but only you can hear the silence in the brass old sax by the steel pipe trochees by the steel pipe and iambs stepping back an echo stepping back wrong foot forward after twist the ankle after never managed learning how to play squash either save file overwritten poem overwritten battle forward ready Regigigas ready rain in appendages moss in appendages old sax by the steel pipe chiptune by the steel pipe command that which is caught I made that which is caught in rock in ice in steel in spark in drake old sax by the steel pipe roaring by the steel pipe never do we wonder what materials travel what goods we get in trade language is a battle culture is a battle know what types you’re up against Clock Out Loading Screen Swayed pierced in the day on water, gleaming megalopolis sinking balconies rendered in texture graphics distorted bodies for assets beyond the skybox picture the hallways empty while everyone fails to sleep they suffer no shadows they worship no name Papasquiaro Death Mask (Fragment A) You the night whatever of the dirty upright coins until a dog comes to ride convulsive homeless vampires and those baptized with sweat of mosh pits to the electric that not only reverberates foreskin among the anthills, dinosaur that dances to bitch at the storms magma and pubic hairs perfumed with hyacinth. You who were the night stained with a turtle egg that comes out of CDs would bang his head against the planet and spill the egg to be that after that even if you met me on the street and you told me, hold my tepache son, son, or you tame time, as we did with the wolf, a time that lends its ass to the cool guy in a shit movie, to know what the sea peoples got drunk with before they incinerated themselves Papasquiaro Death Mask (Fragment B) who were the tricks and velvety cicadas, remains coins after forgoing sleep, on the sidewalk the ground and in its humps summons the cannabis liquor, and umami rain, shade of the poplar tree on Saturdays, the snakes made of pure undulate pickled tissue for the hangover after poetry was made of bleach portraying the rites to asshole dead gods and I who in '97 swore that there were only 3 years of history left some Buddha-faced comet intoxicated with the film that swallowed by the sun in a single wum-bah and there would be no more songs, no movies or cereals and I who in '97 wouldn't know poetry I am going to commune with the metal of the city, maybe not. In a third of lives, nothing happens, in another third, you die, in another third a time tamed with beatings and hunger, ride among the centuries of unreleased eras, the orgasms that we never stirred in Eurydice because we played against memory. Brian Duran-Fuentes is a poet, thriving like lichen on liminal spaces. |