FIRE ESCAPE
sleeping with socks on the subterraneans list out names like bus stops balancing each irritation against one hundred tiny hats or flowers
hands clap together as fast as possible and wiry spires tea and lemon balm dead and
sleepily behaving as tracts or guard rails
you become impatient with me and leave me downstairs
fifteen minutes eighteen minutes ago
A SCHEME
stone feather with pants on sideways
from either minneapolis or kansas city
flash nerd
waveform
warm and green
a good amount of people
at least going to try
trying to sell them for a lotta money
pinecones and pearls
DAY AFTER ST. PATRICK’S DAY 2018
in a dirging whinnying
flowering moment of unrestrained hostility and gentleness
I rest fiercely among nestles of coffee and bobby pins
tirelessly waiting and sashaying my temperate desires off the walls into my pockets
neighborly hoodlums want to make me into a majesty
a butterfly made of marbles
and a half-naked explosion like dry lace or sand castles built in the name of an unspeakable longing
something burning with all the colors of nighttime
cumbersome sprays of piss and perfume alight against nether shafts of traveling dust towards a waterfall of electricity
racing each other underground until a tightly packed someone moseys into the road like a blind toddler
well
it looks like a resounding or echoing applause of jump-overs and left-swerves and peeping stop-hards
heavy with inactivity
my fingerprints nimbly hopscotch thru a meadow thick with tethers and rusty anchors
dismissing all shelters and abandoning the myth of accomplishment in a hailstorm of
betrayal and festive vagrancy
I smile the smile of a beach covered in tigers
and my hair falls out slowly
AN AWKWARD INTERACTION WITH TIME
it’s starting to appear as if long time does not exist
or else it is not so unthinkably long
as people say
how could anything be unthinkable?
it doesn’t make sense
instead
time grows shorter and shorter
sure
it could have been long once
but now it is getting old
and we’re getting tired of counting
or maybe time is like a sneaky houseguest
who invites herself in but never leaves
cursed never to exit
just to irritate everyone present like a Sartrean hell
maybe we should offer it something to eat
“are you hungry?
have you traveled a very long way?
would you like to rest a while?”
but this sparks an unprecedented prideful roar from time
who feels teased by this strange and confusing double-edged kindness
“what do you take me for?
sure, eat and turn my back on everything?
what might slip thru behind me while I do?
who might dance on my chest while I slumber?
and you I trust least of all!
why offer me gifts?
you must be trying to tempt me!
you, the terrible household of eternal, frozen moments!
you exist as photographs!
oh, for the sake of the cosmos in order,
please unleash me from this dreadful living room!
launch me out of the front door like an ex-lover’s laundry!
kick me to the curb to rid me of these endless pitfalls into which I might trip and lose my purpose…
banish me!!”
she rises and quietly leaves the room of her own volition
the house is quiet
and we look at each other in awkward embarrassment
the oven beeps
and we remove our watches to allow them to cool
a bit of butter
a bit of salt
we sit silently while a murderous tango concerns our jaws and some batteries
Colin Ferguson 