James Miller

Dead Bored

Stir your fan-fic                                                   
Disney doo-dads, old world gizmos
that whir and tingle and never run down.
Be certain to stash them secret
when the boys search
the house.
 
The boys will burn
through every owner’s manual
in your tech closet, every cord and cable
and pagan keyboard. Ceaseless swallowing.
Sour oak, taqueria, sweet gleaming F series
Tremor—each goes down,
gulped.

 
Watching
through your garage window?
Turn down the sound! You had hoped for a belly-laugh,
enough to suck oxygen from the brain, enough to pass out
on greyscale concrete. Think of acid eating through
battery, wrist and knee—but the boys are dead
bored with Rimbaud’s
drunken boat.
 
The boys
have developed
a challenging poetics: six their molars
count out, then seven. Grind your teeth together,
and again. Six, and seven. They clean up
mighty well, can charm a crowd
of stiff jowls.
 
You’ve never known
any more than bone. Ideal for crude flutes,
but no tools to force finger holes. Six, then seven.
Play for the bathroom mirror, and still
there is time to wipe it clean
before the boys
come in.