I remember when you took me
corkscrewing down kaleidoscope tunnels for the last time
mounting hummingbirds to fly through the crystallized sky
air splashing against our skin
like an intoxicating perfume, dizzying
old daydreams, new friends like
humans with spectrum eyes and hair that coiled around their shoulders like serpents, all donning galaxy cloaks
reptilian monsters that sprouted raven feathers while chasing each other through smoke trees
silhouettes with rusty-nail teeth who danced like leaves in a gale
inky, spindly limbs reaching
trying to catch the moon
fingers entangled like a dreamcatcher

We were more then the kings and queens, heroes, idols
We were gods,
ruling from the velvet mountains to the silken seas,
everything beneath the candlesmoke clouds and the caramel sun that drips like wax

everything shining beneath the stars
made out of that smoldering purple dust we know so well
always whispering to us in scritch-scratch voices
reciting elegies and hush-hush songs of longing

but then,
reality ignites and burns beneath us as we soar,
elysian fields crumbling,
flames consuming the wonderland we’ve built
that is nothing but a paper thin house of tarot cards
the future written with seeping poison ink
We are left keening in the ashes,
tears to late to douse the inferno

but maybe
they will help some seedling fester beneath the scorched earth

Backstabbing, double-talking
Collection of crooks and creeps.
Oily tinhorn picks the pockets of
The common man while he sleeps.
Corkscrewing rhetoric
The worst you have ever heard
Spoken so that in the end there is
No meaning to the words.

Sidewinding viper’s nest;
No warning rattles on their tails
Criminals being paid too much
That really should be in a jail.
Four-flushing deck-stackers
Two friends and a stranger.
Dressed in thousand dollar suits
All unrecognizable danger.

Mean-spirited jerkwads
Blather daily on my teevee.
Cutpurses and footpads.
Mostly all the same to me.
Dressed up nice and talking
Smooth like a baby’s ***.
Don’t expect me to vote for you.
No thank you, I will pass.

Gutter crawling, bile spewing
Butter won’t melt in your mouth.
Carpetbagging, underhanded
Favorite sons of the Old South
And some forked tongued Yankees
Siding up with traitors and smiling.
Glad-handing, baby kissing liars
Notoriously, falsely beguiling.

In case you find me too subtle
With my message to you and your crew.
There isn’t a whole lot to recommend
Anyone with wisdom to like you.
The only positive use for you
That one can readily foresee
Is to serve as a shining example of
What a politician should never be.


Brent Kincaid
4/21/2015

left, sinistral, left sided, left out,
left behind,
gastropod sea shells,
coiling counterclockwise,
when viewed from the apex

when that all alone,
left-out feeling pervades,
to the party uninvited,
for the team, unchosen,
stand out for not standing in,
invisible moat surrounds and suppresses,
life's outward bound sounds,
vision best,
when only looking inward,
remember this too well..

this world, this work,
was created by an
ambidextrous soulbeing
his soul,
favoring neither right or left,
favoring doing right,
and no one
left behind

cognizant that both sides now
are necessaries
for human and seashell existence

proof be that
the creator,
his perfection, at the very least,
in his design motifs,
unquestioned,
made us all
sinistral shells

and sinistral poets


those apex corkscrewing left poets,
the leaven of human fermentation,
you and your sinistral tidbits
are the influencing spice
of an average world,
keeping the world tilting
on its proper axis

make us and
our daily bread rise,
sinistral yeast,
vive la difference,  
you are
the best of us

I had my first kiss at the cinema, the contour of our silhouettes illuminated by the glow of the rolling credits. He tasted like Altoids and cigarettes, an ambivalent concoction of ice and fire. At one point, I'd bitten him by accident. Whether this was a manifestation of inexperience or (seductively, with heat in her eyes) hunger,  I'm not sure. But, sitting there in the thrill of My Something New, I was certain of one thing: this was a red carpet moment, the stuff of silver screens and glimmering Hollywood starlets and rows of type writer ribbon waiting to be transposed into something theatrical.

After the film, we sat outside a cafe a block over, the fever of summer adhering to the back of our necks like (giggling) misplaced hickeys. Smoke corkscrewing from the end of his parliament, he told me how John F. Kennedy was addicted to opioids. I couldn't help but think back to earlier that afternoon when he first admitted to being a smoker. How he'd asked me, "Is this going to be a problem for you?" hesitation rising up his throat like bile.

I smiled because 'Everyone's got their poison," I replied.  

And poison? Well, there's something so strikingly poetic about it, don't you agree?

(beat.)

JFK must have been Marilyn Monroe's poison, I think.

"So," I offered, "What do you really think happened to Marilyn Monroe?"

"How do you mean?" he said between drags of his cigarette.

"I mean was it really an overdose or--"

"Was it an assassination?" he interjected.

"Mhmmm."

Another drag of his cigarette.

"As they say, the simplest answer is often the correct one."

"Maybe. (beat.) But what makes for the better story?"

After two weeks of courtship, he took his leave. My mother's obvious, unwarranted disapproval was, perhaps, a source of anxiety for him. Me being freshly eighteen, he was also concerned about that (sarcastically) whoppin' three year age gap. (beat.) Not fully buying it, are ya?

Well, neither did I.

Here's my theory: his feelings (or lack thereof) were the reason he called it quits. And instead of being a man--instead of being honest, instead of owning up to the true nature of his intentions--he spun some relatively believable excuse. A coward's way of removing himself from a situation he doesn't want to be in. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't as disappointed as I would have anticipated, had I foreseen the end of our fleeting romance.

I was (beat.) fine.

It does make for a great story, after all. (wryly) But you knew that already.

Because for every Norma Jean, there's always a Marilyn Monroe.

Tell me then--who are you?

(beat.)

Girl curtsies, transitioning into a tableau of Marilyn Monroe's iconic pose wherein she attempts to hold down her dress as the air from a nearby subway grate threatens to expose her undergarments.

Lights fade out.

{Fin}

Threads of cotton
corkscrewing
through blankets,
blending flesh
with fabric.
Flicking rain
drops off the
surface
of window
panes,
penciling my
name over
your skin with
my teeth.
Tremoring fingers
tracing your
silhouette,
sensing your
rapture wrapped
in
apprehensive
heart beats,
hanging on the
fibers folding
over our
unstitched
bodies

This is both how it ends and how it begins:
I gave you two paperback novels and you forgot
to read both of them, they sat on your nightstand
for three months like the ghosts of grandfathers. The cover
of one is neon yellow, all bright like the insides
of your mouth, and the cover of the other
is greens and whites with the face of a small bird
coming out from the center. You hate to read. I knew
you wouldn’t like either book, but I loved them,
so I gave them to you anyway, then watched them
pool together in dust the way sweat pooled across
my body, my body underneath yours, yours a small
lightning rod and mine ever-expanding, corkscrewing
out like a mountain range or like a bottle of wine.
The first day we met we ended up in your car, I sat
in the passenger seat and was terrified of your hand,
but still mine crept to it like a fish to sand sprinkled
across beach by a child. At first you were there
lodged away in my left breast, your body I felt
form a small knot there, and the knot grew, slowly,
and then suddenly, gone, like a confession. First
my hands were deep in your chest and yours were edged
around my hips, everything felt careful and wooden,
and then our hands sawed away and disposed of. There
was one fleeting goodbye and then there was an empty room,
my body once again alone and standing underneath a sky
large and empty and flat as your cool tongue.