Combustible Draw

Glinted eye, the open one
The other squinted
Against sun as if against
Mental invasion

Concentric perfection, both
The pair opened wide
Inviting a challenge
Rebuff to unseen

Familiar coveralls deep blue sheen
Stitched identity to chest
His own significance forgotten
Reversed in mirror image

Sophisticated gloss well worn skin
Name gleaming on left backend
Logo and symbol captured within
Impossible to neglect

Dust does not blow; only snow circles
The garage holds an echo
Like a promise unfulfilled
Eyes, lights fixed to stake

Clamor slickened oil and grease
Tires groping traction
Burn's aroma lingering
Wrench postured ready

A puckering against hood
Near perceptible
One eye winces almost shut
Petrol saliva

Metallic growl corporeal grimace
Gleam of desire sharpening
Chassis slithers against battle-line
Teeth bared against blunted steel

Menace inciting flare fusing an oath
Locking lights to eye glaring
Somewhere a shadow creeps between them
Fallen upon concrete grease

Gritty thumbnail striking sulfur rage
Engine preens and rears at once
Sweat in eye reflecting flame
Metal, flesh cleave and cry

Uncanny Is An Ocean

My fingers are interlaced/between sharp interstices/of the Shark's teeth/atop his marine hide/my legs risk splitting/you are almost visible/the shore is a space/beside the sky/edging the moon/I can imagine you/and your expression/it is disdain/it is just inside of/a smirk and disbelief

If it were not for the water's foam trimming my ankles, I could fully recall that feeling I had. You said I scared you. Not the first time I'd heard that. Just outside my lips the muscles stretching both sides, in either direction. I bit the too smooth skin rimming my inside lip and smiled inside my head. You were crying. The almost invisible smile like a stifled funeral chuckle.

Her fingers are interlaced/within warm pockets/of my teeth/atop my dermal armor/her legs negotiate hugging/he is all but invisible/the shore is a space/beside the next/edging the other/she tries to forget you/and your embrace/was embalming/it was just outside of/a trap and home

If it were not for names decorating my memory, I could nearly forget the faces they had. You were among those faces, the embraces, the traces of exchanges that added up to very little after long and short whiles alike. Funny to page through the albums of personal space before owning individual time. A give-away like "Price Is Right" and "Let's Make A Deal". I'm a lazy negotiator which was apparent until suddenly, and always, it wasn't.

The hunting is good/for interested game/juicy, viable, risky/traipsing boundaries/borders to be teased/to be earned/to be violated/devoted exchanges/determining another's/interest in oneself/circumspect/selfish as shellfish/fearing fresh air/auspices/of personal space/privacy protected

A firecracker's big, bright burst inhabiting hot balmy air or an extensive drag race perpetuated by a solid steel chassis creature: searching, seizing forced, buried, discovered, precipices wrought before instincts. And for what if nothing outside of bursting or dragging? Repeatedly and sometimes repeating, often patterns. Funny and flattering to bestow and be bestowed upon the emotion of another that really will never truly vacate individualized confinement.

The appearance of/disadvantage from one/species to another/actually a construct/a specialized mode/operation that begins/without necessitating/conclusion/make me a woman/mold me a Shark/donate his teeth/dedicate my fingers/outside of someday/inside of tomorrow/a compass that belongs/shoreside/a fancy reservation/made south of advance/elicit a wave/ride my back unseen/unheard/only felt/by a grip/confidently singular/comfortably aware/of generating motion/perpetuated as if dually/uncanny ocean/retreat for lovers

Let's Play Pretend For Real

Brass guitar strings for floss
Clothespins for earrings
Teeth accruing gaps
Earlobes becoming pancakes

Brass tastes like copper
Clothespins pinch like teeth
You like space in between
And breakfast in bed

Arm’s length my phone rings
Little to lose playing craps
My body and you’re the boss
Be it shackles or snakes

