Two Poems
Tao Lin

thank you for calling me 'sweet tao'


suddenly the vegetable would not fit in your mouth
and everyone was confused
and there was a beeping noise
and we listened to it

the beeping noise without origin
consoled us
and i ate your tofu
and i ate everything
which tasted good
and i looked at your boyfriend
and your boyfriend was a philosophy professor
and i was consoled
and i glanced at your vegetable

'i like schopenhauer,' i said
'i read alain de botton,' i said
'what do you think of that?' i said, 'didn't derrida teach at nyu?'
'if he did he was just, like, an adjunct,' said your boyfriend, 'not a full-time professor'
'he died,' i said, 'you're the next generation'
'you'll take over,' i said
'how many people do you lecture?' i said
'is it a lecture?'
'sixty-five,' said your boyfriend
at the reading before dinner
at the restaurant with the fish pond

and we looked at the fish
and the fish were fish
and the fish looked at fish
and the fish were people
and the people looked at people



i want to combine any two things into one thing that looks satisfied at what just happened


i believe in complex systems of line segments, white spaces, and curvy lines
i have talked too much shit about grad school to go to grad school
my unit of communication is the 200-page novel
beautiful music elicits a calmer, less fervent sort of teamwork
the difference between fucking up and drinking coffee alone standing up is negligible
i have talked too much shit about grad school to go to grad school
time plus space plus consciousness can be communicated with a line-graph
i saw it in a textbook
i'm going to build a machine that will convert my blog into a four minute pop punk song
the same machine will also advise me to go to grad school on little slips of paper
my unit of communication is talking shit about grad school
a doctorate in the arts

one month into a romantic relationship i will lecture you on actions and words

the difference between

five out of six decisions were business decisions
the other decision was based on

the difference between

a complex system of line segments, white spaces, and curvy lines

the complexity of this situation is making me

let's work together to make this a

a complex system of line segments, white spaces, and curvy lines
will elicit multiple less complex systems of line segments, white spaces,
and curvy lines, which in turn will

this will take more than four thousand hours over three years

the cruelty of political leaders is that they
your posture is