As you stand there
Decked in pin striped worm skin
Your damp dull eyes staring out at me,
I begin to wonder if your crumpled hands
Have ever come close to those misty shaken clouds
That you aim to touch,
Or if those pale trembling lips of yours
have ever been able to exhale your sullen desires.

Trouble with the Parental Units

I sat tightly perched on
The marshmellowy couch
Desperately clutching to the doughey cushions
Hopeing to lessen the blow.
Hoping to lessen
My throbbing head,
Queasy stomach,
And bruised moral
While I sat there hopelessly,
Watching your veins swell
And feeling the warm spittle
Of your angrrr on my tear-stainid,
Swollen face.
My thumping temples
Still echoe
your hollow tone of angry dissapointment
Each word burrowed into me like a hungry tuber
Flourishing due to the rotten doubts and soggy promises
which linger deep in my in my mind
Though I've tried to push them out completly.
I sat there, my mouth sewn shut by the thick web of shame
As you pulled and stretched my guilt
Like taffy in a lakeshore window.
I sat and watched the thick pink strands
Stick to your fingers with truth
And you look down with disgust-
But I'd used all of the napkins
To dry my crocodile tears.

The Cardboard Taxi Slowly Melts in the Sultry Afternoon Rain

You step into the already wilting taxi
Out of the pulsating luke warm rain
The once crisp and crunchy door,
Buckles and sags as you pull
The musty handle
Shutting the door on traffic,
Shutting the door to chaos,
(Shutting the door on those empty paper buildings,
Which are slowly tearing you apart
Limb from limb)
Shutting you inside.

The windows streak with the city's tears
Despite the persistant windshield wipers
Which smear the salty rain like a butter knife
Until the lights blur and swirl and the whole world
Begins to look like a neon version of Monet

While the damp sticky gears grunt and grind
You watch the pungent blue smoke
Curl from your fig-scented cigarette
Hesitant, wavering below the window
Then sucked out by the moist wind
Which is heavy with the scent of bruised orchids.

As the steaming windows puddle and fog
The dark slimy tires squeel
On the hydrogen lubricated streets
Their deep cut tread
Pressing against the black chunky aspalt
Kissing the steaming pungent black tar
Kissing miles of emmence concrete
Kissing the double yellow line
Then skidding like a greased watermelon.

As the limp taxi veers and squeels
It's thin frame lapping in the warm wind
(which made those buildings sag and streak
The gore of pens dripping
Down, Down,
Oozing onto the sidewalks
And onto the deliciously chunky streets)
You sit peacefully,
(Forever haunted by those vacant looseleaf buildings
with cut out windows
that let the cold sun rays through
through to devour you, eat you up)
Numb against the maroon velour,
Your lips blue from lack of use
And your tongue still pasty from
Licking someone else's dirty boots.

Sweater Boy

You pull on my emotions
Wrap them around your hand
Like each finger is a fleshy spindle
Spinning the threads of my
Sinuous mind until the fibers lock
All thoughts, all dreams, are merged
Into neat tubes of corded fluff
Waiting for the prick of your needle
The knit and perl of your love
Waiting for you to plunge into me
Your sharp points winding me about
In loops, in rows of neat knots,
Waiting to cling to your shivering
Body, waiting to warm your cold solft
Flesh with my wooly coat
Yet, when you're done with me,
You shrug me off, throw me down
In a heap, and maybe after a week,
I'll get hung up in the closet -
Just another one of your winter accessories.

Ruffled Sentiment

We all sleep with Beauty
We all learn early theat diligence bleeds
And that thrifty hands slip over thread
Producing cuts
As if rax was razor sharp
And thimbles were the clamps
Which constrict the soul.

We learn that the spinning wheel
Doesn't lead to sleep
We merely get tangled in the
Spokes of the ever-revolving wheels
Rythmically stamped by the Maker's feet.

We do learn that brambles can be thick
And years long.
But, our ladies in waiting do not wait
As our delicate hands abrade and crease
Like the delicate fans we once used
Ceaselessly, for we learn from error
That wan cheeks buldge,
Chins sag and eyes close.

We learn that palaces are
The trappings of lecherous fools
-teach ourselves out of envy-
That is.
For, when the golden carriage
Strumms along the cobble stone roads
And arrests at our doorstep,
The man with the patent leather boots
For whom we have been waiting
Alone
Has come.
But all his charm has melted away on the long journey
And we are stuck
Helplessly bonded with a stranger
We no longer know
Alone
Now
With the shiny soles
Of one who has come
When we least need him.

We stay silently waiting
For we learn it was all a mistake
And then stop learning.

Poetry Magazine