Parading Paranoids

I. Marriage

Don’t bring grief into someone’s life
immediately: be deliberate, delicate,
and begin slowly--hide keys, have lover
call mid-day, refuse relations’ feasts.
You must seek balance. Have your penitentiary
correct routine annoyances of vagabondage,
pickpocketings, but never relax surveillance.
Organize your reign with monstrous glee:
fertilize the sober soil so that vice
multiplies. Squeeze the toothpaste’s top,
never remember trash night, stuff joints
under the cushions, be blissful when strangers
ring the bell. Don’t bicker or slap--
better that you simulate the South Pole,
tentless, carving your own fingernail grave.
Keep the fruit bowl filled, the sheets clean.
Pay the bills, whisper in your sleep, and open
your windows and your veins: wet back
against wet back, inch near the edge.
Remove yourself from yourself.

II. Divorce

For the perfect crime add layers:
hang out at thrift stores,
buying flannel shirts and extra-large
wing-tips. In your dead man’s clothes
and rusty Pinto breathe in
the sooty scent of the Seventies
as you glue yourself to the VCR,
viewing and re-viewing Gimme Shelter.
Live in an abandoned water tank
and fool the small-town neighbors
by miking your voice through banks
of suspended speakers. Inhale helium.
Sharpen knives daily. Gloved, clean
with peroxide, dry with black napkins.
Stock up on duct tape, valium,
fruit juice, books by Genet,
and gauze, in case of accidents.
For your victim, choose an ex-lover.
She will be suitably depressed, angered,
gullible. Lure her to the river
with cocaine and pirate tapes of the Stones.
Bring tequila: salt, shot, then suck.
Confuse police with no signs of struggle.
Perform pagan pranks--a slow dance,
an orderly fire. Send odors downwind.
Beneath the four-dog moon avoid iron
insects. Ease your pain. Leave town.