Two Poems

Centimetre Ruler

I wanted to stop getting high but you know 
what they say no sobriety
in the first year of a big life change I think I’m recalling 
that right I think I remember

actually everything the movie quote BROTHER
IF YOU CAN’T PAINT IN PARIS, YOU’D BETTER GIVE UP 
AND MARRY THE BOSS’S DAUGHTER I thought of it 

when my actual boss in not Paris expressed
annoyance at how her godson disavowed 
on principle low-wage work but wasn’t too good to cash
the cheques she sent PERHAPS HE BELIEVES

IN REDISTRIBUTION WITHOUT EXPLOITATION
I did not say because I was being at the time paid 
to not say sentences like that but instead 
to absorb can someone wring me 

out or do I as they say about WANTING SOMETHING
DONE RIGHT have to do it myself

Really Raining

Every time I’ve seen the moon, I’ve thought it was the Earth and I’m
somewhere else gazing at it, gauging whether I’ll make it 
back someday. Every time I’ve seen the sun, I’ve thought it was the Earth-moon 
burning and said goodbye. I’ve always made a point, every time 
I’ve seen rain, of announcing IT’S REALLY RAINING, even if it’s just 
a spattering here, a spattering there. WOW, IT’S COMING DOWN. Who am I, 
I’ve said, to say what it’s like in the spray for somebody else, 
and by SOMEBODY ELSE I mean of course that bug, smacked over 
by an eighth-inch of water, splayed and aeriform. When you’re slight 
enough to be ended by a single drop, a single drop’s a storm.