The prison bus
passes this way

every now and then,
surfacing without

warning—a leviathan
of metal, grease, and glass

its dark windows secured
by squares of rusted wire

its diesel engine heart
spewing exhaust that

turns morning rain
the color of seawater.

The prison bus
does not stop
for stop signs;

red lights are nothing
but violent memories
strung in an overcast sky.

When the bus strikes
something in its path

the prisoners bounce
slightly in their seats,

lifted into
impartial air

liberated
momentarily

by the familiar
co-conspirators
of blood and laughter.

In his dreams,
the guard who
drives the prison bus
circumnavigates the globe,
plowing through clouds
of insects that shimmer
like fuel above the road.

These words are like
flower petals strewn across
a forgotten floor.
A contrast in a desolate space,
but chew them,
examine them, love them
and see their origins
birthed in poison.
They escape from their captor's
skin through long trailing tendrils
of ink
much in the way
the ***** pollinates the flower
and is never seen again,
much in the way the words are warped
by alliteration and savagely
captive in metaphors
like they belong in a simile
like they belong under the skin
the way a past made up of
a universe
can never quite make
anything whole again.
They don't quite belong in a
barren place such as this,
but can never move,
for  their venomous
cover would surely taint
all that is green and
full of life.
And if a wind, a breeze,
should lift them from
their resting place upon the floor,
they would surely float and dance
along,
in all normality,
in all the ways they should,
and will wither
and shed their toxic pieces
along the way
to cause coughing, sneezing,
and noses ****** like the watering can
that sprouted these
heinous flowers.
And they will fall
again.

.
How I wish I could lay my head
down gently on your thighs,
to make you moan and sigh aloud
and slowly close your eyes.

How I wish I could use my tongue
and give you more than rhyme,
to bring a flush up to your cheek,
of feelings beyond space and time.

How I wish that I could speak
in words of feathered certainty
and so entice your curious mind
to lay down with me for eternity.
.
.
© Pagan Paul (2017)

Sometimes you ask yourself, does she understand
does she understand what you mean when you
fight through the cold fog of numbing fear to face
her and stutter the words "I love you"
Does she understand it takes more than
just courage to utter some words, does she
know how deep you have to dig to find the right
way to roll the tongue and move your paralysed
teeth just to construct a single sentence...
Sometimes you wonder whether she knows or not
that it takes a thousand heart blips, a ****** labyrinthine
conundrum and a relentless soul to make a single step
across the emotional bridge...
Sometimes you wonder whether she really gets it
when you say she's the road you were destined to
walk without which you won't move on for no matter
how much you'll try, without the road you're stuck to
a single spot, sometimes you ask yourself whether
or not she gets what you mean when you say you
lost your way in the blue Ocean of her eyes and only
the north star of her affection can find you a bearing
back to the shores of reality yet the more the thought
the more the plunder of wonder...especially when you
finally realize she may understand yet not get it...
For how can she get it when even you knows storms
of romance do carry with them heart shuttering thunder
when even you have heard the same lines in songs
when millions of poems say the very thing
some even expressing them in a much more intricate
manner than you can ever weave, how can she get it
when the guy before you said the same thing and
only left a heart he found whole scattered like stars
in the milky way, not that they are not beautiful from afar
when she's probably saving you from her invisible ugly scar
one that will drive you away as soon as she drops the veils
and opens up the fragile side that she hides from the world...
What's there to grasp when her father used a similar phrase
to lure her Mama into an abyss of torment so much she grew up like
an orphan as her Mama could not take it anymore and had
to run off, never to be seen again, when her teacher
defiled her best friend with the allure of something not so different...
when she's read Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and more
where it all ends but in tragedy, fire or War...
What's there to understand when you aren't even sure if what
you feel's passion enough to light all way to forever... and you
know she's no longer playing games, she's been disappointed many times
and she won't simply fall for a beautiful piece simply because it rhymes...
And then you wonder, who'll find you when your rescue is more
lost than you have ever been...