Dallas Clayton
CAPTAIN
CAPTAIN
When the ship is going down
and your baby is still sleeping
do you wake her
to let her know its over
or close your eyes
and lay beside her
waiting?
ASSIGNMENT
ASSIGNMENT
How carefree it is
to be born into a gang.
Lines clearly drawn
enemies color-coordinated
no other goal
but to posture,
hate,
attack
and attempt to survive past your 30s.
PERFECT END
PERFECT END
In the original story
of the Little Mermaid
Ariel is given a knife
by her sisters and told to kill the Prince
so she can become a mermaid forever.
Instead she commits suicide
by throwing herself over the side of a ship.
This didn’t make it
into the motion picture.
RESOLUTIONS PART II
RESOLUTIONS PART II
Every day this year
I would like to go somewhere new
and do something I have never done.
Nothing too fancy.
Just an attempt
at embracing the unfamiliar
and remembering
that no one really
has any idea
what it’s all about
in the first place.
CONTACT
CONTACT
There’s only so hard you can throw something
before it comes whistling back down
and lands on top of you.
Even if you try all day.
You’ll never get it into space.
DANGER
DANGER
What must it be like
to decide to start a company
that makes barbed wire
for keeping people out of places
that look so fun to get inside
that they’d be willing to climb a fence.
BALENCIAGA
BALENCIAGA
When the water begins to rise
and your fingers are too flustered
to fasten a raft
from salvaged wood
and leftover rope
will you regret
the cumulative hours you’ve spent
the past years
looking at purses online
and wondering how many is too many?
RUNNING
RUNNING
My son’s cat escaped three times.
The last time he was gone over a month.
Jumped out the kitchen window
two stories down
And somehow ended up in Studio City.
When I went to retrieve him
the people were nice enough
a small apartment
and more love for cats than I ever could muster.
We packed him into the cage
then back in the car
for [...]
PRAYER
PRAYER
Thanks this evening
for all the diseases
I did not contract
on accident
oblivious
to the many tiny animals,
wild plants,
and floating particles
waiting for a host
to cripple.
FEAR
FEAR
You can catch on fire
in one quick flash
if you get close enough
to the sun.
And even way down here
you can get pretty sore
just walking around with you shirt off.
ACRES
ACRES
I swear I’ve been
to more fancy houses than I could care to count
big as all hell in real life
but never once
with hologram wallpaper
and foods you can’t buy yet
because they don’t have names.
NO LIMIT
NO LIMIT
We’ve been raising a few generations now
-each more fevered than the last-
thinking that modeling
is a noble and necessary profession.
OLDEN TIMES
OLDEN TIMES
Must have been nice
to be able to rob a bank
in the days when it was cool.
Just walk right up to the teller
waving a pistol around,
bandana over your mouth
making your demands.
In and out,
clean as a whistle.
No trouble at all.
Or maybe it wasn’t nice.
Maybe it made you sad
to take things from people
by scaring them into thinking
you’d [...]