Jon Ruseski

World’s Laziest Marxist

I know there’s something wicked inside me

I don’t need poetry to tell me that

My thoughts are not more simple or complex

Than the image on my desktop

A hand touching a jewel

I can’t tell you why

The background fill is pastel

The color not the shade

I set it that way

Accidentally

And left it

For probably

3 months now?

I’ve lost track

I am writing this poem at work

I’m not getting paid for it

But then again

I kind of am

You can thank the gig economy

None of that matters

Sure, you could say

Power whirls around us like a lousy drunk

Or love is a credit card

And money is a pyramid scheme

Romance or finance

It’s always something

You could admire the moodiness

Of a fern

How it could care less about Alexa

Whatever

Covered in fog this morning

The sun looks like the moon

Today is Halloween

For the purposes of a poem like this

That means everyday is Halloween

I like that about the world today

Times like these

You can return to the cards

In one spread

It goes

The seed

The obstacle

The door

The stakes

The outcome

These kind of things are only so useful

But if you’re doing it right

You talk to yourself

Say shit like

“This is the door you walk through”

And it might dawn on you

But there are things

We live among

Such as

Cashback rewards

And a website

Patty uses

Called Yoga Glow

One time

A digital video projection

Of yoga bro

Darren Rhodes

Said to drive the speed limit

In my mind

Which I dunno

I kinda laughed

Then immediately

Tried it

In a hot living room

With not enough space

To fully extend the poses

Sweating and

Comically unable to keep pace

With the pre-recorded class

How else to put it?

Don’t we all want a consciousness

That can accommodate

Our most indeterminate fantasies

A vogue

To propitiate

The outright juvenilia of the heart

And sanction beauty’s insufferable shortcomings

So as to greet mercy’s rainy autumn

More tenderly

And make our presence known

Or something like that

About the Waters

I didn’t know

Spa is an acronym

For the Latin phrase

Salus Per Aquas

Which means

“Health through water”

But that’s

What it says

On the card

From Ojo Caliente

Mineral spa

In Ojo,

New Mexico

Where we

Got feely

In the arsenic pool

In the lithia pool

In the silent

Meditation

Soda pool

Feeling

A little softer

Looking up

At the opaque

Opal

Sky

After Meow Wolf

Which honestly

Was the only way

To come down

From that experience

Zachary says

Soon

There will be

30 Meow Wolfs

In different major American cities

That they’ve hit

A kind of

Corporate psychedelic experience

The youth

Will one day

Collectively

Nostalgically remember

Which is

Of course

Believable

Drifting

The lush textures

Of Meow Wolf

I lost myself

Just a little

Which,

Isn’t that

What art

Can do?

Last night

At La Reina

We talked about

How our ideas

Probably

Aren’t any better

At Meow Wolf

There is an absinthe bar

Next to the gift shop

I almost bought a CD there

I was so caught up

The true

Unpasteurized

Grace

Of this life

Sprawling

My head

The desert

Outside

Filled with

Distance

Beyond

The grasp

Of our camera

Or the rental car

We relentlessly

Improperly

Called a Yaris

Even though

It was a Hyundai Accent

That was the wave we caught

We drove out

To see the Earthships

We stayed

In a cabin

On a farm

With the wood burning stove

The composting toilet

And the donkeys

And the ewes

And the rams

And so what

If there were

A few sudden moments

Of rare

Natural

Beauty

Not that I fetishize pastoral life

Eat the meat that’s there

Brecht says

Which is to say

I ate the pozole

With the

Slaughtered lamb

Slept the night

With lamb fat

Stuck in my teeth

What other use

For this body

And its crude ideas

One meme

Says that maybe

Destruction of the body

Is a revolutionary act

Making the subject

Less useful

To a capitalist

Framework

Clean living

Sold as a way

To maintain

The functionality

Of institutional property

This week

The government

Shutdown

We paid $5

To see

The ruins

Of a church

Designed by

A friar

With limited

Architectural

Knowledge

A hint

To those things

That are there

Caught up

In what dream

It’s sometimes

Hard to say

Maybe I want what’s impossible

To recline

So fully

Into an immaculate mineral bath

The sheer pleasure

Unapologetically

Reverses

The quotidian pain

Illuminated

At the pizza restaurant piano bar

In the Atlanta airport

Face ID

Unable

To recognize me

Staring

At the dude in the Gritty hoodie

Eating alone

Directly in front of the piano

It was shocking

When the pianist

Ran to bathroom

And the music stopped

We were all left

Chewing

Airport food

The Hawks vs. 76ers

Silently

Courting

The ball

On the screens

Above the bar

Jon Ruseski is the author of the chapbooks Enter Sandman, Sporting Life, and Hair of the Dog. He is a founder and editor of b l u s h, an online poetry journal and publishing imprint.