Knitting Christmas Sweaters for Murderers

If I had clamped my jaw shut I would have been able to swallow the future before it happened

Instead I got lost knitting Christmas sweaters for murderers

Knitting stitches so small it makes my eyes hurt

And this one's red for the blood that fell

And this one has a star.

Not that I know whom they killed to get on Death Row

Only that they have arms and torsos, and I, a lot of free time

To perform Thankless Gifts

Like watering trees in other people's yards

Scraping the gum off sidewalks

It's a better kind of prayer than the kind that asks for things

I carry doggy bags to pick up poop

Which is sometimes soft and wet like intestines

Which you might have pulled out of that girl

Or did you drown her?

I would have been so happy to stay with you

But you left and murdered the next girl

I saw her face in the church directory

She had curly, bobbed hair like a poodle

And you're in the penitentiary the penance century the ten-pence mensch-ary

---are the word games I would have played with you

If you hadn't snuffed her out--don't you know we're all free?

To spit gum on sidewalks or scrape it off or pull someone closer or push them off or take a picture or smash a camera or eat spinach or sugar or breathe air or ashes or dust.

'May she rest in peace' is the kind of prayer that asks for things

But my prayer is a tight jaw while knitting

Was she waterlogged when they found her?

Or disemboweled?

I think I will include a note with my sweaters:

'If you let the inmate wear it on his last day

The wool will absorb his jittery sweat

Making cleanup easy.

But, if it's his last day,

Don't let him wear the one with a snowman.

Its coal grin might seem mocking,

disrespectful,
crude.'

The Sock-Stealing Fingered Paramecium

Most paramecium don't have fingers

Most paramecium don't steal socks

But one single-celled ciliated protozoan

Of unclear ancestry but possibly Samoan

Is a sock-stealing fingered paramecium!

It's a tiny little fellow and it's got six digits

It can sense your feet, especially when you fidgets

And once it finds 'em, it steals your socks

And hides 'em in a cavern made of mud and rocks

It's just single-celled, but it's has a single focus

It's as stealthy as a bat and as quiet as a crocus

It sneaks toward your feet while you sit or while you doze

And wriggles off your socks from your ankles to your toes

You'll look down in a flash and you'll find your feet unshod

You might be angry or you might be awed

Your brand-new socks of soft, soft fleece-ium

Have just been pinched by a paramecium!

"Where are your brand-new socks?" asks your mother

"The fleece ones I bought for you and your brother."

And you'll have to admit, with a sense of unease-ium

They were robbed by a sock-stealing fingered paramecium!

Mom might not believe you, she might think you're being brash

So you have to find the protozoan's secret stash

You have to find where the culprit dwells

And reveal to your mother the single cell

With the many fingers who stole your socks

And hid them in a cavern of mud and rocks

And once you've convinced her, she will ring the police-ium

To report the crime by the naughty paramecium

The police will come, catch the thief, and post bail

And the single cell will dwell in a single cell in jail.

I'm Kissing My Rhinoceros To Sleep

I'm kissing my rhinoceros to sleep

'Cause the only way he'll ever shut his eyes

Is if he's kissed upon his neck and chest and thighs

In fact, he gets exceptionally stressed

Without smooches on his thighs and neck and chest

And when he's stressed he rams the wall with his big horn

Which wakes up the neighbor's finicky newborn

Then the baby cries and that upsets him more

So he pounds his hooves on our apartment floor

Which is the ceiling for our downstairs neighbor, Pops

And when Pops gets mad he tends to call the cops

And the sirens make my rhino so alarmed

That it's dangerous for cops to come unarmed

So I have to tell the cops to bring their guns

But the sight of those will give my pet the runs

So there's rhino diarrhea on the floor

And the neighbor's baby's screaming even more

And my pet slips on the mess he made before

And he crashes through the bathroom's glass-paned door
Then he's stressed because he's cut with broken glass

So he vomits yet another heap of grass

And the vet comes with a tranquilizer dart

And she's trying hard to aim it at his heart

But she also slips in vomit and falls down

And my nervous rhino chews upon her gown

Then a gun gets fired and I let out a shout

And my rhino gets so stressed he passes out

And the bill for all that cleanup isn't cheap

So I'm kissing my rhinoceros to sleep.

Dang I Look So Good

          There once was a woman in Town who looked so good everybody thought "dang she looks so good!" and for her birthday one year they all pooled their money and bought her a sweatshirt that had 'Dang I look so good' printed on the hood of it. The woman was proud of her sweatshirt and wore it every day as she rode through Town on her horse.

