Category: Book o’ Verse

It’s long past time
we end this charade.
This intricate dance
designed to mask
your competence
at faxing.
As if it’s something to be
ashamed of
when we both know it’s a
source of strength.
We should celebrate it.
Our dance should celebrate it.
Instead we dance this
shabby lie.

I can
taste it.
Well, almost.
I can sort of taste the taste of it.
The soft peg-like extensions. The way
they protect me from poison
help me sort out
those five sensations.
It tastes good.
So far. That
safe taste of a taste.
We’ll see how much I like
the real thing.

Gold, polygonal shapes.
Rectangular bars,
hexagonal prisms,
discs,
truncated octahedrons
with soft fuzz edges and
little black legs popping off
their sides.
They were fighting each other
in tar-crackled dirt by a roadside stop.
A few feet over they were bobbing around this pond
the little ones dunking the larger ones
with unnecessary ferocity.
Someone said they must have come from outer space.
A tom-boy of a girl with tough brown hair sat by the pond.
She’d been there for some time
watching them.
“Be careful not to get their eggs on you,” she cautioned,
nodding at my cap-toe Brunori’s.
“Little specks. You don’t want to bring them
back with you
to the city.”
“Maybe we should call someone…?” I said.
“Call who?”
“Call Time,” I said. “Or Newsweek. Get someone to cover these
gold colored alien fighting bugs
before they kill us all.”

Scraped knee
so tough
his eyes dry up
when the pants tear through
and a red pearl forms
only sand
drifting out of his eyes.
Swirling crystals enough
to dust
his durable
stegasaurus band-aid.

When I transact toward an espresso
my intent
is to drink
the liquid part.
The cup and plate (and the spoon &c)
would remain the shop’s property.
Really, I just want to make sure
no one’s upset or confused (or surprised &c).
I don’t want to lay down my clink,
then find out too late
that my rights
are limited to
moving the drink around, for example.
Or smelling it.

There wert a time, oh a long time ago,
like in movie time, when you could
tip someone a sketch more than they’d expect
and you’d say “thank you” in a
low ruffled D and they’d say
“thank you,” clean surprise in their voice
and tall eyes with bouncy brows like
“thank you” you know? trilly and upright
and a tip of the bellboy’s cap as for punctuate.
And I suppose it’s still possible these days
to mark such a response
though I ain’t heard so myself.
And what would it take?
Like a gazillion freakin’ dollars?

The scariest guy in town
sits on a bus bench
beside his sweetie true.

His prison-gym forearms
coiled energy
all Pop-Eye'd and snarling
with frenzied shag

end at knotted hands
tranquill in her lap.

Driving past you can hear
love words plopping
like hash
onto metal trays

out of that
crazy-Joe
bushy beard.

The food
inside my intestines
advances like a jungle animal
stalking me in small leaps
three inches, five inches at a time
seizing ground
rumbling
fixing me frightened to a point
because a jungle animal
doesn’t care how nice you are
or how much you need sleep
or how sorry you are
that you ate too much and
drank too much
too much
and neither does the food
inside my intestines.

Watching the movie
of your life and there’s
your enemy repositioned as
the hero
he’s a maverick
standing center
sympathetic
and she digs him
noble
pauses
and all.

Do you believe you have bone inside you?
Have you bought stock
in the scam that
you’re made of stone?
Why not skin? Solid through?
Why not dense-coiled hair
to prop your fading hips?
As if we have a pelvis inside us.
Tell me this: how did that stone
get in there? That stone called
“bone”?
And how come that stone isn’t worn
by time
to a pebble?