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Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Cheerio, cheerio
Four AM they call to keep the awake awake
And lull the slumbering deeper adream

Clutching vapors of the musky night
Cool, humid, starry eve
Betelgeuse humming a tune

Rigel entranced by the melody
Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka belting along
While the nightbirds

While away the hours, embedded
Deep in the canopy of springtime maples
And chirp, and chirp, and chirp the expanse

Singsonging to insomniacs
******* of blue, red, orange, all grey
Parading the atomic clock onward

And every night they chirrup
Never before two o’clock- why at such a time
As the deadzone of slumbering night?

And there goes the first
Cheerio, cheerio
Good night, good morning nightbirds.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
She slides it out
The sound of paper gently scraping cardboard
And it embraces her lips
A click and a glow
And all he can see
Is the ruddy orange light
And all he can hear
Is the sibilant intake of breath
As she draws her thoughts in
Warm and acrid
Through pursed lips she exhales languidly
And the breeze takes away her worries
And she gets a headrush
And takes in another mouthful of smoke
Scenting the air
She watches the white expand
Flowing like liquid through the air
She smiles to herself
As she takes her last drag
And a light in the dirt
Fades out into the night
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
snow for dinner for two on the town
with up so falling thousand flakes down
tie skinny knot to knees how they bow
dress floral pink enrapturing glow
Riffing on Cummings.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through

glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,

that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating

the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,

cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab

hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,

his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,

3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,

liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks

in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-****, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-

and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-**** crust in his stubble,

and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying

she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
Midnight’s glowing solstice moon
From moonrise to moonset-
She feels, hears, sees
Magic, crickets, skunks, dew-

She’s summer.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
The mosquito was ******* my blood
and I let her.

My heart was breaking
and I let her.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
This poem is a Google Adwords ad,
Intruding into the sidebar of your heart.

It’s a 1-800-LAWYERS commercial
Making you money off your personal injury.

It’s a brutal, ****** UFC bout,
Weak in its ground game but knows its Jiu-Jitsu
And it’s got you on the mat, begging you to tap out.

This poem is *****,
a SNAFU waiting to happen.

It’s the sarin gas Syria used against its own
And it’s the attack America will be responding with,
Using ****** to punish murderers.

This poem is a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken
Getting your finger-lickin’-good fingers nice and greasy.

This poem is yet another poet writing yet another poem about poems,
With the word poem repeated ad nauseum.

This poem is a bunch of awful band names,
Like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Tapes ‘n Tapes, and Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!.

It’s a summer blockbuster and a teen dystopian trilogy.

It’s riding *****
In your ex’s car.

This poem is anthropogenic global warming
Whose CO2 emissions are dangerously high and climbing
While its polar bears are stranded on the broken ice floes of its verses.

It’s a baseball crowd speaking the words “no hitter”
In the midst of a no-no
Which itself is a no-no.

Its bad grammar, who’s comma’s are all, out of place
And its’ apostrophe’s, are meaningless.

This poem is Zooey Deschanel,
Who will not marry me some day, any day, in the future.
In fact, it doesn’t even know I exist.
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