Go fish. I don’t have the cards you’re looking for

Don’t tell them who I am:
preconceived ideas–damn it!
I had to deal with those when I got called–oh, so long ago.
You thought I was going to make things better:
give you a mansion by the seaside?
All my talk of mansions isn’t here, you know,
to keep you warm and cozy by the fireside.
Go and save the world, and oh, and by the way,
break your grandmother’s heart
she’ll only see you every 2 years.

When homework depended on holidays

I sit peeling Bible Character nametags off desks
and fill 5 grocery bags with 20-some trophies
all concerning honors and academic teams,
and to think grades mattered;

the echo of an empty house deafens
the aging ear,
unfurnished–the original fixtures go up again,
and the light is not quite the same;

tearing wallpaper is tearing flesh
as corpses of unwanted toys pile up on the curb,
suffocating former friends in plastic bags
as letters of puppy love mix with unused catnip,

an unfinished Webelos badge and a few pinewood derby cars sit on
purple mimeograph worksheets and classmates’ Valentines,
10 D.A.R.E. ribbons and an elementary school yearbook rest upon
my rock collection and its dimens [sic].

when homework depended on holidays: Santa’s letters, Thanksgiving spelling tests, and New Years Resolutions.

Unpopular as innocence (thankfully)

I still shiver when I consider sex before my driver’s test,
two years before my first kiss a girl undressed closed
behind a door I wanted to remove,
waiting, a scared little boy,
if she would have dangled herself before my nose, who knows
what I would have followed

crowded with the crowd into locked rooms,
as if taped up doors ever stopped them.
afraid to be forced do anything (or anyone)
to be in control I must be out of popular circles and 7-minute heavens,
being unconventional at high school academic conventions
when they called my name,
I wrote, I wrote, I wrote.

The crushes

Vina Beans and marshmallows
over electric stoves,
testing physics experiments on Jasmine and
Heather, my Papillion, fluttering in the
Sunshine Shellie

Elizabeth and Mary, did you know?
Probably not, but
I told Sarah, well one of them, who was taken, but wanted away from me,
Niki, it would have been fun, but awkward dancing,
but I’m cool with that
as I’m sure Niki would have been sippin’ B&N mocha,
there was no sign as there was with Princesses on missions,
and along came another as always
holding them until they can fly–
away from me.

But there are Specks of smiling always discovering
disruptions and Allie ways,
oh, hesitant Beatrice,
beautiful in her doubt,
became a bulldog in order to feed the hungry

When the strings and co come to town

No wonder the 19th century poets were ope’ addicts.
No television,
And it took an orchestra from Vienna to reach earthly heaven
Death knolls were entertainment,
kinda grabs you by the neck, no?
but no-bells (Prizes) for imagination
Can’t wait for my dream sequel,
if death were dreaming, there’d be no Hell
“Oh, I’ll fly away, dear Jesus,”
when the strings and co. come to town
swooping in and out of appreciation
between epiphany
and wonder transcending

Pupils’ pupils

It’s clean–like suburbia,
absent of dumpsters,
no scrubbing phone cords
or de-staining diskettes
like when she’s actually laying between the hotel cotton,
oh wait, we let the maids do that;
there’s sweat on the mouse
and saliva on the mouth to the hands to?

alone?
penetration turns to education, maybe artistry?
justifying pupils’ pupils in the camera;
what do thins lines draw?
locating the absent parents of a preteen wading in the hotel pool.

Like the Guy that never got married

Running toward darkness
looking for someone who doesn’t have to smile,
searching for a mirror
so not to change myself–
too lazy to make time for devotions or
do I really want a wife that won’t be praying for me?

do I martyr myself with delusions of sacrifice:
breaking covenants and burning the cow
I’ve been given quite a few after all
to write poems about

if dreams are standards, this is a nightmare
can two reserved persons fall in love
and still love the world
like the Guy that never got married

In the case of the life of the mother

“I guarantee! or your friendship back”
he promises
lay down your problems and back IN my paper tray,
I’ll journal, write now
and male them OUT next Wednesday’s
child is full of Roe, love is murder?
choosing some
aborting hundreds of little verses
and I consented to everyone, every time,
“Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?” Trying to pick up
the paper whispers in my ear
that my pen is running up and down the page–
just like men, no commit,
my uterus expands for another and
halts its periodic ink
for my beautiful child.

She reads road signs (in love with potential)

time is not what seniors have, I think
of classroom teaching
not wild, kinky sex when gazing
into the telescope of time
and those eyes,
I draw lines connecting now and potential
hopefully parallel to I:
fitting seventeen sides into an eighteen sided hole
and eighteen into
nein* teen, because I’m an adult.

Mantis religiosa (only-pricks-of-protein)

Curious, I enter her sight
as the lab coats watch
administrating bright lights and magnifying glasses from above,
ingesting her scent, I approach cautiously,
we pray,
we stare
we flirt,
we dance,
our wings flitter
against the glass ceiling–you stop.
I tackle her into the grassy Green
rolling around abdomens aligned.

I gesture to leave,
but you blink and motion back,
toothed arms rubbing my chest gripping
her-moans–my fantasy,

locked, lips draw blood,
her arms thrash my sternum,
the S-bending of her abdomen revolves,
she blinks again as the
antennae lash out the eyes
and the late summer sky.

Epilogue:
“Placing them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavored to escape. In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She first bit off his front tarsus, and consumed the tibia and femur. Next she gnawed out his left eye…it seems to be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive from the embraces of his partner”
-Leland Ossian Howard, Science, 1886