-Repeat Minus the Lather-
As if it were bricklaying or an onion we could dice and caramelize with olive oil we imagine it facebook-eventable but peace is a memory problem. It fades. We repeat it to ourselves, we repeat it charbroiled. Already it slipped my mind how my stomach goes hydroelectric at the top of a swing chainrust squeezed into my palms rubber seat arching. Zoom in on sky, ground pans out. And I have to hear peace again when later I’m impaling at my keyboard. That cursor blinks, like a crow molting. Blankness in its feathers. I go off to smite against a wall. Come back incorporeal, and peace is whispering something slow and tree sap and I miss it. Preoccupied by the branches and rootwars the concrete on the curb cracking upward. Peace, even carved lavishly in constipated rage...
Read More-Word Choice and Meaning-
She said he had an infectious smile as if the take-over were the only importance. Sure, we all turned up our maws, but did we fester? Invade? Did we swell and pustulate? I wonder if he really had a six courses antibiotics smile. I don’t tell her how leavened bread might not corrode her face. It wouldn’t hurt to have a jingle you hum to the widening fog while washing the dishes smile. He might be more worth her while if his grin was a chocolate craving. You could say his simpers open a six pack and put briquets on the grill. It’s the headwaters of a spring burbling away a swelter in August. Or simply a woosh. But she has already moved on to jumping about pancakes and hair follicles. The infectious smile creepnumbing my heels for amputation. +10 Share...
Read More-Tangle of Ivy-
When did formicating vines, their unrelenting hugs and suckerroots pall in our imaginations to price cuts and overlit mall floors? A plastic mold with five pushbutton pow!action movements may be a choking hazard to tall children under the age of hypnosis. It only costs something that ends in nine and looks small like millions of chemicals and the livelihood of faraway folk cents. But it will never be as fun as letting a slug beslime Kelly’s arm when she’s distracted and the following guffaw-shrieking. Somewhere we lost it, the hours worth dirt digging. And we switched to touchscreens. We no longer mind the vines, what they strangle. It actually looks kind of nice there against the brick, corroding. There isn’t a victory. General Tzo marching and the toppling of a...
Read More-Just Outside for a Breath of Fresh Air-
Our memories take out their kazoos. A buzz, maybe it went humm humm. But the tune is in there, this tin membranophone. I lean back and let the chipped paint railing bend under my hands. And someone can’t make it go, puffing their cheeks. I tell them it uses your voice; a synapse connects, they relax and go timbral. We were figuring if we poured enough foam down our throats, something would burble up. Make a claxon. And be free. But the string section has lapsed. Horsehair bows tangled with splinter and misdirection. There is half a violin vibrating no more. And just edging the proscenium there’s a fuzzy…it could have been clarinet, but it shouldn’t bend that way when headlights flash past and a red metal squeaks around. I am now thinking it’s just a ketchup...
Read More-Lighter-
Everyone keeps telling me, “you could just write short poems like a haiku” But short poems take even more work than long ones. Here is a Cinquain. I spent a whole day not being able to write it. Such that I had to publish this poem back in the past a day from the future (4/16) when I finally finished it for NaPoWriMo. Granted, I also spent most of the 4/15 day stressing out about taxes. — -Lighter- A fume that flagellates out of what moments back were black paraffin and crispwick conks out. +10 Share...
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