Wasteland Paradise

There are crumpled-up poems
Old magazines, dried fruits
A photographer roams
Rolls of film in her peach-pink suit

She must document this:
All the dreams of the now-dead youth
Scorched guitar strings
She's a sentient sleuth

Snap! A photograph
Of a leopard skin worn
By a woman
Whose flesh was torn
By a rhino--hey!

It's a golden key in a window!
See? How the plants grow sideways here
There's a child at the bottom
Of a well, oh dear.

There are shriveled
Lizard tails in jars, dust, skulls
Cold bodies of old cars
Take a photograph

There are cracked bones
Receipts from old folks' homes
Busted telephones
Take a photograph

The photographer
Can't stay long or she'll get trapped
Can't get too involved or too rapt
She has to go back to her child
Who is so unlike that child in the well

And once back, she has to make sure
That her photographs sell
So she can feed her babe
And that's how the wasteland paradise
Made its way into an infant's mouth
And it all went south
from there.

Athletes

Athletes are built to be hefty

Athletes are built to be strong

Athletes have beefy, sleek buttocks

That look like two plums in a thong.

Athletes can lift heavy objects

Athletes can bend metal bars

Athletes are utterly handy

For opening tightly screwed jars.

Athletes’ own muscles have muscles

Athletes have dolphin-smooth skin

Athletes drink protein for breakfast

And say to themselves: “I will win.”

Athletes are tougher than bison

Athletes are swifter than birds

But they don’t write poems about athletes

‘Cuz that is the niche of the nerds.

Crazy People

Crazy people have too much time on their hands

They examine the stomata on the epidermis of leaves

They examine the incisors of gerbils

They sell their souls for too cheap to the divine princess of madness

Not knowing how much more they could get from an auction

Not knowing that Lucifer, capitalism, and consensual reality

Love to outbid one another for souls

Climbing sweatily on top of each other

Wearing disheveled suits

Waving auction paddles scavenged from dumps.

Am I Confusing Angels with Salamanders, Part II

Angels have bright yellow eyes, stripes and cutaneous respiration

They hum like hang drums and slide over hunters’ boots

They snap-jaw tubifex worms; swim peacefully in creeks.

When violence seizes the Zeitgeist

They go underground to fortify their senses

Safe from skunks & badgers, they engage in ritual

A hang drum chorus

Interlaced paws

The Elder One, injured, regenerates her limb in a corner

Her angel sisters sing its growth.

Am I Confusing Angels with Salamanders, Part I

Angels are small and green and live in the sludge

If you pull one out, and it’s feisty, it will bite your finger.

You cannot breathe the same air as them, and they are meticulous about their fingernails.

In earlier days, they had people as slaves

But they get defensive if you bring this up

It was an era cloaked in shame.

Interests

The man I thought I was

Met the woman I thought I shouldn’t have

The two of them went on a date

Smoked weed

And talked about how deluded it was of me

To think I was the man I thought I was

(Really, he was his own person)

And how narrow-minded it was of me

To have connected the word ‘shouldn’t’

With such a lovely woman as her

For you see, they both had their own interests at heart.