Month: September 2022

Two limp boots
Red handkerchief
Retro soup cans
Dirty hands that
Grab at your cheap tracksuit

The shadow cast from the top of the stair
A crooked hand beckons
Climbing the steps it recedes
To an inner sanctum
The Wheeled [sic] Chair grinds and creaks
And the face loses its cover
Eyes that could be found in the
Ground of some warring African nation
A nose that intrudes on the fair
And pleasant
And wrinkles and moles of
Some witch or magician
Pulling the lever on the chair
When he was briefly not looking
Sends him spinning through
The window where the moon
Was peeking

Not ten pennies
Or a nickel
Whipped bare back
Scoured with sickle
The librarian cross-armed
Looked for remorse
Across the face sweat coursed
At a loss why
Nicholas Nickleby

Were permanently affixed
At quarter past six
Surprise
When she awoke
Did not register
One at the chin
One at the ear

We didn’t know what The Ocuometer did
But its loud clanking and banging every 45 minutes
Suggested something important so we kept it

Pout pout
Damned hot
Lady Macbeth
Fudging her lines
The audience
Invents a scenario
For the mouth of Horatio
Peppers and more spring earth and heaven
Upon us
Now not the line but play
The mind wanders

With the last swallow
Of the six-pack
The knickknack
Eyed him reproachfully
Bubbles buzzed
And popped
Time stopped
Between he and it
Then he threw a mammoth fit
And the knickknack
He did stick
God knows where
As he searched languidly
For
On the all day hangover

Staring into the
Mirror
Ralph saw
Reality shimmer
Then splash
Like water
About
His vestments
Poking a
Curious finger in
He felt an
Immediate
Scintillant surge
Ralph’s finger would
Inherit a kingdom there
And rule for forty years
But here just Ralph
Missing a digit

Eaten by gator
Her spirit detailed
Her life on this side
And the other
While drunk on ambrosia
And puffing a cloud
Of angel chair stuffing

She wrote it on a
Napkin
Which wiped the mouth
Of a fat man
Then disposed of
In a closed bin
He wedged his
Hand in
And it looked
Like a password
And an address
With a mess of
Pasta sauce
The spicy and
Pungent
Meal was done
He dug in
Yes this was
The one