Universal Sandwichinator

Lunchmeat of questionable origin and quality approaches my smoothly cut surface
Nothing but the finest Japanese blade for a fine nine grain such as I
Leaving dual plane plateaus for stacking and snacking
Ultimately a place for the cleanest of fingertips to grip
Indenting the soft firmness of my face

A tingle as the thinly sliced slivers touch me
Alerting me to danger
Causing me to totally post-baking ferment out
Swelling complex starchy structures
Splitting the crust of conformity
That once held me to the flame

Ruffled and cheap
The meat falls in a disorderly tainted heap
A poison left for the rodents of the world
Now beneath my notice as I am a size apart
Clasping the form that once cut me to size
Betwixt my squishy thighs
Shocked by the sudden restraint
I get no resistance to assimilation
Sucking down thought and feeling with equal gusto
Feeding an insatiable growth that swells inside

Now growing with no thought to control
Then taking in everything in the surround
Exponentially becoming the biggest thing around
Becoming a brand new recipe of nine grains moons planets and stars

Two slices large enough to thoughtfully encompass the everything
Into a universal sandwich from the galactic deli
A food fit for a god's plate

Mr Tuxedo Duperstar

Harry Tuxedo was no like other men

He signed autographs with a hamburger

And often ate with a pen

His doctor told him to straighten up or it would kill him

And sure enough

One day he accidentally ate his hamburger

And signed for a bill with his pen

When the groupies noticed they tore him limb from insincere limb

The autopsy found him to be quite normal

Whatever had made him a celebrity

Was not discernible in post mortem

Origin Continuation #1 (A Tale of Earth 52.5)

The stars had lulled me to sleep at last
With their icy cold fingered song wrapped around my throat
Causing a curious pain in my left leg
As if the constellations had come alive
To poke and laugh at the injury that keeps me from their company

Though they'd have to walk through a hell of a mess to get to me
Past shattered bottles from benders long past
Shards of glass from portraits ground underfoot
Filled with faces of those who no longer are my loved ones
And one tangled up prosthetic leg
All cables, stainless brackets, and mahogany
Wearing a size 10 Doc Martin boot
Which is a match for no footwear I own

Medals upon the wall tinkle on their velvet board
Touched by the breeze coming in through the open window
A wind chime come alive to clap me on the back
For courage
For bravery
For many other things that all add up to one thing:
Stupidity

Wrong place at the wrong time
Just another hero blown to bits
Asleep in my chrome chair
Before wide open double french doors
Standing atop a short sweep of flagstones to the swimming pool
Rippling in that same moving air
Reflecting those same sorry stars

Holding a streak of light that my passed out eyes miss
But not the sharp crack of a shock wave that startles me back to the world
Just in time to see a dim glow upon the horizon
And more streaks in the night sky

Arcing Earthward
In an almost lovely coordinated dance
Suddenly too numerous to count the beat to

Wolves, Klingons, and a Reversal of Sequence

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Well, me, actually
Sharp teeth, growling, dirty grey fur
Pretty scary stuff really

When the wolf-man came to my door the other day
I refused to let him in
At least until he shed that awful fur coat
And donned a more human skin
For I have dogs already
And am less than impressed with their potty training abilities

I am less than impressed with their conversation abilities
I've met plenty of Klingons already
Even though they resemble humans in general type
Get down beneath that skin and they're in a class alone
So I refused to let him in
When the Klingon came to my door the other day

Pretty scary stuff was all about him
Sharp teeth, growling, and a dirty bloody bat'leth
I'll freely admit that it's me
Who is afraid of the big bad Worf

Awful Animal Safari

This goat is definitely diabetic
It's creepy square pupil eyes are dilated
With blood sugar readings in the thousands
If it was an octane rating
This goat would spontaneously combust

Diabetic goat dances to its own tune
Disregarding doctor's orders with aplomb
Divulging cash from a hidden goat purse
Demonstrating questionable judgment
Devouring caches of donuts and layered pastries
Deported from healthier nations from far overseas

