Word Pastels

Archive for April, 2010

I would rather you thrash and scream
Ripping your claws through my flesh
In boiling tempest and blood-spattered fits
Than to stand frozen in time
Muted contortions, alone
No time, no direction
Reduced to memory
An archived friend.

I eat applesauce now because there is a
Parking boot on my stomach clamped
Because of years of unpaid nutrition tickets that
Seemed such mambo jumbo at the time that no one
Could possibly be serious about them.

Protein shakes like liquid bricks drip past the Guardian
Who passes each drop on inspection
It takes me thirty minutes to savor what used to be three gulps
Of afterthought to wash down the burger-and-fries mash.

I eat applesauce now. It slips unnoticed past the Guardian
Who must think it’s for the baby.

Bear wobbles like a bowling pin
Hands on his hips tip toes to the syncopated Latin piano
He tosses his nose to the sun and draws a drunken pirouette
Inhaling the intoxicating aromas of summer

He looks so flat and angry on the wall in the crackling glow
He is not himself.