Pop goes the weasel as a metaphorical subtext!

What’s Inside (Pandora)

We do not just like our boxes
We love and nourish them
Like the mimicry of newborns;

When these boxes say follow
More often then not, we
Follow as if hypnotized by
What or who we are supposed
To be representing.

Human beasts, my imbalanced
Credit card debt generation,
Are fragile and ornery like
Constructed mathematical
Limitations;

The economy, drinking
Our own blood and spitting
It back into the wound
Now damaged as if it could
Reform and re-form and

And become a better box
Full of fancy multi-colored
Ribbons, and when it opened
No jester or weasel popping
Out to our surprise

Merely a swath of mouths
Void of salvia and comfort
Screaming in our ears
As if to ask the question
If we are boxed and remain
In our boxes,
How can we see what is
Beyond our borders,
Our electrified fences?

by Micah Zevin 2008

Stop Humping...Oh! I mean jumping on our bed!

House Party

All these bastards are lounging
On my leather couch in the
Living room.

Yes, it’s a party, but if they go
Into the off-limits bedroom
To sit on the fire-escape,

And come back to lie on the bed
For a tongue session,
My fiancée and I will be furious,

Because we are the only ones that
Claim a stake to this territory
Where no one fears reprisal

Or embarrassment.

by Micah Zevin 2008.

No Fork in the Road to Gentrification

Crossroads

We work on top of the remains of the industrial complex.
14th street and Astoria boulevard trucks of petroleum
And tars deliver nausea through library windows
While across the street men do not lumber,
They build your kitchen tables, desks and bureaus,
Carefully sawing the shape you will call home
And place your things on.

By the bodega downstairs, glass is carved for windows,
Storefronts, indoor gardens; and one can only hope
You see yourself in their not so tinted reflections,
The future. I will call this forward movement
The condominium, the co-op, the high priced rental
By Astoria park so that the gentrified too can sample
The delectable taste of the East River,

The twittering of birds that once the mall is built
And the poor have left will be trendsetter territory,
The new Williamsburg where the arts will not flourish
Because the rent will become a surreal rendering
Soon, there will be no more homes to care for
The children coming home from school to projects
Will have moved, vanished or become hallucinations

Yet, traffic’s death trap on 21st will still be there,
Magnified by the loss of small factory jobs present, long ago,
The forced migration of a population to a netherworld
At the edge of the darkest bodies of water only to be replaced
by upper class city dwellers rummaging through the
Neighborhoods stark and crumbling past for gemstones
to open and attract this crowd to its magnetic temptations .

by Micah Zevin
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