“…a red lantern flashed a signal…
We had never seen such a sign used before,”
the armed visitor alleged.
Mom’s firecrackers took light
with a rattle of gunfire;
and just like that the evidence burned,
no harm done, no fault, no foul,
How much unthinkable evil pushes suddenly in to the
heated rooms. To the rigid impotence of shoulders and neck
there is irritated angry mood in every motion, in this pretty
voiced bird, that can hide under a single green leaf
My wife serves a Texas Jesus,
drafted the kids and a cousin
to a common liar’s cause.
If there’s a fixation beyond
rolled steel fences and firearms
I haven’t heard it.
“I get it. I don’t like big oil companies
either. I just cash their checks! Sometimes
I think the sign out front the station is the only
stock report some people get. Shoot, maybe it is.”
and I don't tell anyone because then they would know
and the fear of it could've been worse
rising like an echo from someone I love
is more frightening than any hand over my mouth
Like a stone that slows
as it sinks to the bottom of a well.
Like a person who saw paradise from the outside
and never found a way back home.
after the armistice, our cost of living got curb-stomped. penny for your burgeoning madness, deifying junkiedom. the sewers are a-hum with hitmen, but don’t take my word for it—just listen.
Every time you did it, you thought, this time
It will work, you’d step over the boundary that separated
You from the people you wanted to be with. No more
Would you be stranded with the same people you’d been
Fleeing since you made your first decision, a haircut
You (didn’t) know would confirm what everyone else
The international collective remains insufficiently organized
resulting in violence and threats of violence that interrupt
commerce, procreation (love) and the pursuit of happiness (Cameron Diaz)
at least for certain populations, sometimes.
In first light, your wig and Zofran
on the bed stand, saucer of yellow almonds,
cup of tea, on the floor,
I tilt your chin, open your airway,
perform rescue breaths.
Paint barely dry, containing the detritus of fire
Emerging exits slipping out of bounds
Resurrecting your inner idiot, flying at large
An argument never won with a belligerent toss.
in thin dime situations,
it is best to remain calm
a found flannel ensures warmth
you are a smaller version of yourself
Down by the railroad tracks
a mysterious street
hammers before breakfast
where water heats itself
skin aching to be clean
Those whose bodies have vanished
in the black hole of disappearing meat.
Those who must ignore their hungry child
because the answer is always, “No.”
Spooky kine stuff
dat Einstein nevah agree wit
is eerily going on out deah
or in heah
I remember you,
free of walls and doors,
locked gates and security guards,
wardens and cell mates,
a "room for visitors",
Let her house be a bushel of things
growing, fingers reaching, crying
their way from out of the soil
laughing makes way to sky
digging down seven years
to my triple bypass
the bloody remnants
of that trip under lights
In time I might forget myself
In course of vivid currents.
My bastard inclination
To wrestle with the ocean.
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