A mother sobbing,
a raging mob.
What we need is people
to do their job.
A cop stands still
amidst the crowd.
To **** or…be killed?
His head is bowed.
Lock the door and
set the alarm.
So simple a task
to keep some from harm.
Collecting a paycheck,
is easy to do.
But there’s a lot more
we expect of you.
By the time that you
become a grown up
you should have learned
it’s important to show up.

One more shot!
A scorching heat radiates
from her forehead
The last of raspy wheezes,
rusty coughs and gasps
leave the lungs, abandoned towns
lined with rows of empty drugstores.
Her grandkids watch from
behind a thick sheet of glass
through a dense fog,
asking -mommy how long will grandma
be asleep for?-

One more shot!
On Tuesday she was at work.
On Wednesday she got a slight cough.
On Thursday her heartbeat was slow.
On Friday the line hit the flat note.
On Saturday the back of her coffin
married the worms in the dirt just below.

One more shot!
Wiping the sweat off his forehead,
is it his mum or the coal; that ****** black is his skin tone?
A coughing fit, seizing his consciousness
gasping for air; as if he was dying
of laughter,
watching his daughter dance like a ballerina
across their living room into his arms.
Those weren't tears of joy,
when she was dragged away by masked security guards
from the room where her father plummeted into
The swan lake.

One more shot!
The pen quivers in his hand
as he finishes up his English exam.
Finally, all this work done,
the last of the bunch was long gone!
Until he sneezed on the paper.
His portrait wasn't lit as well as his mother hoped
when he received his post-mortem degree,
Honor roll.

One more shot!
They yell as she chugs the bottle,
jubilation ensues!
Shattering glass all over the floor.
Her foot starts bleeding,
She wails and sets for the hospital door.
The doctor takes tweezers
carefully to her sole
as from the corridor comes a loud moan;
her mother on the hospital bed
rides past her door.
The last shot she had at seeing her alive.
But she never looked up.

“You were always taken care of”
My mother whispers
Between drags of her menthol cigarette.
Hands so frail
They look like they might crack
Under the weight.

-I don’t know how to break it to her

The onlooker had something to say,
about the yellowness of the tulip
and the unbroken dew drop
on the lotus floating by

I flowered beside,
not more distinguished than any,
my sprouts, born with a name
not known, to admirers, many

My tiny florets blossomed,
each day the sun’s rays, graced earth
and showers moistened its soil.
I relished in my creations;

Until the day, I withered away,
when my roots left the soil
not charred in negligence
but in content, of living.