to whose misery does truth reveal

but within the bond of mother and son

in the bloody realization

of nature’s separation?

such honesty brings Man to his knees,

breath by law

drags the spirit to the ground

along with that flesh.

in difference of opinion,

whether spoken

or masked in lie,

mother and son

walk not together

in love,

are cleft in two

both spiritual and birth.

the heart cannot be pardoned,

the mind cannot judge

one plus one

equals not two.

Scratching his belly, Pete sat up. Inside the vehicle Pete was Pete. Outside the vehicle, Pete had to struggle to be Pete. Rolling down the window to release the stench of dirty laundry and alcohol, Pete inhaled the heavy burdens of the city. Heaven had not shown her face since childhood. His boy had not shown his face since morning. Scratching lines in the film of sweat on his cheek, the boy fumbled with the mirror, which always hung to the left. After adjusting it, then having it slides to the left again, Pete decided that if no one else ever judged his face, why should he?  Even if something were stuck between his teeth, he had left his toothbrush in his boy’s gym bag, which was with his boy. He sat there for a while. When Maggie chased a ball into the backyard of an abandoned house, Pete tossed up socks and bottles, finally found the keys, and stepped outside onto the hot tarp with his bare feet.

“Maggie! Get yo’ ass over here now!”

No reply.  Pete took off running, tip-toeing fast as he could across the street, dashing in front of an old couple moseying down the road in a shiny Cadillac, as if they were taking notes on the wild life of dirty faced children in the streets, running around on black soles, as if they were analyzing the graffiti on cement. The woman had a platinum head of white hair, whose head stuck out of a black tinted window. Though she had sunglasses on, Pete stared at her harshly. She rolled up her window. Pete watched the vehicle roll halfway into the market, sinking slightly into a pot hole, then backing up and parking on the side.

“Maggie!”

Pete ran in the back of the abandoned building, scanning quickly through the tall grass, with a mossy top of a dog house.

“You ain’t my daddy.” A muddy face of a cream skinned girl with black pigtails submerged from the tall grass, with big, dark brown eyes, squinting in the sun.

“Your daddy will hear about this.” Pete jumped at the girl, knocking her down into the soft grass, tickling her.

“Okay! Okay! Stop! “Maggie giggled.

“Say it.”

“I won’t go into the back yards of abandoned buildings anymore.”

“That is all I ask.” Pete rubbed the girl’s head.

“Don’t mess up my hair. I don’t have any more rubber bands,” the girl slapped his hand.

“What were you doin’ back here anyway?”

“Looking for Snoopy.”

“Who’s Snoopy?”

“My dog.”

Maggie climbed on hands and knees towards the mossy dog house, calling Snoopy’s name.

“The doghouse is empty.” Pete pulled her by the collar. “Go play double dutch.”

“Everyone is at school.”

“Go play double dutch.”

Maggie ran off.

Pete stood up, vaguely remembering when he could not find anyone to play football. The streets would be vacant until evening. In the day, Johnson’s Pops swept, shoveled, or raked the walk. Pete would wander around, stealing candy and chips. Later he sold candy and chips, among other things. Pete still stole candy and chips, but had stopped selling. His boy didn’t want Maggie to see him do it. He sat on the cracked stoop of the building to smoke a cigarette butt he had picked up off the street earlier, but had no matches. Sighing, he knocked heavily on the door, and after a moment, entered.

The lights had been turned off a month ago, long before Sara was arrested. They had found Maggie eating a peanut butter sandwich, on moldy bread, smelling of piss, and skinnier than those kids on television. Sara was in the kitchen. She had run out of dishes to wash. The tile space was cluttered with McDonald’s bags. Flies buzzed around the wrappers. She watched her daughter eat the peanut butter sandwich. After Maggie took the first bite, she looked up at her skinny mother, with equally sad eyes. Her mother was a dark skinned woman, charcoal in the summer, flat-chested with choppy jet black hair always tucked away in a scarf. That day, her hair had been sticking up in the air freely an afro. Maggie waved the sandwich in her mother’s face. Sara took a bite of the sandwich and then threw it at Pete and his boy, who had been standing in the doorway the same way Pete was standing in the doorway now: leaning on his side of the home, waiting for the other side, Sara’s side, to crumble. He would always stand so still, watching them bicker, waiting for the necessary parts of life to pass, so the rest of the day him and his boy could dream and drink, plan and fail.

