Strike, Strike, Strike!

Admit that it would be better,
a-okay to summit, summit,
summit our faults with the lamp on and the window
closed.

Tint in the light and shade in the dark.

Defeat the bleak with cigarette smoke.
Spiral into my hair, tentacle disease.
Prepare the weeds to contain and ease
up rusted metal and the black-turn-green
markings on flesh and skin.
Next to a-okay, beside the magazines

and behind the dictionary.
Strike the gavel and strike the faded-yellow pages.
Strike the marble with palms open, drunken on spirit.
Everyone can follow the horror of knowing
life and children will be a-okay.

I Just Wanna Know Where I am

I'm coffee ground black.
You're walking

Away.

I'm in with
The tweed and gum wrappers.
You's walkin' away.

I'm happy like heart-shaped sprinkles,

I'm whipped cream
white.

Ya'll 're walkin' away.

And you're leaving me between
The cushions with the g.i.
Joe arms and peanut
Skins.

You all are walking
Away.

But You're Only Twenty-Seven!

The soft of your blankets

rubs wrong –

the scratch of the wool and blend

of rayon.

Rubs the trees

from their hold

in their earth. Breaks roots.

Breaks, rots

in the trash in the mold.

Hold the fabric to my face,

and it scratches

like bad associations of my

father's father.

Where he came from doesn't

matter as it breaks my skin and we

can't see the tears and

sores.

It's not refreshing!

assuredly, i say to you

assuredly,
i say to you: as long
as it doesn't hurt
anybody.

my tired feet

I can't sleep
unless i run my fingers
between my toes - each space
given equal attention. Count
out the seconds. Derive the time
of day multiplied by the amount
of steps taken in relation
to my foot size in centi
meters divided by the amount of times
I cried
to the average temperature
over a 12 hour period
centigrade.

It's half-past midnight in Warsaw
and I rub between my thumb and pointer toes
four and a quarter times. Sigh one last time, and fall asleep.

Mmmm, I sure love those lily padshhh!

eat thoshe
funereal flowersh.
purple velvetsh and yellow feltsh.

Narshishush, with heaving shouldersh,
cry and draw me water.
get drunk on yourshelf and don't
hurt them none

when it ain't meant for them.
shower and bashk where you ish not
meant for the shun.

lily padsh and showy shnow.
love them more than thoshe.

the sun provides

The sun weighs on the baby

blue pool. White edges on the positive-spaced

mermaids and mermen

and negative-spaced generic fish shapes. Once live

creatures now subject to entropy – they disintegrate in light.

The sun cracks the plastic where it hits

the longest and most often - in the morning

and after-later-noon: expands and contracts irregularly.

The pool lays lop-sided in the bed

with the corrugated base,

rests in the indentation and settles on the wheel hub. It bends

on the bottom edge and blends

into the encrusted dirt and debris and dead.

There was a puddle from rains – a puddle that leaves

edges of brown and white. Sediment marks

the evaporation on the rusted rouge resting

place in the truck bed and in the pool bed.

The sun trembles on the glassy water left from the rains -

jostles, then shimmies, then trembles.

Light pushes through the fragile, thin pool

edges and eats through the relenting water.

i saw a little girl

instantly, i love this little girl a billion and a half times more than she will ever love me or anyone else, probably.

She approaches in a pink shirt with white text sprawled across the front. Her hair is parted sloppy almost down the middle - the wind crossed and tangled it.

Laceless yellow shoes.

She steps in front of me and orders a cold coffee drink that only a child could want and her voice is gruff - slightly gravelly and deep for her small body.

Brown shorts.

Her head: not sized to her frame - bigger than it should be; and her eyes: light brown and golden - looks up to me and into my own brown-green eyes.

Everything that makes me want her to write about touching the setting sun and painting the pink clouds with a boar-hair brush against the baby boy blue.
Everything that makes me want to speak with her and never at her; mention finches and the flames they swallow and jesus and the fire he breathes in the same sentence.

man: wire frames and pencil mustache

Seedy girls in suburban pink
throw a grin to pale him.

Balding head and dragging feet,
they are his assailants.

In some time, he sees they're weak –
this one, sees the pavement.

Holds his breath, grits his teeth.
He will not let them claim him.