"The Failure of Our Social Norms"

[execution_sutra]

The two ugliest people at my school fell in love.
It was horrible. They looked
nothing like the sea
and they must have been ruining the sunset
for everybody else.

I guess it's nature.
Who else would design
a love so awkward? Her
head was sallow and droopy, flesh
like the jowels of my dog, eyes
black and hollow and
she never even wore makeup. She
must have been fat. Her clothes sagged.

And someone must have told her
"no matter how many times you kiss that toad
it's not a prince. Droopy girls
don't get fairy-tales."
    If no one had,
I wish they would've. His
back must have been a coarse brush, knuckles
almost dragged ground, shoulders
broad and empty goalposts. How
does such a muscled thing fail? It's
got to be impossible. And just think of the children.
    If no one had,
I wish they would've. Sallow russian sluagh
mates with wretched cavern troll. Intolerable.

And it served them right
the blood in their irises
stinging when they looked at us
and stinging when they saw themselves
and stinging when they saw eachother.
They ought to be ashamed of holding
paws, of holding
claws like eloped circus freakshow midgets
because
    when we went home,
the goddess posters, the glossy magazines,
they were empty,
as if the word love didn't belong to us
any more.

-----

This poem was featured in Cal State San Bernardino's 2005 issue of The Pacific Review.