Sara wept. Pete had never seen Sara weep. The woman did not have a soft bone in her body, and truthfully, she didn’t. She was all skin and bones. When she threw a punch, it didn’t matter if she was square on. The woman, so sturdy for a skinny woman, bent and crumpled, leaned against the counter, then slid down along the side of the cabinets next to a bag of bottles, hugging both knees.

We had offered her the money.

Sara began to shake. His boy told Maggie to go play double dutch. It was three in the morning. Pete remembered catching a few of his boy’s sweet nothings whispered into the ear of the crumbling woman.

…things are going to be alright….

…Maggie will go to school…

…we will get the heat turned on…

…I will get a real job…

Those last words Pete had never heard his boy utter. Leaving Memory to its own corner of his world, Pete stepped further into the house. The bag of bottles was still in the kitchen. He ventured past the ragged bed sheet nailed on the doorway. He had never gone past Sara’s kitchen before. Domestic situations were glossed over in everyone’s kitchen. This was a luxury that Pete kept, the only respect he received. Soon as he pulled the sheet aside, a heavy smell of sex hit his nose, the scent of a dirty woman, in the damp corners of her private home. The room was tinted red, with sheer curtains over a dirty window. The sun danced across the floor through wine bottles sitting next to each other on the window sill. The only furniture in the room was a mattress with another bed sheet on it, a wooden crate with some fat and thin candles stagnant in drip, slanting down, and a teddy bear thrown across the room.

The room was not empty. Ghosts of Sara’s silence blew cold breaths along Pete’s spine. The boy ran his fingers along the walls, bumpy plasters fragmented with cracks, tainted with punches. He closed his eyes, pressing both palms on the wall, resting his head on it. She was so angry… he remembered. She was always angry.

Pete, why don’t you ever get a girl of your own?

These were the first words she spoke to him. Pete saw a lot of his boy’s girls. Sara was not any different, at first. She had forgotten to pay him that night, and Pete was larger and stronger than his boy. His boy was the pretty one, a skinny Mexican born with straight white teeth and a head of hair he let grow wild. It always fell on his shoulders peacefully. His voice was clear, though he spoke mainly Spanish, and walked as if he had just gotten a job, which he never did until now. Pete had always thought his boy grew up on the rich side of town, but he just grew up in a strict home. Pete was the one that stood as a rock wherever his boy went. Sara had told his boy to go fuck himself, and knocked him out with a wine bottle. At that point, Sara’s head was never empty. She always had something to say and knew exactly when to say it. She opened the door with a smile, wearing those dresses that skinny women wear, which make them look exotic and artistic. Skinny women can only look exotic and artistic. Maggie wasn’t born then, so she was a stick. Sara would offer them a drink, carrying her voice on light steps, with the echo of a hidden laughter between words, as if there was always some amazing party about to happen at her place, which there never was. Hips magically would appear when she danced this way.

When his boy had asked for his money, Sara flung a lot of words around the answer. Pete knew she kept the money. Sara didn’t do drugs and she didn’t have any children. She also had a day job at McDonalds. He did not know why she would keep the money.

His boy always danced with his women. Pete had found him dancing with one of his women as a little boy. They met on the school bus. Pete had his headphones on, under a black hood, stoned out of his mind. He sat in the back, with his legs spread apart, and on arm hanging on top the seat, and the other in his pocket. Pete sat across from him, dressed in ironed jeans and a wife beater. A little slut from high school was biting her lip, crossing and uncrossing her legs in a short skirt as if she had to go to the bathroom. Pete just sat there, reading a book. Soon enough, they began to play football. His boy taught him some dance moves among the women.

The heavy memory drifted past, and Pete lifted his head from the wall, tracing his fingers into another room. This room was Maggie’s, though now she stayed in her mother’s room, hence the teddy bear. This room was bright, with no curtains on the windows. Maggie’s world was drawn in crayon and marker all over the walls. A pile of the child’s clothes rested in one entire corner of the room, and a sagging cardboard box filled with broken toys was in another corner, flooding out onto the floor. A photo album caught Pete’s tired eye. Pete knelt on one knee, picking it up. Curiosity flipped through the photo album. The only people in the photo album were Maggie and Sara.