I ask you
If this makes sense
Indubitably awaiting a logical answer
Ill prepared for the look that I got
Illustrated best by a design of sharpened daggers
Instigated directly from your eyes
Inked upon parchment comic paper set aside till it dries

Running from that diabetic goat situation
As well as the sharp object spray and pray I encountered
The twisted path that projected before me
Really only led to one inevitable place

Hamsters with bulging hernias
Awaited me at the end of the road
Just as I knew that they would
Not that I'm prescient or anything
Just that I had a feeling it would be something messed up like that

The hamsters could barely walk
Teetering upon their feet
Toes extended to get more lift
Till their sticky-outy insides did not drag the ground
Tumbling from side to side when this wasn't possible
Triggering tiny hamster sized earthquakes with every bounce to the earth
Tagging each other in a mad miniature dance
Titillating in nature
True in purpose
To tickle the truth until secrets spilled out
Trickling into open pink hamster mouths
The overindulgence of which
Takes the lead as the cause of the hernias in the first place

Diabetic goats
Hamsters with hernias
What would be next?
I mused to myself
As I wandered down a dark path
So overgrown with greenery
That I failed to see the sign to the left
Clearly spelling out why this route is unwise

"Beware of Tigers with Tarantulas for Eyes"

Conal Ejection

I get two different shades
One for my left
And one for my right

And it serves me proper too
For staring into the sun all day
With one eye closed
The other sucking in all the UV rays
Damaging the retina beyond all recognition
Rounding up the cones for the rod's personal gratification
Soon having all the conical fellows in one small place
Surrounded by rioting rods
A blur of black and white motion
Rotation counter clockwise around one spot of kaleidoscope color

Fearful for their function
The cones activate their superpowers
Touching one another and being thrown back
A Wonder Twins move if I ever saw one
Transforming all at once into a literal rainbow
Projecting straight out the forward lens
Then arcing downward in an attempt at a circle

Though that'd be silly if achieved
For no entrance would be attained at the back of my head
And all it did was produce an exclamation from my lips
"Oh look! A rainbow!" and a point and gawk with childish delight

That left the right eye
The one that'd stared at the sun for so long
Without a cone to its name
And a black and white outlook from that day forth

So now when I look around at the world
One half sees colors as it should
And the other
Sees more like a dog would

Little Cough

When the baby's temperature hits one hundred and three
And the tiny breaths come in shallow death rattle gasps
Hand sized blocks wrapped in sandpaper course rasps
Rubbing down the walls in the pediatric ward
Till all the bright colors are gone

Seizures come and seizures go
The why even the MRI machine doesn't know
Where the cathode ray gun parallel lines show
Nothing but a blob of brain damage towards the rear
Explaining maybe why the child's eyes are pointing crazily
"She's most likely blind"said the doctor confirming your fear

What to do?
All the tubes and hoses prevent the cuddling you need to give
And the being six months old is a conversation stopper too
So in a manic moment you grab the sunglasses out of your pocket
Put them on her tiny cherub face
Making a feeble Ray Charles joke
That makes the wife break down in tears instead of the laughter you'd misguidedly hoped

Holding her now you pinch yourself secretly
Thinking that this must be a dreamy kind of nightmare
And how thankful you'd be if you awoke

'Murica Shot the Sheriff

T'was the Mozart of spies
With gadgets galore inside his shoe
And glowing green laser eyes
Shooting through Chuck E Cheeses across America
Dancing in jerky animatronic nightmare 2am last call
Kicking down the crumbling Berlin Wall
And declaring rampant Perestroika

Sent to outer space to make some peace
Instead powering up the solar sail array
And tacking across the solar system and off away
Picking up speed
No sir not slowing down
Until hitting Ursa Minor Town
Blistering down through their atmosphere
Anachronistic six-guns a blazing
Until their Sheriff (as it were) surrendered