Innocuous the ad’s lien
My pulse a dance in my head
Responding, an impulsive shopper
Finger to blade bypassing sheath

Promise and threat commingle
A jumble of letters black and white
Filling plain space
I read the line twice

Tie you up tight
You’ll like my basement
I’ll like your legs and arms
And…everything…in between

Attracted by voluntary disgrace
Experiment: body parts and mice
Thrumming tongue, a catchy jingle
Caught in my throat tonight

A thick rope strung from air vent
Hints of plotted harms
Guaranteeing my plight
Promising to be very mean

You’ll wear yourself
I’ll turn you inside out
Precluding more questions
Explicitly simple directions

Like following a crumb trail
My basest drive found your way
Fresh air piercing bared skin
Car and calm abandoned

Balmy glow I wouldn’t see without
Inside bereft of suggestions
Abandoning feigned stealth
So noted, simple instructions

“Come downstairs—I win.”
Outside of suddenly, jammed in
Bound limbs, a physical jail
Almost excited, ready to play

Pretend it hurts, a command
And it does, for real, and good
In my nostrils a scent
Of salt and sweat and man

Rubbing your finger
Across nodules perk and fixed
It’s mine, my blood
Human juice worth drinking

Hard right angle, your body bent
Masked face, my eyes scan
Harnessed jaw, growled demand
Musk flasked beneath your hood

Your tension my sprawl mixed
Pitched, high, my screams aflood
Your shroud the captor, you linger
I twist, my turn, your power shrinking

A Claim Ticket Blanched By The Sun

Equal parts maple syrup cobra venom
Unhaunted uninhabited forest of woods
A tale become legend disrupted burial

Daylight digested wrought by foliage teeth
Unwarranted fame by demand popular
Baking twine fine point scissors preheat to hot

Obscured a grimace flashbulb and pop and shot
Skin the meat saline solution one gallon
Dank marsh seeped in minerals fester rot

Fingers that fidget terminal compulsion
Something more than pretty lucid and elusive
Red light wagon tails happenstance that moment

Two decades two fingers seducing ivory
Salivating unleashed begging not biting
Buzzing ringing claiming her in his ears

Polaroids binoculars fantastic urge
Meticulous consider-it forgot
Desire to please untrained in challenge or sport

Solar embrace suggesting perfection
Twilight swallowed whole implying no place left
Operatic sigh the city’s bowels pretend

Sticky complicated histrionic reflex
Disguised narrative cosigned authority
Evidence motive paperbacks and badges

On three a cry a prayer an interview
The soil’s hug a last organic nudge
Claws his face can’t recall hers caught alone

A Time Upon Which Once There Was

Wanted it to be dirty
Everything about it
Something with scum around the edges

Just one of those spots
You can’t not notice, want it or not
A black film veiling the pool tiles

Submerged in stale water
Capped with leaves turning soft
Their skeletons engorged

Hair strands clogging gutters
Both turned slimy in forced limbo
Crescents of chlorine rimming drains

The water is stagnant
Hot and seeming to steam, the
Inescapable embrace of sun

Wish you were here
Like a lost posted card
Mailed late to a lately lost lover

A glimmer among the murk
It appears to move
Maybe just drifting, as eyes are prone to

Flashing spots, the heat so cruel
Lapsing needs, too late
Obscured amongst her biology

Peeling spots, dark round red
Crusting the deck’s bleached abrasion
They’re hers as was the fin

Overflowing green lava
Mold sputters from spaces dank
Thought forgotten until clogged

A rare shadow at the deep end
Clinging and clung upon
The tail wavers halfway stuck in

Valuable no longer
Useful then, only once
Privilege nascent of neglect, abuse

Paler than the leaves, chlorinated putty
Fine bone structure beneath
Bloated scales once shiny

No howl no scream-done-small splash
He muttered she heard
Don’t want a mermaid no longer, Woman

