Peg-legged In the Gutter with Only Your Prowess

   Umbrellas

I wish your umbrella still fit us both.
I miss the shade it once provided me.
Now that time has past, people rarely see me dry.
And I'm only comfortable in the rain.
It's all I smell these days.
 
                Good thing I float.
           I suppose there's no bottom below.

My favorite part was when the rain wouldn't stop;
no matter why the people begged it to.
As the puddles grew to pools, sky and sea turned out as tantamount.
I watched them all build and sink their boats
  while I'm off doing backstrokes.





   Afraid of Heights

       When we were up in the air,
                                       The moon, she was there.
                  I told no one about her,
                        but I heard someone say heaven's slipping away.
                               Somehow they all found out.
          Oh, it must've been you.
                          You and your big mouth too.
                      Oh, it's okay, they don't want her.
    For that, you can bet she'll never come down.
          Sure wish she'd help me on up.
                        We leave her alone because we've lost our nerve,
                                         and we're all afraid of heights.
                                           And we're all afraid of heights     
          because we're all afraid to die.

   Taming Ghosts

It is four past midnight.

And we're all looking down the road.

We bother a man for a quick ride.

But directions keep curdled in our throats.

We wear our psychologies on our sleeves and tongues.

We're a parliament of devotees come undone.

We bother a man for a quick ride.

But directionless, we hover on our toes.

 Go on.

   Drive me to someone else's home.

     They don't have to know.

       I will haunt them like I should.

         If God is willing, and the creek don't rise too high.

           I bothered the man from the graveyard.

             And now he asks me to shovel out a hole.

               Caving in, I bury business men alive and well. 

                 Stoned cadavers rattle jaws at me like I'm a bad joke.

                    I carved out my den in the graveyard.

                     And my company claims they've seen no warmer guest than me beneath.

                       Roll over.

                         Talk to me like I've still got bones.

                           O man, we've grown so close.

   Sentient Scraps

For as far as I can see,

The fiction I depend on defining me steals all of my clothes.

Where does he take you when I leave?

Tell me, have you seen him in your house?

Does he chew your food before you?

 Muscle be the paper behind my pen and ink.

 Arising to the stench of him in my sheets; all over my clothes.

 Hanging from the margins, I'm off the brink.

 I bate him back to scripture, 

blank and set to burn,

but the page gives way

                 beneath me.

I believed the beast would wash my back.

I released him to do just that.

On the fence about the words I use too few.

He's trying to write me off and blot me out.

For as far as I can see,

I wander 'round my fiction in a blissful craze, kept naked in prose.

Mine was a ripe mind to leave behind.

   I animate these letters to build my roads along all setting souls while in route to you.

   Investigating Me

 I'm an amoristic device plodding my claws through animal nights. O, what you would do to see me in a cage? Made a rage of entanglement an ornament delight. No bowels to spill without guts. You and I both know we could never be much of anything; not if we stayed in the molded absence of atoms in chemical rush. Ah yeah, you know I've got that syndrome too, and it likes my lust to pose in place of marigolds. Wonder how I know? Let's see, What secrets would you have me reveal? If I have the time I will draw you a diagram and list my every meal. What handsome face do you think I'm sneering at you with? This is me, and that fact alone vindicates the guilt of my enemies. But I'll remain your insolent. Disperse. Valedicted. Chase me round the block. Go ahead. Hurry up! I'm a dunce, I'm a slob, I'm a happy drunk. And you're my ditch-effort cause.

   Friendly People

 Come douse yourself in the blood from stories of buried wars. Come alone, in a raft, berating the legs and brains of the ones who look after me. Get out a hose; don't play favorites. Wash every speck you can. All the men who lay their allegiance to an entertainer in a white house are in need of help.

              I can't deny, sometimes, they fool me just as easily and it eases me.

   Takes the squeeze off my inabilities.

    Takes the reigns from my open jealousy.

     Takes the cake as my uncut symmetry.

            I could yell 'til the words went numb on my gums all the way back home, but I don't. No I don't.

  I'm an event not a revelation or an abomination of defense, but I'm gonna offer not to get to know you or your children. I'm only a little more than half-mad. Boiling on the bottom of a bottle, you and your pestering of me. A vile, deviled rudiment of one or another is squelching out the light of your lonely life.

               I can't deny, sometimes, they get the best of parts of me.

                            Yes, it pleases me.