He is the double O-Seven of 'Murica
Bleeding red white and blue
If you can cut him at all
Skin made of diamond blistered Sawz-Alls
With custom gold grill upon upper teeth
Looking cool lounging around the backyard copper tube still
Sipping Tennessee whiskey from a stainless cup
Getting just tipsy enough
To climb a way up high that hill
To the jacked up
Harvester tired Ford Model Bigfoot
A wet dream of Henry's fifty years ago
Giving him a heart attack at last
Leaving Edsel in charge
Which meant you can now get cars in other colors
Where they used to just be all in black
Dignified in their stride
Pulled down the assembly line by wooden teethed George Washington clones
Rejects from Edison's lab down the road
Where all the good experiments go on
With little or no oversight
From government's nanny blight
It gets results
It lines our pockets
Or at least one percent of us

'Murica, 'Murica
Land of the Dave
Home of the see
When that cloudy cleared
That flag was still chock full of snakes
Screaming "Don't Tread on Thee!"
Fangs out and screaming
Skinned to the bone and dreaming
Of a brighter 'Murica for our sons and daughters

Because if it's bright enough to blind them
They'll fail to notice that they aren't any longer free

Call in the Hipster agents
Who've seen it all before
With guns on their backs in Open Carry Orgasm
Hard up against Obamacare and the arsenal of Obamaphones
Free for the taking
Piles of ten year old Motorola Vodaphones
Reception fit for a turd
With the slowest tunes you've ever heard
A slow motion ditty
To remind us that we are shitty
When the daily affirmations get to be too much
And our shit smells like roses again
In the piles next to our beds in the Mental Ward Wing
Brought to us on Valentine's Day
The best Hallmark sponsored holiday in all of pre-spring

Fat signal lit
'Murica responds
Wearing cape and mumu
Riding a red Amigo down the center line at the speed of sound
'Murica dripping like KFC grease from the lips
Eyes open and vacant
Perhaps belonging to a stroke victim
Half a face sagging
Pooping in a bagging
Gay agenda from the rear bumper dragging
Cops beating the shit out of us all for bragging
About how fucking great
This 'Murica kind of place really is

(Don't tase me bro!)

On This Day In History.....Squirrel!!

I'd be lying if I told you I didn't stop to read them
Because there they were
All stuffed about the floor of the attic
Newspapers from the last seventy years
Some with the back piles all tied up with twine
And labeled as to what year they were from
Others strewn about and crumpled up
Stopping up gaps in the boards on the walls
Clearly an insulation substitute in action

My main job was to come up here and try to herd some flying squirrels

Yes
Flying squirrels

They'd been rumbling around the attic for a couple months
And I hadn't thought much of it
As occasionally they could be seen popping out near the chimney
And zooming away across the yard through the air
To land on a tree an impossible seeming distance away

At least I wasn't worried until I read that they never lived alone
And were often in colonies as large as twenty
Which was the part that bothered me
Because that number started to approach what I equated to an infestation

Very patiently I'd checked all around the house for possible exits for them
And watched them for a few days to see their habits
So that when most of them out of the house
And with all but one of the holes that they used plugged up
I could come up here and try to flush out the last of them

None of them were going to come back now that they had left
As I had installed a one way door on the last exit
For the few remaining squirrels to use a final time
After I had rousted them from wherever they were hanging out up here'

I hadn't counted on these marvelous papers though

I set myself down with crossed legs and propped up my flashlight
Sending strange shadows across the attic walls
Making the stacks of papers appear almost as skyscrapers lit by a setting sun
Ripe for my searching fingertips to disturb
Like a giant research Godzilla

Before I knew it I had read about the moon rocket launches
Victory in Europe Day
JFK's assassination
The bombing of Pearl Harbor
Which was right when a squirrel flew by my face
Clearly taunting me with his little bat-like stretched skin wings and cute beady eyes

I set down the paper and grabbed for my broom

These papers could wait until I cleared out these aerial jokesters

Hat Suck

It was a cloudy day
So I don't know why Sal even wore his hat
But that certainly didn't make this an exceptional day
As he wore his hat all the time

Hell, I wouldn't have known he actually had hair
If I hadn't taken to hanging out with him after work sometimes
Which was the first time I saw him really take it off

