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.