She was convicted for ****** of the first degree.
Three bodies were found with duct tape over their mouths,
stab wounds in their stomachs,
and their eyes open.
It was five o-clock in the evening.
The world outside was white.
And the sun had already set.
It was the seventh day of December
and it was her Birthday.
And this, apparently, was her present.
Not wrapped in paper or adorned with a bow.
No candles on a cake or cards on the mantle.
Just blood on the walls
and fear in their eyes
and dead people on the floor.
Her trial lasted nine days.
It was clean.
Not messy.
It was tidy.
Not sloppy.
It was simple.
Not abstruse.
It was nothing like what she had left at the crime scene.
But what they decided on in court
might not be what you may imagine.
Because there’s no death penalty or life sentence
for an eleven year old.
So, for her, it was just fifteen cycles of 365.
Just 780 weeks,
131,475 hours,
2,889,235 minutes
behind seventeen bars.

You remember that cow they told us about?
The one that jumped over the moon?
Well.
It never came back.
It’s hind legs were so powerful,
it’s hooves so sturdy
that he jumped from here,
on earth,
all the way over the moon.
All the way through the asteroid belt
past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
and even Pluto,
that tiny little sphere of ice
those *** holes at the International Astronomical Union
declassified as a planet in 2006.
The cow died before it got there though.
Maybe because there’s no oxygen in space
though I’ll never be certain.
But his body kept on floating.
Still propelled by the force it left earth with:
a dead black and white cow
sailed out of our solar system
and into the Arm of Orion.
But the light from Rigel and Betelgeuse
chased him away.
Blue-white and red supergiants have that effect on people.
Or cows.
Even dead cows.
And so, our travelling hero, who I’ve now named Frank,
spiralled through 0-gravity
and ended up
on the other side of the Milky Way.
Cygnus. Cygnus’ Arm is what caught him.
Cygnus and Frank became good friends.
Who could imagine!?
A dead cow and swan made of stars!
How preposterous.
But eventually they spread apart
(as all friendships eventually do)
and so Frank was left without a companion
and drifted off through space once more.
And we haven’t heard from him since.

I walk with
s l o w
reluctant
footsteps
         and
every  once    in      a

      while
I try to
             s
         h       a
               k       e

                     o
                     f
                     f

The   DEAMONS
       that cling
       to my ankles.

You're kept in a jar on my table.
I punched holes in the lid
so you can breathe
and dripped a little drop of wine
so you can drink.
I ******* the lid on lightly
so if you ever wish
to fly away,
go ahead.
But you'd leave me here
all alone
with nothing in my jar.
Nothing on my table.
Nothing breathing
through the holes I punched
into the lid.
Nothing drinking
the drop of wine
I dripped.

Trapped in a cage
and held behind bars.
Locked up with shackles
and chains.
Until my wrists slide out
of the cuffs
and my skin
turns to bone.