floating and leaving no trace
i close my eyes
and the world
spins backwards
maybe five seconds
i hear the goodbye
again
the “eye” syllable
in the air
impossibly physical
bricklike
solid and hot
i close my eyes again
longer
and when i open them
you haven’t said goodbye
not yet
but your lips part
i shut my eyes
but even if i hold them closed
before i was conceived
before my cell split
for the first time
it would do no good
you never said goodbye
after all
it wasn’t a word you knew
i am sewn into a beaver pelt
and set adrift in the river
i hear the rocks split the water
though only darkness feeds my
starving sense of sight’s appetite
i feel them drag along my back
these jagged river stones
not yet worn down, splitting the water
though only darkness feeds my
starving sense of sight’s appetite
no longer enough air to breathe
the stench of game hide and water fills my lungs
bruised, i flail, splitting the water
though finally darkness satiates my
starving sense of sight’s appetite
——
one of those here-today-gone-tomorrow
carnivals, set up on the green lawn
right next to the rec center
never let anyone tell you carnies
don’t know how to market themselves
small affair, few rides, few games
a couple of food booths
long before everything was deep fried
lucky if they have hot dogs or nachos
with cheese sauce from those industrial-sized
barrels like it had been sucked out
of the earth
one ride makes me realize
i will never go to space
the hammers
twin metal cages on long
pole arms
on either side of a column
thrown together from
some kind of adult erector set
they rotate
spin toward each other
probably so you could wave
at the idiots in the other cage
I didn’t have time to wave or
even look at anyone else
all i felt was g force
quarters flying out of my pockets
bouncing like meteors pinging
and ricocheting off the metal grills
it’s the first ride i’ve
ever just wanted to stop
just
stop
with empty pockets, i stagger out
of the little metal box
and my stomach wants to empty out
and i can’t even look up
at the stars i will never fly to
because the vertigo spins the ground
like an lp around the axis
of my feet
——
for
dVerse ~ Poets Pub
Poetics: Amuse me! Take me for a ride!
focus on the pain originating in your molar
floating heavenward like an angel
made of nerves wrapped around broken stained glass
up through your hard palate
lodging between your ear and jaw
wonder for ten seconds if it’s cancer or an abscess
then opt for tmj because you’re tired and you
need to sleep
this is a memento that death leaves in your crib
to remind you every single day that you are not
in fact, going to live forever
or maybe he colluded with the tooth fairy
when you lost your first tooth
touched that soft bloody spot
in your gums
you obsessively kept
your children’s teeth
even the dog’s
——
from the latin
sub “below, near”
and urbs (genitive urbis) “city”
so then, one might say
something beneath a city
growing
fungus like
virulent and in the dark
but really
what else grows in shadows
and in shit
just so many mushroom capped
spore spreaders without
bearing the weight of skyscrapers
and the dreams that built them
stone on stone
the murder rate is lower
but the suicide rate is higher
in spite of the lack of tall buildings
——
Words and Feathers 