Bleached

A tattered red curtain is being pulled
by simple pressure out the window
where it flies there like a hand
begging for help.

No one is home today since the beach
is open and full of extra sand
so you can sit out in the sun
and forget about the marble floors
in libraries you are not allowed to be in.

I think you’re smart enough to handle
I how I jump between one topic
and the next. Like how right now
I’ll bring up razor blades scrapping off
old layers of paint in a bedroom
long abandoned by the owners.

Then go to rusted shotguns
with no cases or even trigger locks
in the trunk of an old convertible
no one even remembers contains them
to begin with.

Anthropomorphic frogs iron clothes
while listening to Duke Ellington
on a radio made out of lily pads
and lightning bug thoraxes,
and the volume gets so high
when they get into it.

A group of cops, made out of metal,
pistol whip the shit out of a kid
for stealing candy from a corporate store
that didn’t need the money.
Wanted posters list bounties
on the inside of ambulances that have since
been fit with meters just like taxi cabs.

A girl paints little figurines in the images
of old cartoon characters
and when she’s finished she makes scenes
beside her window where the light comes through
and bleaches all she’s worked on.

She didn’t mind that though, to her it was almost like
they were preserved somehow, like the statues
left behind in ancient ruins, taken back
by what they came from in the first place.