Grumpy, middle-aged woman at work,
I wonder if you see me staring in your direction.
I, once again, notice your big hair,
tousled and littered with springy grays.
I, once again, notice your blouse,
dribbled with escapees of your breakfast and lunch.

You’re tapping your foot
to an eighties ballad on the radio—
the same one that we hear twelve times a day,
and each time, I grit my teeth and
begrudgingly swallow the godfather of all expletives.
But you? You love it, don’t you?

No qualms with the world
as you grip that vending machine Klondike Bar
like it’s your only saving grace.
I can’t even manage to blink
as I watch you peel back its thin layer of foil,
exposing the poor chocolate shell
that will soon fall victim to such a savage mouth.  
I shudder at the thought of what you would do
for a Klondike Bar.

Your eyes are wide, black, and merciless
as you crunch into that innocent little square.
Flecks of dark brown fly in every direction,
as you writhe in some sort of hokey ecstasy
straight out of a grocery store mom-erotica.
I can just hear you grunt, “Waste not, want not!”
as you individually finger up
each tiny piece off your keyboard.
I hear your lips smack with every satisfying victory—
and I cringe.

I want to tell you your ice cream is melting,
but I’m too busy watching it drip
down the sides of your hand.
In no time, this Klondike Bar
becomes your own personal rescue mission.
You must desperately save each and every sticky streak
with your unforgiving tongue.
Now and then you’ll slip in a satiated moan
and I can’t help but feel bad for your imprisoned dessert.
Unfortunately, this vicious cycle continues with each bite,
until you become the resident hot mess of Cubicleville,
smeared with melted chocolate and covered in a sugary sheen.

Despite the spectacle, it’s nice to see you happy for once.

It ends when you finally notice my gawk.
That quickly, you’re grumpy again
and demand to know what I’m staring at.

“Nothing,” I reply,
but not without a smile so coy
it gives me away.

Shivering fingers, cradling a cold clay bowl
with dull roses surrounding the rim.
A Klondike bar cut like a grid on a paper towel.
My grandma used to let me eat one in the living room
"careful of the carpet"
on her yellow couches covered with sticky plastic.
She would play the Elvis Presley Christmas album,
To Ginny written in black sharpie on the sleeve
with a Love always, Mom underneath,
over and over again
while she hung bulbs of wood on the bottom branches
so her Welsh Corgi wouldn't break them with his paws.

Slate slabs with handprints
in purple paint every year for the holiday.
She'd set death aside in a coffin ashtray
to kiss my cheek.
Presley played in the background.

She'd rock
on the front porch in white wicker
coughing into the lid of a Pepsi can
until she'd catch me pressing my nose against the door glass,
tell me to turn around and sit on the couch.
It was too cold for me.
She'd only be a minute.

When we played, I'd hide between the two baskets
in the closet that held her hair products.
I could count all the bottles three times each
before she'd say she was too tired,
put on her coat, grab a white box, and hit play.
I always hated that album.

I see a girl
jumping from the Big Dipper
onto the object to which
the action of the sea is directed.

She takes flight,
with the boldness of a Willow Ptarmigan,
and soars high above
Palmer and Seward and the bowl of Anchorage.

She lands atop the snowy slopes
of Denali and carves her way down
into the withered trees of Ghost Forest.

She swims among the Aleutian Islands,
floats on the waves of the Turnagain Arm,
and basks in the waters of the Gastineau Channel.

I see a girl
whose eyes sparkle brighter
than Klondike gold,
and whose voice whispers more beautifully
than the wind that blows
through the great land of Alyeska.

Do you remember:
Watching Harry Potter and pretending the characters were our classmates,
while sitting on your couch eating Dominos,
the spices stinging my split lip.
Naming our sleepovers,
E-mailing "Jennifer is tomorrow".
Slurping mint Klondike bars in your hot tub,
Autumn rain pittering from the trees,
and playing truth-or-dare sitting in front of the jets.
Throwing your old toys in the road
and waiting for them to get run over
until my dad arrived.
Videotaping our feet
in the golden light
and the deleting them to save space
Walking to your house after watching "The video" at school
and giggling past the rivers of rust.

Honestly, I thought
we were going to be friends forever.

The song played-- muffled, hesitant,
As if the tabletop jukebox
Seemed unsure of the tune’s suitability,
As out of place and time as ourselves,
It being Wednesday morning three A.M.
At the all-night diner on the Klondike Road
(The mills, going full-bore down the road in Montmorenci Falls
Making such a place viable, indeed necessary),
But we laughed loudly and nonchalantly
Between bites of nearly adequate cheeseburger,
Ostensibly unaware of all those inevitabilities
Which were tangible but unspoken, indeed unspeakable,
This being the last of the last summer not careworn,
Textbooks to be exchanged for neckties,
Plastic sandals swapped for sensible flats,
Other lives to take flight in other places,
A mere handful of evenings remaining
Before the clumsy process of untying
All that which had been loose ends from the beginning.

