Pink Slip

He buys a round

of pink slips.

Worry not,

it won’t come

to you but

it will find

a throat

that will have

to chug it down.

First round’s on

he who hasn’t

a care in the world

bulldozing

knocking down

what’s real

to find what

he thinks is lost

in the past.

He’s a sad man

with a clown jig.

I cannot bear

witness.

I hold it.

I’m not pink

slipped through

the cracks.

Is it enough

for the sad man

to not know.

His is a slip

I don't envy.

Point of View

In slow seconds

of the day

I wander

to before.

But it does

no good

to look

back there.

I am third

person in

the fading

light.

It’s best

to come back

to where I

is found.

The Worm

My finger snakes across the table

to demonstrate the path

that a dissecting tool would take

to split the skin of a worm.

Its smooth, taut shape

I will slice and pin back,

careful not to cut too deeply

severing its ribless body in half.

Lowly invertebrate:

fish bait - earth composter

the all’s clear after rains -

neither sexed – both sexed

opened for discovery,

guts revealing aortic arches:

five loops carrying blood

to its five beating hearts.

Five hearts, four more

than human, to torment

and devour the one

so easily insinuated into.

My finger remembers

the smooth, sinuous skin 

that covers his cheek.

How did he work his way  

in and not fertilize?

Smoke In My Eyes

Cornea burn.

Corps burning.

Heart burnt.

The visor

not down

lets sun blaze

enzymes

that protect

blue eyes.

White  vision 

blind drive home.

Western-fried,

my core smolders:

smoke   no   flame.

Fans Don't Cool

Hot night I sit on sweat

breathing cigarette smoke

that wafts from the ground

floor like fog across rocks.

My mind is hot split in, too

often revisited complaints

of he who does not listen

to reason or facsimilic truth.

The whir of the fan dulls

all sound from the street.

I do not hear the smoker cough

up the years he drags out.

The air moved into the room

is wet and full of the still

atmosphere that preexists

the storm that is sure to come.

I wipe the moist pebbles

off my brow and wipe my leg.

I will surely die second hand

stuck to my fretted glow.

the box

An inheritance

arrived in a box,

thousands of letters

and photographs

too heavy to carry.

In his journal

I was in third person.

He drank

himself to death

found days after

his heart exploded.

Then,

I did not

warn him

of his indulgence

blind to influence

to make a difference.

We were young, love

came like quicksilver:

willful      fragile.

We spent time,

his other time

wasted.

She calls every night

I am the connection

to a dead son:

did the box arrive, dear?

I don’t pick up, how

she never called him.

Now,

he stands in the corner

watching my sleep

safe from his demons

I suspect.

revised from an earlier version

waco beach

on the shore

looking out,

summer shandies

in hand,

the world looks

finite.

beyond the waves

at the curve,

it seems to

just stop,

and my buddy

says so.