Gin-Palace

There is a pink slip/ nailed to my chest/ “Payment Past Due” it says/ KUB is cutting the power to my heart// The note says the electricity will be cut off/ It does not tell of the awful reality to come// I will be cold without his warmth/ I will be lost in the dark at night/ He will not be there to entertain my days/ When I come home/ I will have nothing to do but sleep alone// “Pay Immediately To Reactivate Your Services”/ Pay Day is weeks away/ and my credit is bad// I will have to wait.

There is not a drop of sun/ to wake the red flower in me// I swallow drops of blue at night/ to get me through the grey day/ without a sneeze or cough/ without a needed umbrella// The weather is strong/ and I am not// You are strong/ and I am not// There is not a drop of sun/ and I don’t think I’ll feel its kiss/ ‘til I feel your skin on mine//

How do you describe love? Is it that moment your heart seizes\ your lungs, your veins, your voice\ or is it that first minute of the day\ when your brain confuses him for air\ ? How do you describe love? Is love when your shoulders hurt\ from laughing, playing, living\ or is love when you forget\ you woke up with a sore neck\ ? How do you describe love? Is it the title of a poem\ you'll never polish, publish\ or is love what remains of\ a reflection, a thorough edit\ ? How do you describe love?

You aspire to be the king of the universe/ No doubt in my mind/ you'll be what you want// A Richard Cory/ without the bullet// So many long for what you stand for and so many long for what you could be// I just long for you// You're the king of my universe///

There was this old woman who used to live under the bridge across the street from my building. She smoked like a chimney, and spent all of the money she got on cigarettes, so we'd all take turns bringing her coffee and bagels, or a sandwich, or spaghetti or something. She never talked to anyone. I think she was mute. I think she had Tourette's, too, because she had this funny little twitchy thing going on all the time, and she would make weird noises that weren't actually words. And she was an artist. She made these fun sculptures out of clothes hangers and things she found in the dumpster. She would build them overnight, then after a couple

The day after the apocalypse, I read. I find a bookshop, one of the only buildings that hasn't been destroyed by the blast.  The door is locked, but the front window has a hole in it , and my shirt-wrapped fingers manage to break away enough of the splinters to create some sort of entrance. For the first time in my life, I am thankful for being small. My hands are bleeding when I get inside. My shoulder is too - there's a sliver of glass buried in it too deep to dig out - and the gashes on my chest have opened up again, but there isn't much I can do about those. I don't want to bleed on the books, that's all. I don't have any bandages, so

I observed her fragile corpse upon the cemetery seat, looking to and fro like a lost pigeon. She blinked her watery green eyes at me just once as I approached, then let them oggle wide. "Madam," said I, "have you any need of assistance?" A soft moan echoed back across the dying rhododendrons. "Are you tired? Lost?" A quick glance at her spittle-slathered chops. "Hungry?" She nodded vigorously and a bit of froth flew loose to stick upon a nearby leaf. I watched as it slowly slid its way to the very tip and plopped with a light "thwack" upon the freshly upturned soil. "Er, there ought to be a dead squirrel or two out back by the fence. I i

Collecting your minutes, materialistic, between commas of the breeze. You breathe the time being like an infant teething, like felines land on feet. It's so easy for you to bottle the blue & allow the blood to drain. You rest with the notion The clocks set with ocean where the tides are apt to change. Well you fold all the laundry like gold origami, like belongings of a King. A bow to illusion, majestic confusion & everything it means. & there's no other pattern to climbing the ladder, your shadow @ the base. Then you look to the skies for some biased advice in a trust fall of its rain. Though you wish you could stay W