The desert air was
stealing water
from the children’s skin.

Their German Shepherd
sprinted along the rusting fence,
her paws flinging dust storms and
leaving a foot-deep moat in their path.

The children’s mother filled the *****’s trench to its brim
with water from the plastic hose.
It almost melted in her hands--

its oily rubber stench

gave her a headache and she went to rest in the
air-conditioned kitchen, leaving
her ******* son in the care of the middle child,
the daughter from the same father.

Her ******* daughter sat waiting for her,
quivering in a wooden chair.

As her mother rested, her
tears pooled on the table, and she
stuttered to Mother about what their father
stole from her body.

Their mother’s blood became bile,
realizing the man she married
was a monster.

The mother stood up from her splintered chair
to gaze through the murky window
at the children she bore with the beast.

They skidded on their tummies across the only wetland
in the lowly desert town, giggling and
splashing their limbs in the filthy yard.

She wondered how she would tell her son
that they were moving far away, without daddy.

She frowned at the daughter of the *******;
could she have at least
one stable child?

Consume speed,
rid auxiliary weight—

no love handles,
no fat from rearview—

just frame,
pumping heart,
place where man can sit.

Muffin-top women watch me
quiver under skin,

unshakable desire
to chew fat from their bodies—

never know if I’d
swallow or spit.

Red, flushed lips and
green, lush eyes,
my pearly white teeth
and ripe, wet licks:

we're ready to strike
with soft, sweet bites,
the slow, great pressure
will break your ****

and you'll flow into me.

But soon, the gray will come and
I
will be lost in its fog,
and you,
well,
you better **** yourself
back in
and run

before you, too,
come near to drowning
on my chemical sadness.



It always happens soon after;
my burgundy heart
suckles on passion
and returns to its crimson ways,

and all I'll want to do
is play.

If you think you can wait.

Crooked, brick teeth behind
a curled, silly smile

Brown, glazed irises swimming in
blood-shot eyes

Smoky hair, thick on top,
more wispy as it descends

but dense as a forest the hair
that hides your sycamore

when you're not using it
to haunt the young.

Betraying your lusts,
you mixed your sycamore

with a full-bloom *****
and brought me to be--

The white skin and purple hues
of my mother

cannot hide that I am
of the monster.

Dare I, half-*****, half-sycamonster
in my full bloom,

become pollinated by
the quaking aspen,

so we may risk bringing to be
another haunter of child's dreams,

or return to the earth,
never knowing who could be?

She has swollen red thoughts
bursting at the themes,

spherical, lustrous logic,
eager to be seen.

She wiggles her cerebrum
at your skull’s front door,

you invite her in,
looking for more.

She smiles at your neurons
that pulse to ***** her tight,

but she whispers to them softy,
“Oh, I’m in charge tonight.”

Logic ruptures from her mind,
your neurons grappling in vain,

her thoughts swallow your world,
so hard it brings you pain.



When she comes once,
you’ll never let her outside—

she’s now your reasoning concubine.

His teeth were ochre pebbles
From the smoking of His pipe—
He bowed down to my bleeding feet
And sang God-awful tripe
“Life is but an odyssey,
  Can’t you open your eyes and see?
  A lot of it is smoke and mirrors
  But the rest is truly ecstasy!”
He tapped my crimson, gushing foot and got up from His knees
To sit down in His musk-rose bed where He settled His old head.

My face began to boil red until I could no longer contain my head and I burst out
at my Old Man hoping it’d make blood flood from His hands!

“Just who the **** do you think you are, God?
How can you say you see?
You know nothing of the Earth
And the nightmares that it breeds!
Did you notice Abu Ghraib,
the torturers’ many ways?
How theft is easy for gangsters
While children starve for days?
Puh!
You just sit here on your musk-rose
Cuddling its soft, fuzzy petals,
You’re nothing but a spoiled child
Who has never desired to run wild!”

And at this, Father whispered from his bed,
“Capricious, I have been
  But I cannot be blamed.
  People choose their lots in life
  For free will is their fame.
  If I gave them acres of land and
  a home that doesn’t weather,
  their bones would turn to tether.
  You think I owe everyone the world,
  And all the fruit it grows,
  But the sweetest peach you reach yourself,
  And this you already know.”

When my Father’s words had stopped
My eyes caught the throbbing wounds;
The skin blanketed the open flesh
And Dad said, “The infection won’t heal soon.”

If home is
merely a place
where you sleep,

shower,
keep your clothes
for the next day,

then, yeah,
I've got one of those.

But if home is
a place where you are loved,
accepted in your totality,

able to express yourself
wholeheartedly
without words of doubt

and decisions that
crush you,
concluding your fate,

then, certainly,
I've not had

one.