That same scenario has gone the opposite direction with other coworkers
Who reach to remove their caps for whatever reason
And reveal a reflecting mirror of a skull looking right back at you
Blinding you with their flesh
No matter the color of their skin
It was always shiny as if polished by a wax buffing wheel

And always
Without exception
You'd fervently wish that they'd put the damn thing back on
Because this wasn't what you'd counted on dealing with today
The image of this person that was like cement in your head
Needed to be maintained gosh darn it

So the hats need to stay on
Usually, anyways

On this cloudy Northern Michigan day
Where there was no need for ball caps
Yet there he went
Walking around the flight line
His dark blue cap jauntily tilted just slightly off center
So much so that you always wanted to reach out and straighten it for him
Except that he wasn't the kind of person you did that to
Not that he was dangerous really
No more than anyone else around there probably
So I suppose that none of us were the type of person you'd reach out and correct a wardrobe issue upon without asking first

There was a Douglas DC-8 doing ground runs in the center of the taxiway
Just kind of idling there
A couple RCH* off of the idle stops
And we were wandering around looking for leaks on the engines
Ducking here and there with flashlights and rags
Wiping at this and that
Then watching the spot for a few seconds to see if the offending substance reappeared
Which it usually did not

DC-8's have a habit of leaking
Pretty much everywhere
But doing it so slowly
That it is hard to catch them at it

They're sneaky leakers

So that was going on
And there was Sal
Walking around like all the rest of us
With his hat loosely cocked in the preferred manner

When he happened to stroll right in front of the running #2 engine inlet

I was looking right at him as he did it
And I wasn't worried in the least
As we all did that without much of a care

Suddenly he went from Sal with a ball cap on his head
To Sal with his full head of fuzzy black hair

He took another half step past the engine and stopped
His hand zipping up to the top of his head in reach for his hat

Then he looked around quickly
In that way that you do when something falls off of you
And you don't know exactly which way it went

Then

And keep in mind that I can't see into the front of the engine
Only he could, from where he was standing
I could only see his face as he saw what he saw

Sal did a total Hollywood double take
With the looking at the front of the jet engine quickly
Then almost looking away
Before locking onto that view with big  surprised eyes
His eyebrow cocked
And he made a quick simultaneous "Oh shit!" movement with his head

Which looked however you think it did
And that you learn to read after working with someone for years

Then he turned quickly and jogged up to the front of the plane
So that the guy in the pilot's seat could see him
And after getting his attention
Sal held up two fingers
Then drew his hand across his throat
Clearly telling them to shut that #2 engine down

Now several of us were curious as to what was going on
And I had my suspicions
So we casually sauntered up to the front of that still running engine and peered inside
Seeing the memorable sight of Sal's blue ball cap
Folded like a taco shell around one of the fan inlet struts
With the fan blades whirring at their uncountable with the naked eye RPM's
Only millimeters away from grinding it up like a giant titanium Cuisinart

That Pratt & Whitney JT3D engine was taunting him
Just as surely as if it had hung a pizza
Or a dollar bill
Or whatever you want to imagine you'd be tempted to grab
On a string just out of reach

Oh yeah
We laughed
And we may have laughed a lot
Some of us may have gotten narrow tunnel vision and stars across our eyes we laughed so hard
Which was a real safe thing for us all to do right next to a running aircraft
But then, we were all about safety back then

I swear we didn't really laugh at him
We loved him too much for that
More at the impossibility of that situation
Of getting a hat sucked off your head by the jet engine
And gaining that instant of "Holy Shit!" as you see your hat hanging millimeters from shelling out a six figure power plant

Sal bought the drinks that night
Sealing us to secrecy perhaps

Until now

*RCH = Red Pubic Hair (you can guess what the 'C' really stands for maybe)
  And there was also a BCH, which is for Black Pubic Hair.  This was a unit of measure; with red being very fine and thin, and black being thicker.  So in practical use, if you were working with someone trying to line something up with hammer blows, and your partner says, "Just another RCH!", that would mean just a light tap of the hammer should get it lined up, as it is super close.  But if he says that it's a BCH, then you better hit it hard, because it isn't so close yet.

