3 other poems

Flight

My eyes drift
Towards the clear plastic jars on the countertop.
Tongue depressors,
Q-tips,
Cotton balls…
Each segregated into their own jar,
Suffocating.

Do they pray to escape?

Carelessly, the doctor opens a jar,
Plops the lid on the countertop,
Removes a cotton ball.

I imagine I can hear their voices,
Begging me to release them. I
Fight the urge to jump off the examination table
With its loud, stiff paper
And knock the bottles off the countertop.

In my mind, I see the bottles shatter
As they hit the floor. The cotton balls float
Out the window.
The Q-tips band together, making wings
For the tongue depressors, so they all escape,
Leaving the doctor dumbfounded.

There aren’t enough Q-tips in the world to lift me off the ground.

“Would you like me to call someone to pick you up?”
“No thanks. I want to walk.”

I stop on the corner and look through the window of the Walgreens.
Impulsively, I go inside
And snatch up all the cotton balls
And the Q-tips and the tongue depressors
And run
Out the door, ripping open the packages and spewing
The contents across the road,
Barely releasing them all
Before the police show up
To take me away.


~*~*~


Verily,  ‘twould be folly to tarry here.  Bats doth inhabit this country.

Scratching an itch sends tingles of frostbite across my skin.

The androgynous cat sleeps on the Lesbian Love Blanket, so named for Jessica and Michelle’s magical night.

There are multiple green plates holding pomegranate rinds, looking like Christmas.

I always feel like a vampire when I eat pomegranates – sucking out the red juices and spitting out the husk, the shell, the seed. Delicious.

Christmas = Jesus’ Birthday

Hold me (dear/near)

Jordan plays with his new digital scale. His Snoopy pajama pants say, “when do we eat?”

The black and blue ghostly fireballs I saw when she momentarily flicked off the light were the antithesis of the rainbow light crystals I was eating earlier.

hickory-handled hatchet

Now the androgynous cat is licking and kneading the Lesbian Love Blanket. And chewing, sometimes, but I don’t know what that alludes to.

The PS2 controller rests on the carpet like a dollop of Gak.

“Do you remember Gak?”

I scratch my neck in a radial sunburst pattern.

tiny texan tumbleweeds

One of the Christmas plates holds a Dr Pepper spilling onto the Catch-22 strewn despondently on the stained carpet.

Easter = Zombie Jesus Day

We are nothing but a tent-pole made of wood and a vibrating plastic octopus.

It’s 5:30. If I see the sun start to crest the hilltops, I’ll go have a cigarette and watch it, though I don’t really want a cigarette and the sun will hurt my eyes – I just don’t want to sit here any more.

(My missing piece was red with purple speckles, but I never did find it.)


~*~*~


Lost

We walked so far for so long with no idea where we were. There were landmarks, but we had no map. There were people, but we were afraid of them. There were animals, but they couldn’t talk.

Finally, we gave up, stayed where we were and built a home.

I still miss mom.