Scissors

                You gotta love all your little hatreds.
                        —Paul Hostovsky

My printers outlast my shredders,
I believe in scissors more than a pen.
I rip up my notes, rarely keep records,
and burn my manuscripts in salty fens.

I find certain words are static charges
alive with present shock and rumble:
annoyance, dryness, blockage, sludge,
black-swan and crumple, 

the color cyan: piercing, glancing,
inhospitable—the nut straight at poker,
the sound of all-in, then raking the chips 
across the felt. I wonder at the change

on the TV screens. We used to watch
video songs. My children saw baby shows
with sing alongs, we had Prince, R.E.M.,
and late King Crimson’s Elephant Talk.

I walked in gardens of fourteen years 
of music. I stumbled in devilish reality 
shows, and no one but the dimwits 
thought it was anything but scripted, 

lives forgotten, now prescribed, lurking 
for love, measured out in scoops 
of worldspeak at Starbucks. Tall? Grande?
Or Venti? What can I get started for you

today? It became comforting to destroy 
rather than create—we’d been given 
examples, albeit rotten and trite, 
every night at 8. The world changed, entire.