dark stabbing shadows

hot dry bowl of dust and rock

black dog in the sun.

Wal Mart and unemployment......

There are always words that

you can say to make it all

better believably less empty

even though the streets end up in the same places

and the walls are really made of the

same atoms that keep following

you everywhere you may care to go

so I say to you

to keep on digging your way down to Babylon

and all the dreams that dreamers dream

because its better than stopping

or turning into something that just sits

there with the wax of sadness gleaming in a puddle around your feet

so what if the world has all the

room of a rusty can of soup..and

you are the BB left there staring at the

sunlit little hole wondering

how you got there.

you must keep going even if there

is no place to go

and look at all the fluorescent toys

in the store, tired of the sick plastic, not able

to look away,

keep looking at all the people around you subtly maimed

by rashes and scrapes on their bulbous luggage

Are you trying to look away?

there is always a bad tattoo

amidst a constellation of pimples

you cannot look away,

you must keep going even

though there is nowhere to

go, and you never had time to

learn anything worth knowing.

Eggplant

Her skin is fog and ivory

rippled by indecision

the delicate wedding cake

frosting crinkled on her

puzzling brow,

hands thin and alabaster, her long

sugary fingers invade the

dark shiny smoothness

first pinching then stroking

holding it up to drink the

shadow with her radiant cheek

she feels the heat and

rubs her straight, thin nose

against the absolute

firmness of it,

and unabashedly, after

her caresses tenderly

lays it slowly

down.

prepositions

Butterfly on a bell

redbird on a cannon

child by the roadside

your face in the window