No wonder no one had reported her missing…

The door squeaked open. Pete slid his hand under his belt, groping a knife, frozen, staring at the door. Tiny footsteps danced across the floor, like a dogs. Pete let his knife go.

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Just thinking,”

“About Mommy?”

“Yeah.”

Maggie held out her hand. “Come on. This house is empty. Let us go find some people.”

Pete took her hand and walked out the door.

“Do you remember Mommy?” Pete looked down at the beautiful girl standing next to him, with mud smeared across both cheeks.

“Not really. Do I look like her?”

Pete looked at his boy’s clear brown eyes and straight teeth. “Not really.”

“Good.” Maggie smiled, cooling the ghosts from Pete’s spine. She squeezed his hand in hers, leading him out of the home. Pete danced with Maggie, riding on her light foot.

The two of them stepped barefoot on the hot tarp, dashing across the road. The lady with platinum white hair stared at them both. She was sitting on the stoop with Mr. Johnson, drinking a cup of coffee. Maggie stuck her tongue out at her. Pete and Mr. Johnson laughed.

Mr. Johnson was a name that could have its own street in this neighborhood. The Johnsons have owned the market since Pete was born. Pete stole from it, his boy stole from it, and their parents stole from it. Now, his boy bagged fruits and vegetables in it. Mr. Johnson was one of the friendly black men in the neighborhood, as Pete was one of the friendly Mexicans in the neighborhood. He was middle aged with a head of silver hair on top a loud face with a loud mouth as well. Bright whites in his eyes exaggerated his black, with a large soft nose between two laughing cheeks, always active. His lips were thick and full, bearing crooked teeth. He was always wearing tattered blue jean overalls with paint splattered over them, with no shirt underneath. He was an average sized man, with a small potbelly that held his wife’s meals and his boys’ forties. Everyone in the neighborhood respected him. Even the white women, hustlers, hoes, and pimps.

“Don’t mind them, Judy. That’s Pete and Tom’s little girl, Maggie.”

Judy sipped her coffee, staring at Pete’s feet, shielding her eyes from the sun with her free hand.

“How can you drink coffee when it’s this hot?” Maggie stared at the lady. “How can you wear pants when it’s this hot?” Maggie asked Mr. Johnson.

“How come you ain’t in school?” Mr. Johnson asked Maggie.

“Good question.”

Both Maggie and Mr. Johnson stared at Pete.

Pete’s silence spoke, filling the response. He stood there, barefoot, shirtless, wearing a pair of ragged cut off jean shorts.

“I see.” Mr. Johnson replied.

“Where’s Daddy?” Maggie asked.

“Good question. There ain’t nobody here. Everyone’s over at the barbecue. Go tell yo’ papa he can go.”

Maggie ran inside.

“You get that girl electricity yet?” Mr. Johnson squinted.

“No.”

“I got an idea. That home is dead; that apartment is dead. Why don’t yall come stay with me and my wife? All the children are gone, and we some God lovin’ people, with a basement to fill. I got me a good woman who loves to cook.” Johnson took a swig out of a paper bag.

“Excuse me for interrupting.” A small voice escaped from the old woman.

Both men stared at her.

“My son is a landlord. He’s been looking for some tenants to fix up an apartment to live in. Would you be interested? The first two months rent is free, because you will be fixing up the house.”

Tom appeared in the doorway, mapping his day in his face with creases, holding his dreams in the bags under his eyes. He held Maggie in his arm, who was smiling ear to ear.

“Hey, dar’s meh boy!” Pete rose to his feet, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Maggie, do you want to move into a new home?” Pete petted Maggie’s head.

“I don’t want to abandon our home!” Maggie frowned.

“Not interested.” Pete told the woman.

Tom scrunched his eyebrows at Pete, who returned the gesture with a jerk of the head, motioning them to go. Pete got on both feet, walking towards is car. Tom, still holding Maggie, followed.

“Pete, you gonna’ have to let that boy make decisions on his own. Sara left a long, long time ago, and that home ain’t fit to raise a girl. Pete!” Mr. Johnson yelled across the street.

