NATE HOIL / DECODING THE CODE: 5 POEMS
Summer, you can walk across a lake.
It is raining fish; the sidewalks are littered with fish.
The sidewalks are littered with garbage—
the garbage is a danger to the fish on the ground.
Swimmers float on their backs, and the dead ones float face down.
The streets are filled with happy faces
holding their breath.
The swimmers get stranded on an island,
start a business there,
send their products through the mail.
Dead fish float in every fishbowl—
dead eyes on the fish that is knocking on my door.
I’m giving up on making things comfortable
for those who wish pain upon me.
Dead fish swim in and out of consciousness.
They never dry off.
Lady Macbeth.
Nothing matters, except the flowers sprouting out of my grave
and the assembly line of robotic replicas
of me and all my celebrity crushes—
actresses, musicians, investigative reporters.
My robot and my celebrities are going to have an orgy.
My celebrities go to work;
they go and get some work done.
Plastic surgeons are ready with knives and tire pumps.
Why don’t we put this to bed
in the bedroom?
I want a robotic replica of Lady Macbeth
to kill me
when I least expect it.
Meanwhile I’m just standing here.
Dinosaurs cannonball off cliffs.
I love television so much that I surgically insert one into my head.
I can’t see the screen,
but I can hear it humming.
Looking down at the ground, the floor is like a picture on the wall.
If you look into my eyes,
you will notice my extreme focus.
I’m so focused that I can’t close my eyes!
I sit and wait for the water to boil.
The things on the ground
look much more important than I feel.
I’ve been around the block a few times,
because I’m scared to leave my neighborhood.
I can’t stop having visions of a better tomorrow.
Decoding the code.
Why is every mad scientist incredibly old?
I’m almost 30.
Botox stretches my face
around the power-source of my evil genius.
(I’m too drunk to show you how powerful my brain is.)
Everything is stupid
when you’re as fucking smart as me!
I’m wearing a hat, but the hat is too small.
My head is shaped like a flat screen TV.
What has come over me?
(Other than the sky.)
The sky is a blanket that doesn’t keep anything warm…
I go to sleep in the grass and wake up in the grave.
No one knows who wrote this poem,
but it wasn’t Nate Hoil.
I’m so evil that they discuss me in the Bible.
The party is hungry for love.
My face is pressed against the window, watching the glass—
ignoring what’s behind it:
behind it the dancer moves too quickly to be identified.
But I can tell she has a body
like someone who is trying to get pregnant.
I want to go out and take her
photograph
from the waist down,
but a pin is sticking through the window’s glass
and into my eyeball.
The window has a body like a computer virus.
The window is symbolic, and it won’t let me out.
I must continue living
in order to see what happens next.
Nate Hoil works as a writing tutor, and a caretaker for clients with cognitive illnesses such as dementia. You can find more of his work at natehoil.com.