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The Price of Perfection / Meet Me at College

Two Poems

The Price of Perfection


People pour in, companies pour in.
Toddie, elephant
you’re so complete I’d lie for
your oeuvre’s commemorative
evocable love-defense, its watery touch
distant plump scabs
smattered red with cardboard.

If you want a who’s-is of getting money
pencil in all-transparent media prefecture humor
seabeds asshole not bathymetry stretched to asses leaving
headlands to swirling depths
smirks over tons of brands shoaling processed ass as well.

I do my hair and mod challenges lying ahead in not even the grave
life-apprenticing, appearing bright and withholding
deeper pits of my disdain for you. Circularly I hope not. I love
the price of perfection for when it comes.

Locked prototype so blessed friendly. Wild shots, barren ground,
no one to release you otherwise. Camming in microwear
wanting the foreseen gruntwork enchanted
specific mired gnomes I love. Large pits are wider and encrypt
the stinking barrel I crawl around in.

I don’t forgive putrescent taglines, nor would you,
and I don’t forgive the price of perfection.


Divider

Meet Me at College


with few tics
maintain face
sufferers

I have to remind myself

college tripe edged
manufacturer trough
statespersons and stents
sufferers’ faces
dealing emulate. Cover
on the balcony embarrassed
careful hedon
illiquid rupture
excuses nurse
dark horse drinks gaping

Any applicable returns
stanch the flu
meet me at college
where the air is blue
protect the industry
and choose no obscure directives.

Junior mortician
physics barbers
excuse-nurses’
gasoline board
converts gifted right

close out
empty hours parents’
classist taste cripplingly arises
the good projects poor puffing
you’d rather not say it

provided horrible regrets
alternating sweet homes
parents’ niche
meted cunning’s expected
essays on yourself
zinc betters anyone cold

parse them terrified demand immunity of
bunk fine
couple doctors waiting gust doing
for you with fulfilled idioms and platter
nervous mice for the gift of forfeiture.


J. GORDON FAYLOR is the author of People Skulk (Smiling Mind Documents, 2019), Plummet (TROLL THREAD, 2018), and Registration Caspar (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016), and is the editor of Gauss PDF and the managing editor of SFMOMA’s Open Space. He lives in Oakland.