Poem: Wear Something Silk For Quitting Time

Wear Something Silk For Quitting Time

It was my job in the environmental lab
to pinch rubber tops of glass droppers
and squeeze out drops of of aitch see ell,
and aitch three bee oh three,
into glass bottoms. But they never let me use any of it.

Good god, I still want acid drops for the fabric of society
to eat polygon holes out of that bleached table cloth,
So managers like us can’t point or yank at it for support,
can’t mark it up with explanatory graphs,
and can’t keep us looking at each other
through constitutional veils.

When you gonna let the clothes out of the wardrobe?
Tumnus isn’t hopping to fetch them
to the other side and give them reign over kingdoms
of cgi crowds lifting up the same repeated arm
and smiling like horny slaves up at moth worried uniforms.

Let’s put the guns down and feel the weight of hammers
and make rock dust out of chiseled mannequins,
American Idols, textile facades,  
and infrastructures of finance that enclose us
in dimensions we wear but can't point to.

From everywhere, around the world, we’ll go dancing.
Dressing down cops and bosses, twirling in bell dresses, 
dressing up as each other, and wearing out the unity of
fabric sewn together, by un-thanked fingers padded
with worked to death skin, and sold to be worn by veiled bodies
that sell data entry, words for students, the grip of a broom
and the embroidery of geniuses like us.