coyote don't go to work so good i gotta tie 'im up and shut
'im down esp. that damn yapping mouth of his nobody
in an office wanna hear what can't bear what he has to
say might shake 'em all up wreck their whole day —
well their whole living breathing eating shitting
computer-staring bussing training cussing playing
fucking paying might rattle their whole subway off its
track and you know i can't concentrate if i listen to him
if i listen to him i can't even get on that train can't even
sit in that blue chair can't even pretend to care, see,
coyote wants to kill me
wants me to lose my job starve to death go to jail get exported
extorted deported sent to work on a road crew wants me
to live. gets really bored sitting in a desk all day staring
at the big square flickering eye must
stand up and turn around in a circle to lie back again
a thousand times a day til he's worn a circle in the gray
no-pile carpet a thousand times a minute til he
looks like his own little gray cyclone ears and tail
whipping round and round puts me right into a
trance watching him and i stare at the silent space
in the middle and see mountains and bellydancers
and backslidden buddhas with flashing knives
and the ghost of my great-grandmother's
terrier and lonely Osa in cold dark cave giving sticky twins
the birth and all sudden i havene't done a thing
all day gotta tie 'im up or he'll jump and
eat out my throat to keep me jump me right at the door
of the big glass building reflecting my blood-mess all over the sidewalk
and windows and they have to go to all the trouble to call
window washers with their long squeegies and my body dead
and coyote says,
Well, that's a lot better we can go live somewhere now,
someplace with at least a single sagebrush and a rabbit
to eat over and over every day same jack
which may sound boring but hell-of-a-lot better
than this, least the rabbit change his name & come
back to life not this death and slow sucking. that's what
coyote say, so
because he'll kill me, distract me and eat my lunch
when i'm not looking i tie 'im up tight wrap shoelaces
round his snout cram him deep down some dark corner
where i live but don't go. coyote don't see
i gotta eat to live gotta work to eat gotta suck the teat
gotta gotta gotta gotta go.
c o y o t e
n e x t