            It was a particularly bright autumn day and the vain woman was riding down Main Street asking everyone about her beauty. "Do I look so good?" she asked, and each of them answered, "Oh yes!" in turn. Then she saw, coming towards her, the Specter of Death on a black horse. She asked, "Death, do I look so good?" and Death just stared forward, not responding. The woman tried again-- "Death, do I look so good?" --- but Death just continued in his slow, silent trot. Now this woman loved crabs more than anything and she always carried a sack of them in her saddlebag. She was eager to impress Death even if he refused to compliment her, so she held up a crab by its spindly leg and asked, "Want one?" Death paused his horse and nodded, although he had no mouth with which to eat. The woman handed Death the crab and he placed it in his saddlebag. He then snapped the reins and carried on.

            Just outside of town, Death came across a tiny, hunched figure, bent over his wares on the side of the road. The old man was arranging his spoons just so when a dark shadow fell over him. He turned his head up toward the source, and when he saw the robed reaper he fainted dead away. People often fainted when Death came to take them, and this agitated Death because he needed them to climb on his horse. He kept a Tupperware of cold water in his saddlebag for these instances, and now he reached for it and he poured its contents on the spoon-seller's face. "Wake up!" he called, but the spoon-seller was so deeply unconscious that the cold water didn't wake him. In these cases, Death usually grumbled, got off his horse and poked the victim with his scythe, but he hated dismounting because he was lazy. Feeling around in his saddlebag, he came across the crab, and tossed it at the spoon-seller's head. SMACK--the hard chitin to the cheek woke the spoon-seller up that instant. With one blackened finger Death gestured for the little man to climb up on his horse. Terrified, the spoon-seller obeyed, using as a stepstool the little red ladder he carried with him everywhere to help him reach low-hanging peaches.

            Now later on that afternoon, the woman with the hood that said 'Dang I look so good' happened to come riding along the same path. When she came to the side of the road where the spoon-seller had fainted, she saw the discarded crab, and recognized it as the one she had given to Death. "Well, isn't he an ungrateful specter," she thought, and being rather haughty, she decided to follow him and asked him why he'd tossed her gift aside. She rode on a little ways until she got to the gas station, and there she asked the attendant which direction Death had gone.

            "Oh," said the acne'd attendant in coveralls. "He had the little spoon-seller with him. I'm sure he was heading to the Underworld."

            "And how do you get to the Underworld?" the woman asked.

            "Three camels to the right and down the Rabbit Hole."

            The woman with the hood that said 'Dang I look so good' counted one, two, three camels to her right and urged her white horse toward the Rabbit Hole. At the sight of the vortex, the white horse whinnied and backed away, so the woman tied the animal to a nearby tree and jumped down the Rabbit Hole alone.

            Sure enough, Death and his horse and the spoon-seller were at the bottom of the Rabbit Hole, filling out paperwork for the Underworld. The spoon seller was resting on the black horse, taking his last living breaths and answering questions like, "What's your date of birth?" and "What's your mother's maiden name?"

            "Why," interrupted the woman, "would you take my crab and then discard it, instead of just saying in the first place that you don't like crab?"

            Death, dodging the question, explained the whole rigamarole with the fainting spoon-seller and how the water hadn't woken him up but the crab to the face had worked like a charm.

            "Why," continued the woman, still angry, "didn't you just climb down from the horse yourself and wake the man by poking him with your scythe?"

            Death shrugged, and the truth of the matter sunk in: Death, the woman realized, was lazy. "You know you shouldn't be so lazy," she chided, and she reached into her saddlebag for a crab-snack to improve her mood, but of course she had left her horse behind and her saddlebag wasn't there.

            "I'm not going to make a big deal out of this, because it looks like you're busy with paperwork," the woman continued. "But I hope when my time comes, if I faint from fear, you will have the decency to get off your horse and wake me instead of just throwing a crab at my face."

            "You should've known," Death said in a low, unapologetic tone. "That specters don't have mouths."

            The woman huffed and turned to get back to her horse, but it Rabbit Holes, which are easy to fall into, are quite difficult to get back up out of.

            "How do I get out of this thing?" the woman asked.

            "You've made a second mistake," Death said. " Once you set foot in the Underworld, you are officially deceased. The only beings who can traverse the worlds are myself and my horse."

            The tiny spoon-seller still sat on Death's horse, quivering in fear.

            "What are you saying?" the woman demanded. "You're saying I'm dead?"

            "Pay attention to your toes," Death responded.

The woman did so, and noticed a creeping chill starting at the base of her toenails. She saw also that the ground upon which she stood was made of frozen blood.

            "You're gradually turning into a corpse," Death informed her. "Whereas the spoon-seller, who's still on the horse, has not yet touched the deathly ground. You'll stay here in his place, and he'll return to the Living. Now, if you don't mind, I need your date of birth and your mother's maiden name."

            The little spoon-seller, shocked at this turn of fortune, bounced up and down on the saddle with glee. The woman, struck with disbelief, answered the questions for the paperwork. When it was all finished, Death asked: "Where's the cold feeling now?"

