Snowball

snowball had the loathing something chronic       she’d smashed all her mirrors in iconoclast  and said she’d pan my windows too if I didn’t lick her wounds        self inflicted wounds are often the last to heal       least said      soonest mended they used to say       but they were wrong

she had come on like a breath of sunshine        but she had dark roots      I’d been keeping a beady on her peroxide explosion       altruistically fucking her from time to time          it cut both ways      we both had needs

I was pretty liberal with the advice     but more frugal with my affections        I like to think of myself as a coward       that’s the best spin I can place on my actions       I couldn’t dive in       because I can’t swim        so  I turned  away      at the crucial moment I closed my eyes        but I still heard her cry  

I guess for her I was yet another disappointment in a long series of disappointments          was I a user?     an abuser?     or just a man of straw?     I’m not the best judge of that      for my part      her voice is one of many       all asking the same question    do you now   or did you ever   possess an ounce of soul?

 

 

Formless

He’d once been a pariah, an untouchable. He had a definite shape, but it was asymmetrical. He was composed of acute and awkward angles, ragged contours and sharp edges. Cutting edges. He had always felt at odds with nature, a square peg in a universe of round holes.

He felt powerless in his predicament. There was no panacea, no prescription, no discipline, or philosophy to ease his discomfort. There was not even a name for what ailed him, no diagnosis for his wayward geometry.

His was the difficult path and he stumbled often, and sometimes he fell. But over the years his angles were chipped away and his edges were made smooth through collision and erosion. So that one day he awakened to discover that he was practically formless.

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The Temple of a Thousand Buddhas

On the first day of summer,
In the Temple of a Thousand Buddhas,
You turned and said to me;
“Your smile is a blessing to my heart”
That was long ago, but I’m smiling still.

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Coydogs

Do you see those ferals over there? They are my murder squad and that’s my blood on their sandals. They must have gotten my number from some old directory, because I’m unlisted now.

They came to chasten me for some mythic infraction in the bygone, but it’s never too late to deliver bad news. Apparently I had robbed some whore to feed some bitch. I can’t recall the details; they were pretty inchoate with their charges.

I was all negotiable, but they were not. We reached an accommodation where I shut the fuck up in exchange for a kicking. However, I take succour from the knowledge that they will one day turn on the hand that now feeds them.

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Panthers

the sickly hours draw near       I’ve been out on the prowl     feasting with panthers      and laying with the low        life bleeds out from my promiscuous regions     my seed, the gift of our benefactor      was spilled on vulgar ground      a menagerie of brightly polished fossils     perched four and twenty deep on a blackened bow      each was perfectly honed       to provide the keen edges a boy could shred his soul on

 

there’s a laboratory in my mind       where pornographic experimentations are crudely coupled with shameful memories     so I make meat in wee small hours to feed the fire that burns in my loins     ever the same incessant pounding of a thousand heartbeats      a tide of lovers float into memory      people like us know what we’re doing       people like us have rapacious hearts