Tom looked back, with Maggie in his arms, eyes closed.

“Tom-“

“That’s Maggie’s home. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Johnson.” Tom buckled in Maggie in the front seat, and got in the back.

“Let’s go get us some food and showers,” Tom said between Maggie and Pete, one hand on each front seat.

Maggie kicked her short feet in her seat.

“Let’s go find Sara first!” Maggie squealed.

Tom and Pete stared at one another.

Pete sighed. “Let’s go find Sara.”

Pete started the car with a putter. After the fifth try, she coughed, and then ran. They drove a good half hour’s drive across town. Pete stared at the gas mileage.

“Tell me about your day, sweetie.” Tom asked.

“Well, I played double-dutch all day with Natasha and Mercedes-“

“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from those girls?”

“Everyone else is at school, daddy. The streets are empty. Any who, I played double dutch, and then I fed Snoopy some left-overs from Mr. Johnson’s lunch, and then Uncle Pete and I played house in our abandoned home for a while.”

“Is that right, Uncle Pete?”

Pete didn’t say anything.

They finally arrived at a small diner on the side of a highway outside the city. Fields of corn sprouted around the diner. The air smelled sweet with wildflowers, humid and sticky. Birds chirped, hidden in bushes and trees. They rolled onto the gravel in their 89’ volts wagon, rusted red, next to a black pickup truck, covered in mud. Pete stepped out the door. He walked around, unbuckling Maggie. Pete sat still for a moment.

“You alright, boy?”

“Yeah. You gonna lock these doors?”

“No need for that.”

Tom and Pete stepped in the diner, each holding on of Maggie’s hands. A nice looking Mexican boy on one side and a fat black boy on the other side, with a beautiful caramel skinned girl in-between. The diner was dimly lit with swinging lamps over food. A large fan behind the bar blew the aroma into their empty stomachs. Service was slow. Two waitresses were seated at the bar, crossing their legs, and leaning in towards one another with sincere faces. Both wore cut off jean shorts with aprons longer than the shorts and t-shirts that said ‘Pop’s Diner,’ on them. One smoked a cigarette, speaking about her husband whom had left her a year ago with a child and only one car…among other things. Her hoarse voice scraped the paint off the walls. She had dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, with powdery bags under her eyes holding the truth of hidden age. A red-faced bar tender squinted towards the two boys and girl. The top of his head shone with the lights above. He lifted a chubby hand to his eyes and hollered over.

“Sara ain’t off for another half an hour.”

“Speaking of the devil…” the woman with a hoarse voice sent shivers across the floorboards.

The other waitress jabbed her in the side with a bony elbow. Her black afro was tied in a poof with a scarf wrapped around it. She was reading a magazine. She looked over at the boys, and the smile she reserved for the other waitress thinned to a sharp line, centered with stressed eyebrows.

“Sara!”

Maggie ran across the wooden floor, smack into the barstool which Sara was sitting on.

“Hey, honey!” She lifted Maggie up and put her on the lap. “How has your day been?”

“Weplayeddoubledutchandmeand PeteplayedhouseinMommy’soldapartment…”

Sara looked toward the boys, whom shrugged their shoulders.

“Go home, Sara. Yer boys makin’ meh diner look dirty like them.” The bar tender grabbed a wet towel and wiped down the clean bar. “Get back to work, Josie. Go wipe down some menus or somethin’.”

“I wiped down the menus an hour ago, and only two people have eaten. I’ll wipe down those menus, if you want, but they still eatin’.”

“Wipe down the menus.”

Josie slid off the barstool, exited to the back waitress station to smoke another cigarette. “Be safe, girls.” Josie glared at the boys before she left. Pete stared back.

Sara set Maggie down on her feet. “I’ll be back, sweetie. Let me just go grab my things.”

Sara applied blush on her thin face, and red lipstick on her lips. She untied her pony tail in the stained work bathroom mirror, only to tie it back up in the same pony tail, wrapped in the same scarf. She peeled off her sweaty jeans and t shirt, applied some perfumed body spray, and tossed a thin summer dress over her body, slipping on some flip flops. Stepping out of the bathroom to clock out, she bee lined back to the waitress station.

