She

She offered little in the way of salvation.
No nudge of optimism.
Just ugly floating balloons,
jagged teeth of baboons.

She kept close
but yet
stayed back in the dark,
the lost area of
gray.

She treats me as if I’m
burning the unclaimed dead,
a pathetic sick cat with
frost bit eyes.
I’m like Mexican water or an
old Canadian trucker with a
Southern accent.

She scowls rapid like a
bandit’s gunfire. She wraps my soul around
her beauty,

leaves me
to scratch myself blind,

count backwards from one hundred.

The Morning I Forgot How to Walk

I had a skeletal jarring fall

down

carpeted

stairs.

The baby blue fibers puncture my left elbow, twice.
Soft claws dissected my flesh,
not to the bone, but

I bled.

Checkmate

When dissecting the plausible existence of
ex-loves,
that temporary pause of sanity,

a hollow wave collapses while dogs moan.

The credence of victory reigns,
echoes throughout the landscape of lessons learned.

Seconds and minutes served as the pawns and rooks.
Dreams faded by fog reveal the Queen has
slaughtered the untouchable, senile King.

Life’s a Supermarket with Expiring Goods

1.

A child quietly screaming, veins pulse towards
a motherly shadow.
Bruised face, red-purple,
like the discolored arms and
veins of heroin addicts from countless years before and
to come. The child stares my way, an

innocent, isolated alien
abandoned three planets from the sun.

2.

Token thoughts of the saddest kind were given to
the juvenile moped riders, the helmetless
children of pavement and cement. A crescent
raceway designated for the speed and superegos of
calloused emotions, the hard-headed
drivers of remote-controlled cars and baby whispers.

3.

I walk past normal spectacles of any day.
A confusion jamboree
tornadoed among the weak, dedicated, and
elderly.

In the marketplace,
in the produce and deli sections,
the dog of consumers’ souls waits at the end of a rusted chain.
A slobbering guardian. Jaw lock.

Kill
or nap under discretion’s shadow.

In line first, but forgot to grab
a ticket with a number printed on it.

“The line starts back here,” some guy says.