Book o’ Verse

Everybody’s tired of it today.
Tired of the same old everyday vibrations
chugging through their bodies
down from their throats to
their hands
to the ground.
The lechers are too tired to lech today.
You see?
Dogs don’t even try to lick their buddies.
And now the sidewalk prophets are even putting down their
street signs, even walking off their jobs
saying: “Doom.
Whatever.
Doom.”

put on a fat coat
bagel coat
butter coat
wind too sharp
biscuit coat
bones

Taking us from a to b.
Varying in heft.
Guileless.
Craftless.
Curving shiny sometimes
but still always essentially
linear.
Scribbly.
Stand in front of thirty.
“Which one is my favorite?”
But how could he
possibly
know?

This brain don’t tire
of shore
shrinking to speck
as boat pulls away
as every day
I immigrate.

And the monkey breath!
You gotta pack that up, my friend
all smelling of termites and sticks
and other monkeys.
No one asked you to smell that way.
In fact, the assignation specifically connoted
replicating a contrary stench, to whit:
the non-monkey stench.
So why carmelize your ack ack ack ack ack, my friend, my friend?
Instead, hey —
flatten out your wallet.
Hey narrow your eye-wear.
Hey surge-protect
your estuary
knowledge core.

Gathering glass breath
into slushed dixie cups
chimney’d through milk wood
through worm weed
in whispers.
Marked pies with iron-crossed crust.
Heartfelt. Growing.
Red whispers.
Sliding up against
red-veined wood fences.
Slipping into character such that
white curves
twist toward
fading blue words.
Graffiti glass breath, my sweetie.
Popular chain-gang motif.

He looked like he was drawn
not with a pen or a paintbrush
but with the dull wet end of a used toothpick.

A dent. An imprint.
A soft image.

Leaving behind
a flaw designed primarily
to gather dust.

Soon will come a time
when we’ll move out to that house
by the brook.
And the weather will be fine.
And the broadband.

Pouring all these
good things inside me.
Tea. Poetry. Pear tart. Lemonade.
Tea. Poetry. Lemonade. Lemonade.
Pear tart.
Lemonade.
Tea.
Pale Fire.
Pear tart.
Lemonade.
Hoping some of it sticks.

Perhaps it’s just a dream
but I do like the idea
of some days having
that boot on my desk.
Some days not.