any secrets can keep to infinity
as long as they aren't my own

camus, albert

there against the desk door chair
and your lover is ringing ringing
they always want to have me over
listen don't invite her for dinner
one drink more won't kill you

i am a wolf in wolf's clothing
don't ask how many members
of my thesis committee i fucked
any secrets can keep to infinity
as long as they aren't my own

you think this is chocolate cake
i am the proverbial empty shell
you think i want you to fill me
but i make you an empty shell
pressing my up against your

my body is a slow rifle
every professor is game
oh frosting you like that
even though i leave you
screwed bleeding troubled

i haven't taken any pedagogy courses
though i do teach them the hard way
a sickness with the sun in your eyes
where everyone hopes to judge you
pausing first to zip up their trousers


chomsky, noam

there is nothing more
glamorous than an aging
bored dominatrix


cixous, hélène

i once gave my principal a really scathing semester evaluation
they were supposed to be anonymous
though any student could easily recognize my handwriting
jackass never came by my class to see it

six months later he referred to my brutal commentary in meetings
and attributed the remarks to a math teacher
surprise surprise when next fall we had hired a new math teacher
though the first one got great student reviews

in seventh grade i took a drafting course that changed my life
say what you will about pretty faces
that may be what landed you the job you were looking for
but penmanship is how you keep it

some people would simply not have written such nasty criticism
and none of those people are me

during the course of my childhood it was revealed
that woody woodpecker was voiced by a woman
which i felt very intensely as a kind of betrayal
instantly transforming woody into medusa laughing

this is also my first inkling of what the closet means
and how disturbing it is when something pops out of one
because my happy happy cartoon world was infiltrated
then shattered by the suddenly gay warner brothers agenda

the wrench of polymorphous perversity
jacked up the cogs of my consciousness
initiating me into the squeaky wheel club
where i’ve messed with admin ever since

there is indeed much to be said for bucking the man’s language
but if instead you discover a queer ability to proficiently speak it



de beauvoir, simone

when i sigh i wish we had known each other
she cinematically protests she is ugly in love
such an offhandedly deft render of annie hall
it is impossible to say she was only kidding

looking up vaguely under the direction of her pointed finger
outside a second hand store with shabby hats in the window
i am standing on a windy corner somewhere in new york city

we drop it and my thoughts fly to cimetière du montparnasse
remembering how i left two business cards on their one tomb
so jean and simone don't bicker over my contact info in hell

wherever this angelic duo of existentialism resides
i hope they are a safe distance from the badgering
the how often did they fuck and was she a lesbian
folded away under a legacy of good work together


de certeau, michel

i took out eighty thousand dollars in student loans
so that when everything i write omits capital letters
people do not think of me as an ignorant hippie type
but as a willfully detached and pretentious intellectual

it's amazing how schooling can elevate simple aesthetics
to the level of a serious political argument and real strategy
even while school itself thinks of me as grossly unprofessional
unable to map how deeply i took advantage of what it had to offer

also toward this end i spent a lot of the loan money on a trip to paris
climbing all over historic artifacts that infused me with a profound sense
of not giving a damn about anything i can't relate back to my own self-worth
poaching from the territory of rules what i need to carve out my own constellation

the loans have a very high fixed rate of interest
but then so does the poet who spent this money