FOUR POEMS by NATE HOIL
Christ went broke buying lunch for his apostles.
I want to meet a porn star while pretending to work at the farmer’s market.
I want to be wearing a straw hat and overalls,
with a piece of grass between my teeth.
I’m in a field full of nuns and I’m tossing up flowers.
I’m throwing them up through my mouth.
There’s this phonebook I have with every porn star in it.
I want to date a porn star and leave her for a nun.
In a suit I look like Cary Grant
returning from the women’s bathroom.
I tuck my shirt in and wipe my forehead with my cold dead hands.
I hope you see the light in me.
There’s a blinding light coming out of my eyes.
I see my reflection on every surface,
even a brick wall.
Tell God to bring their kitty over.
There’s broken glass in my bed.
STERN STARES FROM SHADOWY PLACES.
I’d steal planes and trains, but I never steal cars.
Stealing cars is easy.
I want to steal someone’s house.
Like most things, not every dollar has one particular owner.
I want to steal a cement mixer,
or a semi with a trailer full of race horses.
Find me robbing empty banks and out of business convenient stores.
It’s only a gun fight if there’s more than one gun.
What’s the most useless moment that’s ever been lived through?
Other than running through thousands of fields,
most of which look exactly the same.
Now I’m running from a crime scene.
Now I’m breaking through the police tape like a ribbon across a finish line.
I want to kiss the shadow of your outward-stretched hand
while the whole world covers its tracks with dirt.
The wind isn’t howling at anyone in particular.
Give me somewhere to put my trash.
The octopus generation.
I’m a beautiful butterfly with a helmet made of cinderblock.
You can call me
if you find yourself falling through the air.
I couldn’t lift a bag of feathers
the size of a stadium,
but I could slingshot a bankroll into the popcorn kernel of existence.
In this room there’s no room for the sky.
There are roses on the wall growing out of the wallpaper.
I’m excusing myself from your birthday party
to send care packages of expired produce to my enemies.
Some people package their nerves like a knot of broken necks.
A page falls to Earth so I pick it up and I read it
aloud like an opera singer standing at the edge of time.
Each sentence is an attempt to find something true.
I’m a sexy nurse,
come and tuck me in.
Ways to be happy without sacrificing goats.
Put my drink in your glass.
Let’s make this a party.
I’m looking for a woman with money to shoot me off my horse.
If they don’t have a big bank-account I can take it from their mother.
I leave their house in a Mercedes.
My penance is the nutrients in their hands.
My horoscope predicts a meeting with a recently thawed velociraptor.
Meanwhile I play four-square with three unknown figures in snorkeling gear.
Sometimes I forget things while they’re happening.
I spend most of the time whispering secrets to the shared apartment wall.
My old kidney makes a flowerpot.
Some people are so pretty that I want them to use my head as a match stick.
What’s the difference between living here and freezing to death?
Both will force smiles on blue faces.
Nate Hoil has words at natehoil.com and is on Twitter @natehoil.