Would I go back?  In a sense, it does not matter.
There was always a laundry list of reasons
That it could not be, cannot be, will not be:
Irreparably meshed gears of relocations and reconciliations,
Gordian knots of logic and desire.
Still, in my dreams, I often run like a madman,
Chest burning as my sneakers slap the pavement in the darkness,
Back toward the diner, but it has been razed to the ground
(Likely the case, for all I know,
What with the mills silent and padlocked all these years)
And I paw madly, feverishly through the rubble
In search of some remains of those vinyl chanteuses of love songs,
Those epitaphs of our failures,
Those three-minute odes
To our compromised and conditional successes.

What would I do for a Klondike?
I might ****** a militia of a million men,
Take the time to cut off every head
With a quick swink and a loud thud.
We don't play, bud, I'd crawl through the mud,
Grind through the filth of Shawshank
With smells too terrible to speak
For just a bite of that creamy treat.

I'd be a drug mule until I got to the top, bro.
I'd smuggle it all like El Chapo,
Working hard with police on my payroll
Until I got caught and questioned,
Judged and jailed to teach me a lesson.
Showing them that ice cream for confession
And all they responded was,
"Ryan, that was a rhetorical question"

1.  Klondike bars
2.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
3.  Out of rope
4.  Just joined the cult to get laid
5.  Turns out mom and dad do understand
6.  Tie: The Price is Right and Matlock
7.  It's called responsibility!
8.  High as hell on life
9.  Foes still unvanquished
10.  ***
11.  Drugs
12.  The Wise and Mighty Zoroaster
13.  Rock 'n' Roll
14.  You

are you dead yet?
my pillow has the plastic to prove it
take a thought, overplay it, remove it
the whole time
staring at the sun, with eyes wide
burned retinas blinded with truth
shaking in the darkness with vermouth
staring at flesh, of flesh
staring at the truth in flesh, of it
one day I smell the sky, the next I can't fly

bipolar without klondike bars
humor doesn't work either, smell ether
smell ether and breathe
working with strings and straps
not g strings and strap ons
working with and against myself
constructing the pyramid with the town
burning a hole in my back
lies are cement to be removed

Are you dead yet?
Why even ask, viruses aren't living
taking a **** and growing up, caring and giving
dividing my time up to distract
providing it won't sneak attack
I must have ate a lot of nuts
Planters **** you, now I pay he ultimate price
******* and screaming while my vice peaks
slips into, porcelain
no more sin, please, no more sin

I’m ******* freezing.
I’ve been sitting here across from a parking lot
in a little patch of green, and the sprinklers
keep going on and off, but I sit here—
watch the droplets slide down my black leather boots,
shifting my legs in my soaked denim shorts,
picking at the soggy bread of my dollar menu sandwich.
I didn’t win the peel off sticker contest on the wrapping,
and I also missed the trashcan when I threw it out,
like you threw me out

and it’s not like I saw it coming. Considering our cat
is still at the vet and we just found a new couch,
but I guess my bag of clothes and one pair of clean underwear
are my only companions now as I wait
for some sort of direction or weird, metaphor
to slink down from the Maybelline billboard,
crawl up my skin and into my mind so I’m not just
sitting here, freezing.

But I guess it’s not as cold as that one time
you slid half a Klondike bar down my back
as I sat circling help-wanted ads in the paper.
I screamed, but you covered my mouth and kissed
the space behind my ears a million little time.
I licked your hand and you wiped it on my shoulder,
turning

back to the stove to stir the Campbell’s soup we found
behind the expired olives in the cupboard. Yet, I always thought
that I was your sliver of a masterpiece.

It’s not everyday that someone calls a girl beautiful
when she’s got bags the size of small countries
under her eyes or a flannel with five missing buttons.
But the way you held my collarbone in your hands,
or carried my sculptures to the shows, or bent
your life a little differently just to fit my mold.

I guess our love just grew old
to you, but I never thought that a parking lot,
after hours of drizzle and haze
rising from the blacktop, would look better
than the canopy we made from old t-shirts
that hung above our bed with a mobile
of everything I ever made up in my head
that you could be.

Oh come on.
Seriously?
You know perfectly well
There's little I wouldn't do
For a klondike bar.

The still air sets off into a run when the speedometer reads 100.

Nothing really matters at those speeds. The only thing that seems real is that beautiful harmony coming gently out of a few speakers.

At 100 nothing really matters because if you worry you slip.
If you slip you run off the road.
If you run off the road you die.

Death is good for figuring things out.

But this isn't about death.
It's about life
That beautiful fleeting thing,
Where everything matters and doesn't at the same time.

That Klondike bar looks good and this song is hitting me just right. I love you too.