“Josie, I need some earrings.”

Josie smirked at her. “Why? It ain’t like you like him anymore. Why do you eat dinner with him every day?”

“Because they don’t have a home, and as long as Maggie is with them, I want to see my little girl. That and I don’t have a car.”

Josie slapped some hoops in Sara’s open hand. “My mom didn’t tell me until I was twenty. I threw a flower vase at her head, and ain’t talk to her since.”

“Thanks.” Sara took the ear rings and slid them onto her lobes.

The skinny black girl left with the thin Mexican boy and fat black boy into the hesitant vehicle. They drove listening to Maggie’s stories down an unpaved country road. Soon, the little girl hushed, sticking her head out the window, pointing out cows, horses, burnt sheds, and abandoned farms. Fifteen minute later, they drove through a thin wood, and finally turned into a driveway, behind a beat up town car. The silence waited for conversation.

“How you been?” Sara turned towards Pete, who had been driving.
“Um, you know… I been workin’.”

“Me too.”

Tom and Sara walked into the kitchen, which was spotless, except for the few home appliances, a microwave, toaster, and coffee pot. The dish rack was even empty. A loaf of bread sat on the white counter top unopened. A breeze entered a cracked window, carrying any other strange smells outside. Tom leaned against the counter, staring at Sara.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Sara looked at Tom’s shoes. “Take off your shoes.”

Tom stood on the doormat, flapping his hand open. Sara put some hundred dollar bills in his hand. “Pete still has his girls. He still has you.”

“Pete never had me. I hoed around because I wanted the money. Not because I needed the money. Now I need the money.” Sara turned towards the wall.

“For what? For this playhouse?” Tom spread his hand around the house, as if it were on display. “Tom taught me everything I know bout’ the streets, and I gave him everything that came to me for free. You one of them. Together we built a home. I included you. And you left. We own you.” Tom stepped outside onto the porch. Sara followed.

Maggie ran out the car door, into a flowerbed, where a black and white tom cat hissed. The little girl pounced on the tom cat, which scratched her arm. They wrestled. Tom stepped from out the back seat to breath air, something he had not been accustomed to do in the city. He sat on a swinging bench on the porch, watching Maggie, swinging slowly. Tom could die right now. When the tom cat ran into the field, losing Maggie, the little girl sat in the flower bed, getting her muddy shorts muddy again. The child looked down, her lower lip hanging slightly. Pete looked over to the couple, whose faces were strict, fighting off emotion, pouring into each other’s eyes. He sighed. Getting up, he sat in the flowerbed next to Maggie.

“What’s wrong?”

“This place. It’s so empty.” Maggie plucked a flower. “There aren’t any dandelions.”

“What do you mean? There are flowers, and rivers, trees and Chuckles over there…” Tom was referring to the cat.

“There are no people. There’s no one playing, no one sleeping, working, nothing. This home is empty. No wonder Sara always wants us to come over.”

Tom hugged Maggie.

“I wonder who abandoned her.”

“No one abandoned Sara, Maggie. Sara abandoned home.  She will always live in clean, empty, houses.”

The fisherman, inside his house with too many windows, listens to the ocean in a conch shell given to him by a forgotten muse.

Outside these many windows, the muse is there among the people, occupying flickering flames in warm window sills, luring tired shadows that time has distributed to the wrong owners. Survival is the best motivator, sweeping the skinny along the shore in a pile of bad smell and doll like eyes.

A dragonfly crawls inside a window, directing a million eyes like opposing wind. Just ride, having come from stiff stalks and abandoned caravans with wandering circus freaks lighting bonfires.

It comes, it stays, and it dries, becoming neat, collecting dust left in yesterdays.

Many dreams are traveled between muses inside one particular window, riding yellow kitchen squares of light. The fisherman sees only others’ dreams, while everyone else sees only their own. The people have come to reclaim their sleeping shadows but find only dreams scattered throughout the dust collected.

The fisherman, crowded with dreams, finds the fly, hooks it, and steps outside. He has read somewhere of fly fishing. Perhaps he could catch a dream, a dragon,

Something.