For glory, In vanity

a stray spider leg twitches still
atangle amongst his whiskers
men and their beards
things crumbs snot stuck
flicking his tongue across
his nostrils, it’s sensual
just beyond his intrigue
were it present

recently obvious aged man
swings with heavy intent, brow hot
grip tight, axe loose
adversary
frantic discovery
somewhere a saint buried down deep
just outside his pursuit
were it for real

spider clings to the window screen
screaming from tight condensed lungs
eight iron grips
deaf misery
plea to Arachnia
harkened breeze suddenly strong
just against his smooth belly
it’s her hot breath

her chin, windowpane
abreeze of sweat and soil
glossy lips below pert nose
parted against themselves
she calls aloud
his name, her voice
shifting he looks up, compliant
his axe drops, the cat comes, she laughs

The Desert Never Starves

The impervious Plexiglas bubble bounced to Earth
A tangle of jumbled kids within too dizzy to notice
Disarrayed, splayed about, a sewage of wreckage
The adults reduced to pulp and soup and barbeque

Upon the Earth, the middle of one of Her desolations
A few things found, in spite of countless limbs
The plane so, only by history and fire was victory
The adults, mostly parents according to vain memory

The Plexiglas bubble shown opalescent under hot gloam
The kids’ faces masked misshapen, distorted, cartoonish
Their howls, their pleas their mouths did silently mime
Of the dozen or so, two passed out, possibly dead or near

Giant enough to hold twelve wriggling bodies yet compact
Fitting within the standard cross continental mechanical craft
Genius, the inventor of bouncy Plexi resilient despite altitude
Impressed the adults would have been if alive

Unlocking the Plexi from inside, the oversight made
Inventors aren’t perfect and seldom are their inventions
Nature isn’t either, and because She’s not it’s as if She is
Limited air in the Plexi proffered via nail head holes

Sensing a ruckus, came along prairie dogs eventually
Taut brown bodies alert to disaster, paws flexing at air
The rot enticing initially, scavenging as though for wallets
Fickle as they were, the prairie dogs detected more

The Plexiglas bubble like a mad sorcerer’s vengeance
Blinded their blind eyes and confounded their nostrils
Unfamiliar with heated polymer, at first unidentifiable
Then whiff by whiff seeping through out the nail holes

The prairie dogs avenged the holes with keen teeth
The bubble suddenly necessitating dental worship
A matter of time, seconds or hours, the desert only knows
The bubble collapsed under massive precision

The still conscious kids looked finally about
The wreckage was blurry, the sun obscuring the blood
The haze of parental bodies no longer resembled as much
The prairie dogs looked tiny and cute and strangely alert

Abandoning the bubble's remains and their limp cohorts
The kids scooped prairie dogs into sweaty dusty pockets
One wriggling loose deftly replaced by two others more
In this way, pockets full of prairie dogs, off, beyond they set

The horizon was bland as they always are except in paintings
The surroundings were grim as they always are especially in dreams
The kids were determined without realizing they were
And the prairie dogs were glad: a free lift to a new place

Spoon Feeding

organic organs originated over
yester-years of yearning uselessness
unless unraveling the uninspired unifies un-
constitutional construction consorting in
trepid tastelessness that titillates wasteful
wanton wonderment whilst whiling away
alone abridged autonomous and de
void voluntarily-so-vindicated vapid by
laws legalizing legitimately lengthy lies said
solely so silent so souls still fresh
freeze finally filled from a
band
on
mint menthol methanol merriment my
miss

staked

claim

formed

for
now

Crucial Remnants

A pretty yellow dress
bunched up, it is, in the corner
not so pretty, as it was,
lying soggy
wrung
misshapen

The mooring Pacific Ocean
it tasted, as it was, of skin
not unfresh, it is,
stretching over
scented
flesh (yours)

A disarming contraction
bunched up, it is, deeper
less pliable, as it was,
before control
abandoned
compulsion

The heated spasms
eyelids, as it was, lashes
lashing, it is,
painful
bloody

and alas and

salty