I 

None of us are corpses yet and I throw shade, 

Miss Jean Brodie-style shade, at the young women giggling 

as the yogi tells us this is our time, the time 

we have earned through choosing to work our bodies 

in a 130 degree heat index, in 80% humidity. 

The minutes tick away as I seethe at their Lululemons, 

even though I know this is like importing harlequin 

ladybeetles to control aphids, planting Tree of Heavens 

to prevent hillside erosion. Correctives cause their own 

misalignments and in them we miss our own little deaths.  

II

This world is an irritating and irrational one 

full of racism, corporate colonialism, and jeggings, 

which don’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge 

their stirrup pants roots. My favorite punk rocker/ 

animal lover/suicide said that the world made no sense.  

So many days I agree with her. Other days I will choose 

to misinterpret my second favorite suicide, Nicolas Chamfort, 

and shout, “the heart must either break or turn to lead,” 

because homographs are God’s gift to the despondently hopeful. 

Then I come out a leader, swinging, like a wild-souled cephalopod 

I’ve seen in Christ-like graffiti where a two-armed figure 

enjoins, “If you ain’t got no one to hate on, hate on me.  

Drunk Octopus wants to fight.” 

III

Thank you, savior cephalopod, tip the tables 

of the moneychangers in the temple of my hate 

so I may no longer store it up, slow loris style, 

in a gland on my elbow. My first victim was always 

the closest, like a megalodon rousing from a million-year sleep 

to destroy the nuclear sub that woke her before hitting  

an innocent 747 and the not-so-innocent suicide hotspot, 

the Golden Gate Bridge. She is as symbolic as the Navy 

using the retired supercarrier USS America as target practice. 

IV

Are you ready to stop target practicing on yourself? 

Ready to find your inner MegaShark to troll the oceans 

of the schoolyards and malls for jerks, scumbags, 

and others who psychologist R.D. Laing says do violence 

in the name of love? Can you stop fighting the giant octopus 

long enough to team up and form the Justice League of Bitches? 

Can you take Laing as a mantra and not believe that being  

in formation means doing right? You may abbreviate it, 

“if everyone jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you,” 

if that’s more helpful. If not, can you at least make the shape 

of the thing? We will all be corpses soon enough.