Nine Out Of Ten

I'm no surgeon, but I could
carve your finger off with a scalpel,
if you were too afraid.
Like the man who sawed his hand off
so he wouldn't starve, but
your boulder crushes you by choice.
Perhaps I could even gnaw it off,
if I weren't so hungry.
Hydrochloric acid wouldn't be so bad;
a slight stinging and then - voila!
I'd cut mine off to match, and
we could step together down this trail,
hand in mutilated hand, one
limb short of a tree, one
digit short of a decimal system.

~02-10-10

Tierra del Fuego

Alive like a car,
cold coffee on the dashboard.
It's gonna be a long night, like
Chile in the winter.
A land lit up, the reflection of fire:
Tierra del Fuego en fuego sin agua,
the most volatile place you can
visit, if you never bloom in my head.
You're not a cactus; you need
water, or coffee, and even then
I've never seen a flower kiss the
darkness without cringing.

Dead like a star,
whose spark never quite reaches
my engine. If we stay still, we
travel at chaotic speeds -
all relative, of course - but there is
an order to our route that says,
"keep driving." Into the land of fire,
the long night, the vast and violent barren
blackness that breeds life. One sprout,
dancing in the dirt, kissed by
a narrative that needs two writers.

-02-09-10

Rubber Band

I stretch a rubber band to
the breaking point.
This is me, I say to you.
Should I be a slingshot, projecting
pebbles into your pond?
Or are you already rippled?
I could be a cog to your wheel,
and we could crank this
into gear.
Or I could snap, with sudden
calamity, and...no! you say,
I will not snap.
Your kisses, your caresses, your massages
will ease the tension, and
Before long we will master the machine;
we will turn slowly;
we will manufacture galaxies.

-02-14-10

A Penny Laid...Is A Penny Spurned

I plucked a precious penny off the ground;
she pranced and bucked and I said,
"pretty baby, why you wanna debase yourself down there?
The concrete's cold and my pocket's pleasing."
Her bearded face balked but still she shined,
so I flipped her on her front and
caressed her edifice like it was edible.
"The sensation of inflation will soon name you
negligible," I said, "would you rather be
obsolete or indiscreet?"
But a penny laid is a penny spurned,
and she fell through a hole the next day,
slipping into the slit of a lesbian piggy bank.

~02-02-10