That's all that matters right now, but by the time anyone sees this I'll have forgotten what this was about

Listening to talk radio
On the 45 minutes back to the castle
A daily habit
Get home
Read some political articles
A daily habit
Post a politically related video to facebook
A daily habit
Discovery: Teeth are sore from gritting them all the way home
A daily habit?
Realization: I really hate politics, can’t stand being strong armed by views clearly wrong
Conclusion: Life is too enjoyable for polarized party line talking points
Decision: Need to listen to something else besides the discharge oozing from my car radio
Action taken: Video post removed
Action taken: Walk outside with the family
Action taken: Green tea
Action taken: Klondike bar (double chocolate)

I’m reading my dictionary with the pages missing
Of all the words that I’d much rather be dismissing
It’s much easier to ignore what’s been written
To stop the queue of a page that’s already printing
Listen
Cause we live where we can rip anything out that we don’t like
Take out words like bomb raids and hunger strike
My dictionary might be a little lifelike
It’s saying what I can and can’t do for a klondike
unlike
Sitting down and facing brown reality
Taking very simple things making hyperbole
To realize you might be a nobody
Cause there’s nothing that life can guarantee
Do you agree
To be afraid of a word in a book is nonsense
Maybe I don’t understand the context
But is there really that much weighing on your conscious
That reading is like consuming tons of toxins
Word

Everyone likes to tell me what I can and can’t say
But I like to disobey and I say it anyway
Any way that I can
To get my point across
Any way that I play
with word play
and words say
how much you can weigh
and can you be gay
or can you horseplay
on the Lord’s day
and hey
I take the highway
As my getaway
But the signs are on display
on where I can turn
and when should I yield
And still the words reflect
on my windshield
but what’s in a word

bird
I hear bird’s the word
But let me reword my password
Cause it’s too simple
To unlock the emotions of other people
When they wear their heart on their sleeve
Strung together with staples
And it is a staple
That I should be graceful
And tasteful
Not be wasteful of my words
Cause that’s all I got
and it seems I forgot
to boycott the
thought talk
and just keep it to myself

Because words are powerful
And I am not
And too often I hide behind them
And finally I’m giving it a second thought

hey, are you doing anything?
i’ve been reading a lot of poetry and i was wondering
if you wanted to stay up all night again
and when i say stay up all night again
i mean let’s not sleep a single hour
roll around on the floor again
chlorine scented hair
and warm hands
under torn shirts
and let’s go swimming in my grandmothers pool
in our underwear at two in the morning
float on our backs to see the stars
maybe we’ll catch the sun rise just over the neighbors roof
or maybe we’ll dry off
and eat melted klondike bars in the driveway
and i’ll be tempted to lick the chocolate off of your
fingers

hey, are you doing anything?
let’s hold each other’s face
like we’re stopping earth’s orbit
and pretend the sun won’t rise anytime soon

They do not, like their more esteemed Californian cousins,
Sweep into town over sloop-festooned, canvas-checkered waters,
Passing over the remnants of missions
Packed with the ghosts of Christian guilt and romantic swashbucklers;
They labor at their workaday altitude just above the treetops
Still budding in the newness of May,
Pausing to rest on the jagged orange chain-link
Which surrounds the dormant mills,
Or perhaps a sill fronting a boarded window at the old school
Before taking to their summer quarters at the abandoned quarry
A couple of miles up the Klondike Road,
and invariably one of the old-timers will say
Little birds hain't much too look at,
But at least they come back every year,
And then not giving the simple brown creatures another thought,
As they find no particular interest in the notion of flight.

I put myself back together
with Choco-Choco Chip
and Caramel Pretzel Klondike bars

and did I mention
Cabernet Sauvignon

another Death yep
this one a stunner
leaving gaping holes in hearts

and did I mention this young goddess

I put myself back together
with sugar
and intimacy

I broke
from the loss
of my nephew
my godson

I'm putting myself back together
with misspelling and wine

I broke, am breaking
I'm putting am back
togethering

i miss you already
i wonder why you had to do
such a ******* thing

and i'm crying again
and this is high
and this is low
and this is    
you know
******
too well


Copyright#2018 Dennis Willis

They still weep;
Not as often in those early days
When the telegram delivery boy,
Every bit as foreboding as the Grim Reaper,
Had arrived at their particular doorstep,
But at odd, importune times:
When the light shines just so in his old bedroom,
(Some instances just as he left it,
Other times clean and empty
As if never occupied at all)
The sound of boys playing baseball
In the field on the Klondike Road,
The bells at the Methodist Church
Ringing for another young couple.
Still, the world rolls along
In its own diffident manner:
There are cars, butter, and gasoline now,
Young men who were at Midway and Omaha Beach
Are back on the line at the mill,
Their mothers plan weddings
And buy dresses from Larson’s down in Ridgway.
They may pause briefly if they catch something
In the eye of a friend
Who has no need to buy frocks
Or reserve banquet halls,
And they will say, casting down their eyes a bit
Life goes on, I guess.
Yes, but they still weep

romola grey plays the glistery xylophone, one foot perched up on a potato mountain. in her arteries are gold rushes, klondike blood and moody oxygen. there is a particular grace to her madness: she used to be a seaweed keeper in carmel, long-finned pilot whale watcher in cork, hoary hair weaver in aix, newspaper delivery boy in columbus—she planted soulful cacophonies of watermelon kids who ice skated around her ankles.

romola grey hits the notes in vernacular solicitude, her fingers in antarctican winds, sloughs off half of the continent of dry skin. she looks for a wolf-boy who will listen to her calls, and her musical outpour of thunderous howls. but there is a nome-alaska body in her gut, corpuscled deep in her legs that trench a frozen pumpkin patch—for she is her own snowy witch with the back of a lion.