Friday, September 25, 2009

The Toga Party

One morning James
awoke to find
his bed in the middle
of the street.

An appropriately formal
letter pinned to his head
said he'd been evicted.

Suddenly he saw
some problems with sleeping
in the nude.

Fashioning a toga
from a tired bedsheet,
he recalled a party
to which he'd once worn
something similar
under his clothes.

The night had taken
an awkward turn
when he forgot to remove
a layer and went home
with a psychology major.
James could not explain
his choice of underwear.

He hoped his landlord
would show more sympathy.

A relief, then,
that the man
answered his door in attire
revealing a proclivity
for roman trash culture.

James got his room back
at a discounted rate.
In it he discovered
a vat of grapes
and a rack of new garments,
and he never slept
naked again.

-the ambassador

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Graffiti Animation

This is a short film called MUTO by a Latin American artist called Blu. I was shown this earlier this year by a friend, but had forgotten about it before tonight. Graphic media like nothing I've never seen. Enjoy.


untitled

You are
all creatures I do
not recognize,
and still I climb,
hands tied, up
a worn rope
to gaze inside a gut.

All I see
is aflame.
I have written
down my name
many times, each
memory is more
scrambled
and strange to me.

So we take
photographs of mirrors
and move in reverse.
Someone here is
powerless precisely
because we do not believe.

This is how it goes.
A god dies
every day.
I would dream
another but
I could not cause it
to behave.

I am
only a will,
a network I can't
create. An inactive
appetite
has brought me here
weakly, I make no
appointments or promises.

A voice inhabits us.

-the ambassador

Monday, September 7, 2009

Here I Lay It Out

Unable to say I am
a victim of circumstance,
I burnt my house down.

It was made of cards
anyhow. This is why
we balance a job
and a hobby so precariously.
I am invariably
wrong.

Watch the news
tonight. Wasn't that home
beautiful on fire? A location
primed for crime
and romance, just
don't ask how many
have lived there.

A story still does. I am
evidence incarnate. Heat has
licked me clean, though I do
resonate with memory. Here
I lay it out.

-the ambassador

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Fright & Comfort

It has been years. At
slim twenty-two I have
known only so many. I
cannot cover a catastrophe
much. We will sing it again.

She bays her way into
a home, a refuge for
a recluse, or some. This
winter I will write a poem.

The edges have been lopped
off. I held the note up under
a light and trimmed it. An
unnecessary maneuver, but
the degree was such I'd sooner
scrape my fingertips than watch
the moon go down.

We will sing it again.
There is no consequence.
We will sing it again.

-the ambassador