A penny for your thoughts
A dime for the ashtray
Splayed open and trimmed
Needle like, pinned with
juniper bark and mesquite
needles

Skin deep, funny how flashing lights command attention
In a different dimension, each of us, independent experience
The sphere still spins, this lens is turning more grey, each day
Thoughts spray, out the side of your face, straight shoe lace noose
What's the use, they don't love you anyway
Those grasshopper sawing legs get louder and louder
One day I'll go deaf, they're humming but soon they will scream

Wandering birds in the sky
Watching, always watching
With precision the incision
is stitched into staight line
Flossy dental smile, blood gums
Carbon and CLP, just time
Spent on nothing

Naked paper sheets, taut and sterile, blinking into milk white
Light coming in right, dancing off all the printed fish
Swish of a brush and you wish you could stare forever
Pull that little lever once, gave me goosebumps
horrid and crippling,
blushing fear
Take a picture, clear, for reference

Clutches of succulents in your breast pocket
Worn quietly, love lockets, jaw broken over the shoulder kiss
Loose tooth wiggling blood in your gum line chewing nicorette
Blow a bubble, blue button on your wrist
Gray mist pushes into lips and hits lung deep
Jump, leap, blind and hoping on a soft landing
Sanitizing cuts on your finger, linger on the last cigarette
Hope I have enough pocket change for the next pack

Tired heart overflowing, brim of pitcher bubbling, red and frothing
I sing out into the night, dark coats of gray and black, screeching white fluorescence taunting
The wrong thing to bottle up, nitroglycerin in your cup, slapped down
You wake up with a frown, chase those pills straight down with sink water
Chemical dependance for sanities sake, my life is a case opportunities not taken
Things falling through my fingers, who else to blame
Make the insiscion, remove my heart, my name, parts of my brain
A crane in shallow water, hunting for trapped fish, it gets drier every day, nowhere to hide from this

Mountain
mass and monolith and more
Tree
I see your breathing hands
Sea
let me be at your center

Levee starting to crack
Plugging holes with our fingers
You can run or linger
The outcome is meager
any way you slice it
dice it
steamed basmati
rice it