The heart that ticks
Inside her chest
Will talk to someone else.

There's little more to do for
that solitary image.
A brown house on an off-brown
background. The door stopped
closing right nearly ten
years ago.

She sits at the single table
eating the brown dust like
a baby's song, cooing to
herself. Cooing to the walls.
And stopping to stretch her
muted fingers.

He sleeps. A deserved sleep.
Better than propped dry against
the outside wall, marshaled
hands still en deshabille. All
that stuff was his wife's or
his father's.

It fetched a nice enough price
all the same, and where
antiquity fails the wise man
speeds off with a whistle. Funny
tune, but it's better than what the
wife murmurs.

Oh my, one almost forgets.
There was a boy as well, but
he left long ago, must have
been nearly twelve or so
years ago, when the sun was high
as now.

Though truth be told, he was
one of those poor ******* that
exercised theory and let practice
starve; let action gather dirt
and whipped the thoughts to breathe in
still more dust.

One would say they raised him
right enough and still be wrong.
The day he closed that door
on them, they just stood still
kinda watching as the wind blew
them along.

Sky-flower.
Blooms to sway in blue bowl.
Feeds with ******* root, edges in grass.
Turns quick head.
Flicks dead eyes.
But sings *** brightly.
Plumage song,
Melodious leaf.
With nested seeds in calcium shelf.
Dies under the sting of a Tybalt or two.
And the ****** bird drops.
Wilts in the sun.

I hope it's dead.
The way it spits and foams
and drags its pure white
form against the fence.

I left for breath
but it stays with me,
keeping pace with hopes
to crawl and live and be.

But they do not deny
the blood from gaping mouth.
My sister and my brother
are behind to watch, uncouth.

It will not let them near
enough to bludgeon to
near-nothing like Heaven
and cries for what it cannot do.

They are twisted,
his innards, and they mesh
further. An hour, not two.
I hope it's dead. God, how I wish.

The winter had been bitter cold,
Yet still gave way to spring.
Anticipating the untold
And ev’ry lively fling.

Of eager mists and marigolds,
The winds would think at length.
In majesty the hilly folds
Shone sunny, golden plinths.

Still Silence greeted Morning, bold
Not fearing, he, the sting.
For Winter had been careless, cold
And murdered everything.

The clothes on a perfectly sculpted mannequin
do not accentuate the garment's beauty.
Rather, it hollows it, makes it unwholesome
and outlines all the more clearly how empty it truly is
to the point where one forgets what one is looking at.
Like a vague pronoun.

The human mind, the decent soul, cannot and should
not be subjected to such a ******* and feels inhumanly
compelled to destroy the effect.

And that is why mannequins are so good for sales.

On the sofa.
On the carpet.
In the parking lot.
Out back in the dirt.
No one's looking, now.
She's on her knees
Heaving.

Face red with disbelief.
It's because they're all
Dead
But she's alive.

It's because they get to live.
Not her.
She's laminated,
Book-pressed to last,
And it's death.

Glossed pages, merely
Slides in lantern light
Without narration.
Monday slips into Friday
Without a sound
Or impress of color.
Yesterday was February
And tomorrow drags
Muddy footprints as it heads
Into next year.

It is not real.
     so pour yourself into your works
     build an immunity to it:
What we can feel.

The Dead don't bleed.
The dead Don't bleed.
The dead don't Bleed.
At the bar without heed.
Gulp down burning
Mouthfuls of amnesiac need.
The devil's in the music,
As it creeps across the floor.
But the Devil
(with a gold star from Sunday school)
Hasn’t got the power to hold a pin.
And nails go through.
And nails go through.
And he's surprised
Because they Do.

Scratch it out in the back as a
Quick bathroom rendezvous.
She can rid her self of
A gypsum heart and
Rinse it down the drain.

And he in the stall
Kills his rebellion
With sharp hands and sharper heart.
Holding frenzied permanent ink.
Every number he leaves,
And all the faces he defaces,
And every envy he engraves
Blossoms in tune with, complements
Her ecstatic criticisms against the stall.

Now I lay me down to sleep
It wasn't real enough to keep.
She ended it in love, with loving leap.