What Makes a Poem a Poem Because Moan Lisa Asked

A poem is whatever you want to make
It can arrange letters to dance around
Rhyming if needed in a two-step half-turn shake
In end-line mimicry of A-C B-D sound

Or it could-good-goodery
Be the best Seuss that our pen stuffed with ink can make make makery
Snarfing dotes from the moats to float ink upon their coats
With words all over the nerds who read opera to their goats

Often it won't rhyme at all
Especially where things take a serious turn
With a dark moment illustrated in great detail
The feel of the pea green shag carpet between your toes
As your dad walked in still wearing his work suit
An unlit cigarette held too tightly in his left hand
Bending the tube of mighty fine tobacco until a small tear appeared in the paper
The spearmint smell of his breath as he tells you the news that your grandfather has died
And how it is really ok
Because that is what happens to everybody
And is the most natural thing that there is
Though you don't believe him
Because the world just won't turn the same without grandfather in it
To fix all the clocks and bicycles
To build all the chairs and kitchen tables
And tell you stories about the old country
In tales spattered with the odd German word and phrase as he forgets himself

Poetry can be.
A stopped up sink of stopping.
Staggered.
With periods.

Or

Extra

Spaces

I've seen poetry in xy78.88.00.09679
Which led inexorably to http://ThePoetryDoesntNeedTo.org/Rhyme/Ever/xbin

Poetry is what you make of it
This arrangement of words upon a page
Which is itself just one facet of what poetry could be
Sometimes it never gets written down at all
Spoken out loud
Shouted into a canyon
And echoed back
For a thousand person audience
Or one person
Or just you and the mule that you rode in on

I've seen poetry in metal
With curves swerves jiggles and joggles
Paintings with colors I cannot still comprehend
A singer singing in a language I'll never understand
A wad of paper bronzed high upon a pedestal

All is poetry
Poetry is all

Though the thing that really screams out poetry
In all caps like this: POETRY
Is when I see it, or read it, or feel it
And it makes me stop in my tracks
Either mentally or physically
Causing me pause
To ponder its cause
Feeling revulsion joy disgust happiness sadness despair hate and love

The best poetry leaves an imprint upon something
Whether it is on the person who reads
Or the one who writes it
Or the rock in the desert it is inscribed upon

That is what poetry is to me

Aviation Catholic Confessional

My dirty black work pants
Covering bruised and battered knees
Fell heavily upon the red velvet wrapped kneeler
The massive confessional door clicked shut loudly
Cuing a sliding panel to open in front of me
With a silhouette in view past the woven bamboo fingers

"Bless me father for I have sinned
It's been so long since last time
I can't even guess since when

I have committed grave sins against Type Certification
Creating Frankenstein's monster
Where once a Cessna Citation once had been

Three hard points upon each naked wing
In support of various ordinance
Wrecking the aerodynamics
Defeating physics at last
I don't know how it stays in the air to be honest
If not for the high performance turbofans we installed

Beefed up engine pylons
With oversized lugs
To take GE F404's
Complete with afterburner nozzles
Shrouded in one of a kind cowling

Four extra fuel bladders beneath the floors
Plumbed with titanium line
Inline fuel pumps with magnets around the outlets
To align the electrons for higher performance
Because the owner had watched too many late night commercials

A cockpit panel made of one piece of interactive touchscreen glass
Made by the Chinese
Which company I forgot to ask
Basically a king sized iPod with wings
With fly by wire control sticks
For the pilots to do their things

Jammers and boosters
Penetrating radar to the rear
Satellite internet service
Which costs pretty dear
Though money was no object
And we all worked through the night out of fear

I seek absolution for this sin against aviation
More rocket than aircraft
The only thing keeping it in the air is thrust
An F-4 is a glider dancing upon thermals by comparison"

The priest cleared his throat
And offered this,
"My son
Jesus would not approve of your bending of the rules
But He would rejoice in the high performance of the result
Therefore I prescribe a light penance to remind you to look at your maintenance manuals a little more often

