We aren't cephalopods, e.g.

I think it’s easy to believe
that mice kill men; it’s easier,
still, to find the converse true.

True like the wintermints, your
girlfriend, or the sly octopus,
judging the southern African lineup
(here from the the whole world coming)
to choose eight straight winners.
Incredible, really.
And to whose grave establishment,
has the party created,
a vague sense of irony,
or a corpuscle of raw iron turnip
coasting out like the murky pump of
buttresses, lunches.
That’s right world, cephalopoda
have heads too. Hearts, also, and
tentacles from here to Tuesday to tomorrow
to Monday. Again—the day of the sun.

If I had to believe in some type of man
to set the bar for others, it would be a lectitorn
a goldfinch in a Petrarchan sonnet, the kind
that fill your eyes with tears. Or used to,
at least: we haven’t all been to Bunker Hill,
but I have. I’d seen the casino there, tasted
the Indians yams and medium-cooked stripsteak.
It was all much better than Squanto could have
imagined: which is a heartless, spineless way of
admitting the unfathomable horror of the old way
of life, upon knowing ours; of the old guard hearing
our new petulant girls, pornstars faking orgiastic
sentiment, just gross poor women sluts like slots like
poker tables dirty, depressed, naked with skulls with
iron pots with dirty hayseed mannequins with liquor
cigarette potty stains,
dirty red pretty lipstick fucking until they’re sick, five minutes
at a time, time for 5, time for lunch, time for the threesome,
time for the breathmint, time for the aftershave, time for
the shower, time to eat breakfast, time to commute home,
time to review the mortgage, time to gauge the amount of
resin in the tires, resin in the pipe the only flute to tomorrow,
the only tulip for the brain the only way to stay same the only
curse fucking curse like a furnace like a cat like a kitten like a cat
revisited: a fucked up cat a golf course a wizard a dead wizard a
new man a new plan a canal Panama

a desert a whelp a kid a soccer tourney
a mother driving a mother
wiving a mother bringing her son a sandwich
when there’s already fruit rollups
it’s the dusty then the clean
the cloudy then the sheen I mean the clear
the dirty the milky the rainy the feared
men, the clasping dirty re-trained brains
the minds of many, the clans, the kooks,
the verily verb missing the man with his lantern
keeps returning being so meta being too thin
getting into drugs getting into Vogue getting into
the club getting into kids things getting pregnant getting fucked
getting new shoes getting chewed out getting cheated on getting
killed getting new getting knowledge getting dome getting head
getting gravy at the gravy store (who has heard of this?
who has heard of that? who has planted this?)

another parenthetical needed—nobody plants anything, anymore!
the real sweet moments overlooked
or turned into something “sweetheart” or “downhome” or “authentic”
the real parts turned out the real parts turned in the man in the mannequin
posing as a mannequin
the man named Quinn
the Black Man loving to rhyme again
just listen to rap and hear me grin
hear me run hear me bunch hear me yipes hear me yanks year me yet
hear me left