The ocean has dried and in its place is a desert. Drop jaw wishing wells among the young and poor,

the old and the rich, amazed at the hairy fisherman.  They jump at his hand bobbing in the air, treasure on a string, Mankind’s trash between teasing small fingers.

The fisherman sees farther.

Below sight,

they are shrinking.

Up there, catching light are the iridescent wings. A rainbow, without rain. Sunrise is coming.

The happy man bobs his hand to the hungry orphans and shakes his head. One dream he yearns to feed his family of shadows.

He will build a ship. They will laugh at him. The rain will come. He dreamt it.

Cool colors strut by autumn streets,

Howling in the moonlight. Those cats

Trip over my early winter boots.

(This late writer talks little.

Friendship is a reoccurring dream

Between rejection letters.)

Closing time has killed my AM 5:00

Shadow and the stray cats

Shrink back to life size.

(I watch them, in thought,

Pen tapping, wires sprung.)

Tongues tied,

Echoing summer’s romance

Between naked knocking knees

Beneath clacking jaws.

They hold so tight to the west wind,

It carries them to their dreams,

Hibernating in repeating schedules.

The clubs are packed,

Line out the door,

All the way to my little home.

Soon, soon, those icons

Will be judged honestly,

By laughter only,

Not their fancy feathers,

Hourglass figures,

Nor Commercial Pop.

Stripped of flesh,

And all its vanity,

By the cloaking

Heavy blanket of white.

(Oh teacher, student, lover, friend,

You look familiar to me now.)

Soon our kind will be filtered

Out of autumn’s tye-dye streets

Into a shaking cup of December’s

Thanksgiving outside Macy’s

New Year Day’s Parade.

stable, still, and closed

fragmented across time.

each thought is a piece

unfinished, skip to the end

where another morning begins.

we are wearing the same clothes

I wore last night.

Apart, We eats

half the plate, glass of wine,

confess half our sins,

drop out the third semester.

We don’t call you back,

We wait,

I will call again.

I has been here afterwards,

but that is not me.

We are not me.When i bleed,

You feel it. When we bleed,

no one cares.

men hold I in their arms,

but no one feels it.

We are not I.

We are stable, still, and closed.

We do not move.

We never unite.

I am no longer I,

but a part of that holy one.

My truths are true,

impartial, but true.

My ears hear the winds

across continents and calendars,

where the other makes all the love.

my ears hear not the birds

outside my window.it is not mine.

they belong to I.

my heart is cold, the other one burns.

the fire feeds not my own.

when will it be my birth?

when will it be my turn?

This morning you cry,

because your lover called me last night,

and I may have answered,

but I am no longer I ,

and when I am,

that is the biggest lie.

So, back to Bennets. The book was published in 2007, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Mind you… I’m still at the beginning of the book. The main topic interests me. The feminine mistake is a woman being financially dependent on her husband. However, Bennet’s reasoning, so far, leaves out a huge percentage of the female population. And yes, this included me! If it didn’t, I’d probably be ignoring it too.

I am a mexican twenty five year old female, whose mother once picked cotton in Texas, and whose father is mentally insane. Because of this, I grew up poor, and still live in poverty. I also spent over ten years in and out of mental hospitals for drug abuse and suicide attempts. Currently, I am in a marriage where I am the bread winner (though not a very good one) and still a college student. My story is strange. I dropped out of high school only to go back and graduate valedictorian. Now, I am wondering, if I work because I have to, and if I was given a choice, would I be a stay at home mom (if I had children)?

Leslie Bennets covers only the upper middle to upper class of women. What about women who were born with divorced parents, born into crack houses, racism, dirt floors? How do these women discover themselves, when the most important decision daily is to fulfill basic necessities? My mother says it takes two generations to benefit from a parent having a college degree. My mother was the only one out of nine children who graduated with a degree of some sort. I am graduating this December with a BA in Creative Writing. I am working on applying to Grad School. However, I have no support.

My husband too was raised in circumstances that hindered his success. The question is now, how can love conquer such demanding expectations in a capitalistic society?