Perform six Acts of Contrition
Three Hail Mary's
Read the AC43.13 latest revision from front to back
And write "I will not modify aircraft and components without a Form 337 or STC" exactly 100 times

I will expect that last one upon my rectory desk by tomorrow morning
Now go in peace with God's blessing my child"

The little door slid shut with an implied sigh
Echoed by my own
As I rose
Opened that large door
And went to the front pew to get started on my penance

Community Violation

VIOLATION

You have violated our community guidelines
That bar profanity and sexually explicit content.
For your convenience we'll handle you gently
And the guidelines will be reiterated presently:

Due to our desire
To appeal to varied audience
And stoke a tame creative fire
We only ban certain things to maintain a balance

For example we don't ban all seven of the Dirty Words!
Of shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits
Only six are banned outright
With two available for use under proper contextual light!

Piss is always allowed
As a bodily function it can add zest to any poet's work
So feel free to piss on this or that
Consider it yours as a post pissing perk

Cunt could sometimes be allowed
When used to berate one's best mate
In the best way possible
Seeing as how he's a good cunt to drink a pint with

Cunt could never be allowed
When in reference to the female genitalia
Every American conservative conservationist knows
That's one slimy slobbery gibbering gash that only grows and horribly grows!

Tits is also allowed when writing of the Paridae and its high pitched wit
This large family of passerine birds includes the Tit
And in this context Titmouse and Tomtit would also be lovely
Describing pretty little flying bits with some things in common with your pet budgie

Tits would be horrifying to both pixel and printed page
Were you to use it in description of mammalian mammaries
Women would scream
Children would cry
Men would grow stoic
And would only result in a stern presentation of the birds and the bees

Those three are the only ones allowable in our great Google Group
One for always and two for sometimes
Which leaves us with four more to discuss briefly
But which never should ever be used specifically

Shit should never be used at all
Whether referring to excrement
Or used as startled exclamation
It just sticks in our craw like an unwanted shit ration

Fuck is just a vulgar set of letters
And using it sets you lower than your betters
Who would look down upon this descriptive noun
Describing the finest activity of reproductively getting down

Cocksucker is a terrible word and even worse thing to do
So Shocking to utter or scribe we have a saying to help avoid it
As cribbed from our sisters from their Temperance movement towers
"Lips that touch cock shall never touch ours!"

Motherfucker is just the worst kind of word
It walks into the bar and orders a whiskey
Cheats its way through the card tables
Before giving its mother a high inner thigh hickey
It is the worst
And makes us fit to burst
You can't make us tolerate its use
Not even if that mother needs it so bad she's knitting up a noose!

These rules are for everyone's protected enjoyment
Art is only art when it adheres to rules
Any other kind we simply do not need

Typewritten Rough Draft

The action is a bit sticky

From something like the plaque in my head

Insulating the nerves of transmission

From fingers dry and rusty

Creaking their way to the platen

Through Bakelite labelled key

Sculpted stamped steel arm

Pivoting on tint hinge pins

To swing old oily furry linty

Thus encrusted muscled type bars

Which entangle one another

On their arc to and from the paper

Should I dare to try and strike too fast

Reactionary

We came together with invisible forces
And in the beginning we couldn't get enough
Resisting separation with all our might
Though pulled by one hundred horses

And so we were one under the suns
Spending overlapped days
And the short sort of twilight
Absorbing all that there was about one another

But that was also where the trouble started

I found out that she didn't like the number three
And she found that I did not like cherry pie
Those differences starting the first cracks in our union
Until we chafed to the other's very presence

Finally the galling of our metal souls
Eventually pushed us apart
Scientifically measured with calipers
And duly recorded upon a paper chart

Becoming just another footnote in a Nobel laureate's publication
As we went our separate ways on permanent vacation

Every now and again I see her
And I know that she sees me
But we act as if no attraction is there
Though there always will be
And we both pretend not to care

Where's Dalai?