            "In my knees," said the woman.

            "When it's up to your head, you'll be fully deceased." He handed her the paperwork. "And these forms will be clutched in your frozen fingers. At that point, someone will come to take you away."

            He climbed back on his black horse with the spoon-seller and waved goodbye.

            "Wait," squeaked the spoon-seller, eyeing the woman's customized sweatshirt. "I'm cold."

            "You're cold?" the woman said, reading the old man's intentions. "Fine. Take my sweatshirt. I'm dead."

            She handed him the sweatshirt that had 'Dang I look so good' printed on the hood of it. It was big for the spoon-seller but he wore it happily. In fact, it was the first piece of clothing anyone had offered him in all his fifty years.

            Death snapped the reins of the horse and returned through the Rabbit Hole. Having no immediate work to attend to, he carried the spoon-seller back to his spot on the side of the road. The red ladder still stood in the dust, and the spoons were still laid out just so.

            "Thank you for your mercy," the spoon-seller said as he climbed back down.

            "I'll be back for you soon enough," Death responded.

            Four people bought spoons that afternoon, and two more bought handkerchiefs. Some complimented the old man on his sweatshirt, and others snickered because the man did not look so good at all. He had warts on his nose and scars on his cheeks, and his lips were cracked like old pottery. But at least he didn't have fishy crab-breath, which was what all the Townspeople had said about the vain woman behind her back, and no one really noticed she was gone. No one, that is, except the gas station attendant, who found her white horse at sunset and rode off toward the horizon, while the spoon-seller packed up his wares after a day of good business, and the vain woman froze in the Underworld, and Death, at home with his feet up, sketched a self-portrait in which he had a mouth.

Do Not Sleep An Undeserved Sleep

Do not sleep an undeserved sleep

Your actions are reflected in that grand amphitheater of sky

And shine prismatically to all corners of this cosmic circus

School kids will snooze through their lessons and fail

Farmers will fall to their pillows, and who will sow the crops?

Housewives will drift into dreams, leaving their babies to howl and their Bundt cakes to burn.

Do not eat an undeserved meal

Your actions are reflected in that grand amphitheater of sky

And shine prismatically to all corners of this cosmic circus

Businessmen will overindulge and grow fat

Thin girls, subconsciously attempting to reset the balance, will starve themselves

Babies will suck too hard on the breast and bloat.

Do not seduce an unwilling mate.

Your actions are reflected in that grand amphitheater of sky

And shine prismatically to all corners of this cosmic circus

Martian men will prey on Martian girls

Priests will prey on altar boys

Women will invest in plastic tits without knowing why.

Do not cry an undeserved cry.

Your actions are reflected in that grand amphitheater of sky

And shine prismatically to all corners of this cosmic circus

Children everywhere will make big fusses when they stub their toes

Grown men will huff and puff when made to wait in line

And the real tears of orphans will go unseen.

Love as much as you can love.

Your actions are reflected in that grand amphitheater of sky

And shine prismatically to all corners of this cosmic circus

Priests will provide meals to hungry mouths

Housewives will help to build again after a storm

Mermaids will love their tails, just as humans will love their legs

And love is the strongest cosmic prism

The favorite bauble of the gods.

Poor Jesus

The thirty men inside my jaw

That crank the midnight moon

Got lost inside a lion’s paw

Before the twelfth of noon.

The ice turned warm, the grass turned red

The hens stopped laying eggs

And women over thirty

All lost their arms and legs

The boxes broke, the sheets bunched up

Blood crusted on the spoon

And Jesus by the wishing well

Played ‘toot’ on his bassoon

We searched in every lion’s den

And found the culprit paw

That hid the thirty dirty men

Who’d lived inside my jaw

The men, put back, re-cranked the moon

The ice turned back to cold

The hens were laying eggs again

The grass turned green as mold

All women got their limbs back

And all boxes were repaired

The rumpled sheets were all picked up

And shaken out and aired

The silverware shone bright again

The whole world sighed relief

Except for Jesus, who, without his horn

Went stiff with grief.

The Futile Caterwauling of the Sloth

The girl and her dog went out looking for water. Their walking made very little noise and from their footprints arose subtle wafts that said: ‘thirst, thirst.’

A kindly sloth came ambling through the forest, smelled the thirsty footsteps, and caterwauled directions to the nearest clearwater stream.  “Right at the largest blackberry bush! Left at the tree that looks like a broken leg!” Other sloths could have understood him, but to the girl and her dog it came out: “Raawrr aorhgh aorhgh.”

The girl and her dog were happy folk, and had a natural interest in things. If they came across a butterfly or a snake’s eggs, they would pause and observe with enchantment. This pausing hadn’t been a problem before, but soon they began to notice that whenever they felt enchantment, their thirst intensified.

