Humans yearn for a gush of sun to overtake the sky,
scraping and cracking us in red bloom,

or a cough of water to pour from an unseen throat
and slice through, like tangled hair.  

Nuclear warfare as vivid as second-grade sound effects,
every circle of hell that can climb into your mind,

maybe even a tattered zombie apocalypse.
It lacks class, but isn’t that the point?

Alas. We won’t get a dinosaur ending,
or a clashing of the gods.

Our insects and our imaginations grow smaller by the day,
and the meteors don’t like our kind of gravity anymore.

Instead, this blue marble will soup into itself.
The ice cubes will leak, and then skyscrape up again,

we drill up and down with our fingers
and the leaves will fall and eat forests in flames.

It leaves a membrane of smoke in the sky,
but don’t worry. I don’t. The world ends slowly.

Kindergarten

I don't know if I believe in God,
but I believe in heaven and angels
and the power of the vet,
so I mutter to them
in a sticky panic
when the rubber tire of the
UPS truck
catches your tail,

your midsection,

and irons your round belly
into the sidewalk.

I think this is the day I stop being a dog person.

I wonder if "writer's block" refers to a block like
a kindergarten alphabet piece,

or a

long

building
that slimes up the street
like an unsavory garden creature.

(you only have to walk one block...)

Sometimes it feels like writer's monolith,
a monument puncturing the sky,
collecting clouds like cotton candy

Mesmerizing

like watching a black hole devour a star.

Have you seen
how that happens?

First, the star inches closer

(not a smile from the abyss,
not even the flash of teeth),

and stretches its arms out,
strings of light pour from it's body,
reminiscent of silver spilling
from a fairy-tale character when
their soul is stolen.

It smokes and stretches
into the hands of the beast.

You blink, and a mere
millions of years later,
the star is gone.

Barnacles crunch like fast food under your sneakers,
my gnawed-on boots.

We pass over cat-eyed shards of glass
still spicy with beer bubbles
and still fizzy with teen rebellion;

It molds like an infection here.
In a town nicknamed "Little Norway." ~

This place hoards candy-colored suburbia in its pockets.

Houses like skittles weigh down its pants
and it belches out tourist traps weaker than expired pepsi,

yet it still manages these moments
where I can trot by your gazelle legs
and blast Julie Andrew's confidence.

And I want to heap myself on the oyster shells, say
STOP
Put this moment in a snowglobe,
sigh into it before we move on,
do anything before the wind whips it away.

Etch it into your hand if you have to.

But breeze dimples the water like a golf ball
and rips at the seams of the shore.



Please don't forget me when you leave.

I.

I'm a growing polliwog,
not a butterfly--

pickled legs hang off of my fish body
and gills close off so rapidly.
A minute ago I could caress the water
and make oxygen bubble in my throat. Now

beating,

pulsing

lungs intrude
like pink bubble gum ready to pop.


What a sadistic word,

oxygen.


II.

After a little nap in a sleeping bag
butterflies are monarchs,
stained glass fluttering perfection,

symbols of luck,

symbols of
beauty,
Their wired bodies are scribbled together
like starving supermodels.


III.

And my seams are

!slowly!  

pinching themselves open,
a la Frankenstein.

I want to think these body parts are mine:

A tentative nose,

very green pointillism eyes
with lashes like brittle grass or bent nails,

These white playdough thighs,
and stretchmarks like remnants of lace
chewed up by my insane canine.

Pink.
Dainty and tangled on my legs,
I think they look like jet-streams lit by sunset.

Gum is another tongue in your mouth,
taste-bud studded with sugar and pink

Hubba Bubba Double Bubble

Your jaw feels like expanding bread
when you rest from chewing
flatten it into a saucer and
let it balloon from your mouth,

it distends like an internal *****
or the full stomach of a frog
spilling from your lips

(When he stretches, you see veins
******* across his amphibian chest)

It hooks itself on your nose
and wilts into a pink tangle.

Your
beloved feline settles into himself and
muffs his paws together,
tongue
sticks out slightly like
a wedge of grapefruit between his teeth
and when you call,
he murmurs
but only sometimes comes.