Pick up the bones
Littered on the ground like a necklace
You made when you were five
Out of sea shells and mermaid hair
Wishing that you had scales and that you could swim
Because little girls don’t play in sandboxes anymore
But in their mothers’ makeup
Pretending to get fake injections in their face
Popping Smarties that they wish were diet pills
While they wait for their ******* to come in
The ones like Barbie’s: disproportional to her body—
A twenty pound weight that forces you forwards
With puckered lips and wrinkled spine—
Setting them up for disappointment and therapy
That comes in exactly the same shade of pink as the doll house
That promises real answers and quick fixes
Which figurines can’t convincingly lie about
Because they are more real as a plastic piece of childhood
Than the science behind depression and the statistically-backed  
positives of fancy water with antioxidants.

Pick up the bones
While little boys play with firecrackers and rocks
Popping them at the feet of faceless passersby
Wondering if the snaps are anything like the guns
From COD instead of WWII
Hoping that the girl next door will grow up to be a ****
But more interested in her mom being a cougar
That cigarettes will stop being bad for them
Because Indiana Jones made them look so cool
And leather jackets will always be in style
So they grow bored with legos and G.I. Joe’s
Because there’s no ***, no violence in imagination—
Not real violence anyway.

So bend down and pick them up
The shattered remains of what was left of the pretend baby
You thought you wanted
What was left of you before you remembered to dye your hair
And to darken your eyes with black smudges
What was left of your brother before he joined the army
Before he fell inside a scotch bottle and drowned
In the amber liquid that reminded him of *****
Passed down from your father.
Clutch at what was left of your sister before she wasted away into
The shallow shell of what she thought was beautiful
To the point of emaciation
Because pointed elbows and sunken cheeks
Will get her the movies she thinks she wants
And that you know she won’t get because she’s
Become too fake, too plastic to play a’real-boy.’

Now put them in your pocket
Because the wind is blowing and you’re afraid they will fly away
Afraid you will too without them to weigh you down
To keep you here.

Tuck them up and wrap them in mermaid hair and sea shells
And wish that you could be the person who played in sandboxes
And only cried if she got shampoo in her eyes
The one who made necklaces instead of doctor’s appointments
And laughed at herself instead of being tired all the time.

You put them in your pocket
And pray that someday you’ll figure out how to put them back together
Stand them up like a statue
One that you can make wave or frown
But not smile because you can’t remember what theirs looked like
(And it wouldn’t be realistic anyway)
So that you can make-believe
they never fell apart in the first place and that you never fell apart with them.

I’ve got this pocketful of dragons
and it’s doing my head in.
They just won’t stay still.

They keep roaring and when they
get really upset they breath this fire,
yes, ****** fire,
and it plays havoc with the lining
of your jacket.

But there are compensations; dragons
have had a bad press you know.

Although volatile and let’s face it
-utterly unpredictable- they tend to
balance this out with a world-weary
wisdom; an erudition that takes us back
to the dinosaurs, to that time
When They Ruled The World  
and although occasionally bitter
about their fall, they’re still up for it,
oh yes, and so:

I put them on the table in front of me
and sympathize with their woes and sigh at
the resigned acceptance of their fate.  

They don’t seem to mind

They just want to help

To contribute even  

But all they do is live in my pocket  
which hack’s them off to a certain extent
but after a few pints of diesel they just sit back
and relax, kick back and have a laugh
and slur ‘sailor vee,’ and eventually pass out,
at which point I gently gather them up,
and put them back into my pocket.

Trudging the road
with heavy feelings,
like I am a pocketful
of tarnished golden shillings.

Dragging feet
through soaking
pavement; walking,
lured by the lark's
shrilly singing.

Twenty-one years
of overexaggerated living,
I was promised of a life
halfway fulfilled,
only to find at almost twenty-two,
to believe in people's wholehearted joking.

Spending the majority of
my life then, just daydreaming
of how things could be
if only I had stopped believing.

Yet here I am,
a pocketful of useless learning,
but I don't know how long this would last
until I stretch my fabric; thinning,
only to shred it apart; bit by bit, tearing.

When the dark velvet blanket drapes across the sky
And the stars shine bright in the night
We shut our eyes
Turn the lights off
And drift into sleep
So peaceful and soft

In our sleep
We dream of things
We long to have
We dream of happiness, love and hope
To ignore all of the bad

In the morning
When we wake
We may not know
What we dreamed before
But we are granted with a little hope
Another open door

For each morning offers a new chance
To fix our mistakes
And change what was wrong yesterday
With thoughts from our dreams
That we dreamed when we were away

Away from the world
That is hard to survive in
Hard to have courage
Hard to live and strive in

But our dreams
They tell us
Where to go
How to act
And how to grow

So the world is not so bad
It is only dark at night
For if you close your eyes
And open them real soon
It will soon be time for you to dream along with the moon

he empties his pockets
at the end of the day
she hates random
pieces of paper
in her washing
cleaning out the lint filter
mumbling to herself
shaking out the snow
of forgotten wishes
from her clean clothes

he can't say

that was the receipt
for the flowers I sent
or the lay by for something
simply fantastic,
regardless of what's spent

so he dutifully empties
his pockets each evening
before leaving
his clothes for cleaning
and then sits silently
holding onto
all of his dreams
from his pocket...
staring at receipts
of his attempt
to please
his woman, his wife
the love of his life

there is no snow
on his clothes
because each night
he remembers
to empty
his pocket
full of dreams
*and hope

Step out from the obscurity
Haunting your mind
And your soul entirely with
Darkness which invades all your
Organs slightly
W**ith a pocketful of sunshine.

in this
pocketful
        of limbo
          the distance rises
               in curls of smoke
        a prairie fire
siphoning into
crisp edge
           of forest
          Inside my
uncloaked ventricle
primeval forces
turn my blood into
dusted gold
as they pump
        sacred texts
into my oxygen
      They roll your quintessence
upon my fingers,
            playing inside
     my psyche's  
wild ache
a spread of orifice
in spellbound mantra,
       as I spit out
          the
            hairy thorns,
a holy purge of
   internal
        engravings
    
Somehow ---
like a miracle,
I grow ripe seedlings
from deep within
            my womb
as I trip into
a universe rising
I take wisps
of your grace
as it brushes
the jut of my
astral collarbone
You are always
         grounding me
                    like this,
               my tongue
              tripping
         over velvet
stance of warrior
        assuaged into silk
    
        Without you,
I might be
whisked off into
the periphery
of chaos
but instead
       I am simply
tied to
      the urgency
of the little novas
about to
        explode

While I wait
            I tend to
              the wildfires.
     to make sure they
                   are still burning
I keep my honey
wet and fresh
upon your
                   lips,
let my pores
drip moonpools
    into your glistening
wet of mouth
and only when
          it is time
I let the whole of
           me burst
into the
      fire -wrapped
tips of
   stars