This became most evident when they encountered an oddly glossy mushroom, shaped like an ear. They bent down to examine its minute hairs and beautiful gloss. But oh! This made the thirst unbearable. They turned away from the mushroom and their thirst subsided. The dog whined.

Life went on like this--that is to say, miserably. They did not die because they sometimes found water. But it was always in insufficient amounts: quantities that would have barely taken the edge off the thirst of a hummingbird.

Over time, to survive, their eyes became dim to the world. Rarely, only rarely, their vision was snatched by a shimmering caterpillar or the majesty of the stars. But whenever this happened, their shared tongue would swell and dry up like a salted slug. 

Yes, they shared a tongue, but it’s of no importance really.

The only importance is that of lost hope, and of the futile caterwauling of the sloth.

The Deep-Dwelling Bony-Eared Assfish

Who’s the best of all creatures that live in the sea?

The dolphin is, according to me

But my boyfriend insists with obstinate glee

It’s the deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.

The bony-eared assfish is no beauty queen

It looks like a slug dipped in gray Vaseline

If you ate it, you’d barf (or at least turn dark green)

It's a deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.

And that’s not its only unfortunate trait

Its brain is the smallest of all vertebrates

I doubt that it's ever been asked on a date

It's a deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.

And it’s technically ‘eel’, it isn’t a fish

And it'd fit inside of a petri dish

It's also incredibly easy to squish

It's a deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.

And it can swim fast, but it’d rather not

If it didn’t live deep, it’d be easily caught

Did I mention it looks like it’s covered in snot?

It's a deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.

I’d vote for the dolphin any day

And I suspect my boyfriend feels the same way

But 'dolphin' isn’t as fun to say

As: “Deep-dwelling bony-eared assfish.”

What Are the Chances Your Mind's Made of Branches

What are the chances your mind’s made of branches?

You brainstem’s a trunk that is wooden and tall

Your consciousness swings through the treetops, not stopping

To wonder just why there are branches at all

At one bifurcation are thoughts of vacation

The next mental split contains thoughts of your mum

Nostalgia for grade school has sprouted nearby

On the end of a branch, in the form of a plum

In one of the branches an owl is resting

He watches your mind with a skeptical frown

When your consciousness gets too rambunctious

He ruffles his feathers and hoots: “Mind yourself! Settle down!”

Some branches are missing—they’re things you’ve forgotten

Don’t sweat; it’s just pruning, it’s good for the tree

Some of the branches are knobby and crooked

They also have knowledge, so just let them be.

If you doubt that your mind’s made of branches

Just look at a neuron up close—see its willowy arms?

You can’t see the settle-down owl in the neurons

But invisibility’s part of its charm

So if you get depressed or you’re having a rough one

Imagine the tree that’s inside of your head

It’s a beautiful fractal with spindly dactyls

And will be forever. (At least ‘til you’re dead.)

The Merry-Go-Found

Your keys aren’t lost, you’re keys aren’t gone

You didn’t leave them on the ground

They simply floated to the merry-go-found

To the merry-go-found in the sky

The match to your sock ain’t gone astray

It ain’t grown legs and walked away

It just floated off to the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky

Your headphones, glasses, and library card

Weren’t left at the store or dropped in the yard

They’ve just floated off to the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky

And Grandpa’s watch chain made of gold

You got when you were five years old

It wasn’t stolen, lost or sold

It just floated off to the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky

And the Hoisin sauce you’re sure you bought

And thought maybe you left in the parking lot

Has just floated off to the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky

And you’re wondering now: Well, what is the cost

To get there? To fetch all the things that I’ve lost?

But you should know, should know quite clear

That you have to be lost to someone dear

In order to float to the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky

So make your choice and pick your poison:

Stay close to the loved ones you’ve already chosen?

Or reunite with your headphones, your keys and the Hoisin

At the merry-go-found in the sky?

Look, I won’t blame you either way

I won’t tell you to go, won’t tell you to stay

For a price, I will even be willing to lie

And say to your loved ones: “So sorry, he died.”

To spare them from knowing you went to the sky

To retrieve all those items of yours

And if you go, you can’t come back

But please throw down my hackey sack

I lost it just a li’l while back

But I don’t mean ‘lost’, I just mean that

It’s hitchin’ a ride on the merry-go-found

The merry-go-found in the sky.

Reading a Book

I was reading a book in an unexpected place. Twenty men gathered around me to watch me read. I started to read aloud but they complained, said: No, no, read silently. I switched back to reading silently and watched them watch my eyes. Then it hit me: How was I reading while also watching the men watch my eyes? I realized then I had two sets of eyes and got dizzy. I toppled over and when I came to I was cradled in one of the men's arms; another was gently feeding me water. I spat it out, yelled: Away, you fools! Aren't there any women around here? But that was the year all women were exiled to the sky, and I could see them reaching helplessly towards me, chained to their clouds.