Observing window dictatorship,
My eyes curse a teasing apple.
Bobbing on a dying extremity,
To plunge
Into the graveyard amongst forgotten friends,

That bad apple
Defies;

Knocking at my invisibility,
Shattering my focus,
Time permits the west winds
Favored tenor;

I wait
Behind Puberty’s glass dictatorship
To retrieve the soft one,
The ugly, rotten one,
Boredom kicks to first days
Of grade school;

My youth
Walled in daydream, escapes,
The shards at my feet
With the bad apple
Behind, forgotten, that window was.

Apple season,
Is when that childhood slipped
Out the window;
I never really noticed,

Until the tree’s nakedness
Embarrassed me,
That I was free.

My lazy eye
Had fallen asleep on watch,
Cradled in fist,
Letting go my consciousness,
Like a child frees a pet
Into the wilderness.

I must return home
To a familiar tune,
Whistling
‘Farewell, Goodbye.’
In familiar bones.

Death doesn’t
Always lose a life;
My heart gone
Before I have arrived.

It was as if her breasts were painted
hot pink.
two eyes staring from beneath
sheer silk.
and she knows this
much is true:
Paper dolls are clichés
and it’s best
when men just give them away.

Forget the number on the matchbook!
I’ll write my name on her back
fold her in half
slip her in my back pocket
between a hot pink cell phone
and a box of rolled cigarettes.
I’ll steal her Chanel stilettos
and cop her Versace clutch purse.

Next time I come around
with a hotel bottle of FUN
in a glass eye dropper
pinched beneath my belt on the hip,
My eyes glass marbles
reflecting the bouncer’s youth,
my half smile a sample
of a fantasy never spoken,
rockin Chanel stilettos
and Versace clutch purse,

he’ll ask me for an I.D.
and I’ll show him her picture.
Under the velvet rope I slip,
then pinch her from pocket.
When the hip bartender buys me a drink
I’ll leave her folded neath my glass
as a tip with my number on it.

Goodbye stabbed heart.

Drinking a glass of milk

hand to breast

she died.

I wrapped her white body,

tied her braids round her breast.

I laid her body in the grave

under the kitchen tiles.

Then there came a tapping.

My brain was napping

slushing in my skull,

swimming with the dreams.

I watered them

-gulp gulp gulp-

with the half empty glass

of milk.

Then there came more tapping.

Through my peephole

I saw Poe.

He wanted his heart back.

I told him I dunno.

American Dreamless man,

picketfenceless man,

lounging against mailboxes,

brick walls and telephone poles,

your eyes are no better than glass

on dolls that are given dreams

on assembly lines.

your scratch-resistant arms,

from bar fights and close arrests,

pine for existence.

sleeves rolled up, sun-burnt

forearms stretch

to the sun

that cataracts your pupils.

the rays peek-a-boo

between moving tall trees

that are people walking by,

to their jobs

society assigned,

but you are not alive,

picket-fenceless man,

an American dreamless man,

you catch their Morning

in golden daggers piercing

your cardboard box

and manufacture syringes.

You are a sleeping dog.

Am I a privileged underdog?

Hit it. Boil it. Give me some of that.

I purchase your syringes for a meal.

Follow me, American dreamless man,

Come inside, picket-fenceless man,

Your smiling eyes

Settle my hangover

In my sun-lit kitchen squares.

You squint and squint,

never catch my twitching begging lip,

as I flush sin in colorful chunks

you heave and hum

some wicked sad song:

“I agree with you, Mmm hmm,

what you say is true.”

In between trips

I remember the cardboard box

and your dark forearms.

I believe as an underdog I am saved.

You mutter while I scrub dishes

“you look good, you do.”

I serve you cigarettes and Sunny Delight.

Between bites of burnt toast

You curse my remedy for the shakes:

Addiction

echoing off hand-on-jutting hip.

Our Morning Breath

from one hundred proof

of false destiny in Half Empty

bottle seizes the day.

We reek of French toast and vodka.

Words are blurred and loose.

You are a runaway, streetless man

and I am to blame

as the cause of your departure.

Now you sleep on my rocking chair,

kicking and pawing.

Old dogs cannot be tamed.

I must poke you, old bastard.

But you are not alive,

picket-fenceless man,

an American dreamless man,

you catch Morning

in golden daggers invading

your cardboard box

and manufacture syringes.

As an underdog, I am saved,

buying syringes in the safety of my own home.

it is best to leave sleeping dogs alone.