For Three Hours And A Lawnmower

26 April, 2007

Due to fifty square feet
that denies a patio set
and a gas fireplace
that throws no heat
and a car that's broken into
twice a month,
there's suspicion that
this middle class status
is a technicality.

Particle board, cheap sealant,
neighbours who can hear every drip and cough,
driving both ways in the dark
to purchase three waking hours
in a future tenement:
these are the waking dreams of grown-ups
who brag that they bought the cheapest mower
of the highest quality.

And yet,
we all sit clean and straight through sermons
about the Good Lord that makes us possible.
We're such happy sheep aplenty
while the organ plays a hymn of praise.
We put money in the offering plate
and we nod and smile during potluck
over the Free Zone's finest plastic plates,
and we won't know
that they once passed by
six-cent workers in a row on metal chairs.

A Flight Of Children

25 April, 2007

Onions justify the butter
and an expiry date on a carton justifies the too-large omelette.
Cold air pardons another day out of the sun
when there is wine in the cupboard
and beer on the floor
and magazines thick in a folding contraption,
which may or may not count as furniture.
Children, ugly as crows,
screech and belt aggressive orders in the courtyard,
their sociopathy not yet tenderized
by the salt of articulated experience in later years,
when they might sip from a mug
and worry over the placement of words,
cringing at the shriek of little girls
who work too hard to be heard over loud boys from 14E
that chase them with stinging nettle from the alley.

They beat, hurl, push, bellow, steal, and taunt.
They want, cry, shush, run, stomp, and pinch.
Their sharp eyes hunt out opportunity
while they grab what is near in fat fists,
the wringing a reflex, until they are bored.
They must not like each other;
they are jarring and murderous,
filled with volatile unpredictability,
until their weekend man calls time to go.
They run down welded stairs
to wait in the car
where they become the distant thumps of popcorn
in a hot, oiled kettle.

Droopy-boobed Lady, Let's Go Get
Some Bacon-wrapped Goat Cheese Together

18 April, 2007

Droopy-boobed lady,
let's go get some bacon-wrapped goat cheese,
because that sweater you're wearing,
tied up the way it is under your breasts,
shows off the soft fall of old flesh,
and I want to be near that.
I know what the pearlized scars from change
look like on my thighs,
but I want to see those lines thin,
long and corrugated in toward one another,
ranging down your skin toward the nipple.
I would brush against those fine hairs
and roll soft skin between my thumb and forefinger
where it would feel papery and light as refined silk.
They would fall and hang apart against your belly,
looking this way and that,
less focused since they lost their fat,
and I would hold them together to see
where one was darker, more dimpled, harder.
But first, droopy-boobed lady, we'll do this right,
and you and me'll go get some bacon-wrapped goat cheese together.