I smoke a little on the heavy side
and predict the almost certain
deadweight downfall like a statue dropped
from a balcony no one is standing on.
I don’t want to make friends
by sculpting their faces with two
hooked thumbs that slowly work open
their eyes, I’d rather say something
sort of funny in a morbid kind of way,
and hear them laugh like I have figured out
the future.
I want to pick my sharpest memories deliberately
like I am walking through a market full
of fish just caught today, and in so choosing
I am stuck on silver scales that are like nothing
I remember.
Grape soda is spilled on the tan carpet
like a puddle of blood,
and there are no more in the freezer
for tomorrow now, when everyone’s in town.
I settle up with the bartender for my one drink
and am charged over the number
on the chalkboard, with the purple letters
spelling out the name.
There is a vacant job in the city
where you drive around in cargo vans
to businesses and screw
on brand new toilet seats in bathrooms,
when they’ve broken off from way too many
sit downs. I think the going rate was barely
eight an hour.
I climb a pine tree among pine trees
where the guardrail of this backroad
fails to keep me in the lines to where
I’m going. I pretend to be an owl in the day
and slowly drift to sleep while waiting
for a nightmare that could wake me
when I’m ready.
I want to cut a notch into a tree and leave
the hatchet there in open air, and let it rust
like an extension of my soul so I can see
my time reflected in its metal.
I give to you the streetlight beams
to sleep in like a cave that’s full of hay
somehow, no matter what the odds.
Let the wild cows walk up to you
and eat their way around you
until the only thing left standing
are your cold feet on the ground
and all the blinking eyes behind you
wanting more.
Teleporting Typewriter 