red eyes, green wine, weak smiles, hollow cheeks, shallow drips.

Dark, not Black.

a desire to be linear, now crowded with curves
sickly sweet
sarcastically sour
no longer sweet, just sour


hot on cold, cold on hot, sweet and sour but sour and sour
tick tick tick, did it feel?
tick tick tick, did you feel?
failed when born, how can change it all, before dawn?

I guess I was amassing a collection
So I could show my children all the places I’ve ate

Like little milestones

All the places I’ve had dead end dates

All the places I’ve gorged myself
Having just got off work
Or just smoked a bowl
Either way I felt deserving of a feast

All the places I shared stories with friends
All the places we shared kisses before we went in

All the orange chicken I ate to help sober up
All the take out I ordered when we broke up
And that one place I found out I was allergic to shrimp and threw up

Yeah I remember it all
The egg rolls, the soup, the soy sauce
The painting of pandas or dragons
The red lanterns
All the motifs
You seemingly needed to run an establishment
Like this

There are the stand outs
The Lucky Star whose pork fried rice was just cut up Slim Jims
The Panda House who treated me less like a customer and more like a friend
If I didn’t come around, they would call and ask where I had been

It didn’t matter if it was in a mall or in my small home town
I always found comfort in this other culture’s food
So while I’m waiting for all those fountain cookies to come true
I guess I’ll look back over these dozen Chinese menus

The flowing lava,
destroys,
burns,
hurts,
kills,
overwhelms,
turns my blood to molten magma,
and yet makes feel so alive.

                                                                             -storm-

When life gives you lemons
You make lemonade
But taste sour it will
If you don't have the sugar.

first, sweet
then, sour
                                you grab me by my throat and make me cower
i freeze.
you do as you please.

sweet
but mostly sour
i let my heart become tamarind
to protect myself from you.

From the grand expanse of the sky
To the unreached depth of the sea
Every stone, every tree
Every bone, every seed
That I know is hard to fathom
But somehow you must believe

Pathways right through the middle of town
Lead directly to an open door
But we were not worried that the rain was falling
No we were not worried if the rain was falling

Sometimes dealing with the truth is painful
But in the truth there is love
Every word despite the world
Every word and each heart beat
That I know is not so simple
But somehow you must believe

Arrow shot forth in a million different ways
Aimed directly at your heart
And a moment you could feel that the rain was falling
Take a moment we can feel the way the rain is falling
The rain is falling

She can be
Sweet as Honey
Sour as Lemon
Depends...

©  2020 Jim Davis