Looking for the Dalai Lama in all the wrong places
These days he is often lost
In a sea of white faces
Lhasa echoes hollowly without him
Wind whipping the monk's robes
Once with the winds of the Far East Nation
Then running from the red state police
Now with the fire of self immolation
Perhaps he will consent when this current coil expires
To return once again to the heights of Lhasa
With tiny hands to grasp something that once was his
And a heavyweight task upon his small head
Spinning prayer wheels
Tying colorful cloth
Creating sand images
And freeing Tibet

Work Favorites

The sweet smell of a rag soaked with MEK
Causing my head to go light
As I clean a confined space
Dancing to fantastical mechanic day dreams

Black soot staining my hands
After working on an old jet engine
That only comes off on my greasy french fries

The ear drum rupturing Chest gripping sound of four jet engines All hard upon their full military stops
While I am crouched only twelve feet away

The ignorant bliss of being in a foreign country And never leaving the concrete of the airport
With only the picture postcard impression of the landscape
To serve as a memory that I was once there

Reading a Harlan Ellison short story collection While sitting awkwardly in the courier seats Of a 40 year old DC-8 freighter flying over the Rockies
And having a short burst of turbulence coincide with a written jump scare

Falling asleep on the floor Wedged into the back corner of a B747 cockpit And waking up half a world away With a foreign sunrise in my eyes

Sitting down and drinking a cold water With desert sun baking my shoulders While I contemplate a very broken airplane
And hoping I could find a fulcrum and a long enough arm

Attaching strange things to the outside of an airplane In the interest of Research and development
Leaving five trails of exhaust from a four engine type plane
Now with a strange silhouette for spotters

Having my family visit me at work for lunch To have them eat boxed lunches on board a B747 Then play flight crew up in the cockpit
Back when I could hold them easily in my arms

Those were a few of my favorite things

#unlikeeveilpeopleilikegoodthings
#favoritethingsaboutwork

Post Vitam

The funeral clothes make the man
In starched up suit holding rigorous pose
Unseen stitches upon lips and eyelids
Firm little plugs stuffed up the nose

What secrets can he have after being embalmed
After an intravenous feeding of formaldehyde
All made up in product like a blushing bride
And an unseen air freshener tucked away to the side

Shit doesn't stink anymore
And neither does decay
In this state of the art facility
Where nature is kept at bay

Everything is wigs makeup and body filler
Making dead slabs of meat look like they are sleeping
Until you touch their hands seeking comfort
And realize that this is just a nightmare fuel feeding

Oh when my heart finally gives out
Give me a cardboard box to call home
Complete with all my parts
No danger of postmortem farts
Slipping silently at last into fiery crematorium

Zappa'd At Beginning & End

Zircon encrusted or milled hard face
I needed some pinchy pointed grabbers
Subtle enough to steal first base
With wisdom beyond their years
And a warranty to assuage my fears
Though I was assured repeatedly
That what had come before would not now be the case

In comes a salesman painted in his whore's makeup
With carpet bag chock full of products on the markup
And a folder full of papers jotted with figures he'd just made up
A sale was all he'd smelled for the last hundred miles
The scent of which had driven him slowly wild

There's a story here I know it
Full of a salesman's greed
A tall grey stalwart steed
And a donated Stetson hat to those in need

We'll find it
And that hat will help
Keeping the sun from our eyes
And harmful rays off the scalp

In ten days you'll get our report
Filled out by committee
Who unfortunately wasn't on the same page
Thus producing a six languaged incomprehensible ditty

Run through WOPR for a translation
It mostly caused nuclear annihilation
Handed to Wall-E
Who squashed it into a cube
Interpreted by HAL
It caused a lock on the pod bay doors

So I gave up on that ditty
And settled down to run the family dental floss farm

Misheard Quantum Mechanics in 1969: FALL

A floral handbag hand grenade
Full of people dreams and wishes
Pull the petaled pin and toss far away
Meaning the handbag hand grenade and not the shiny pin
Ducking down to smell the rare earth of this fresh foxhole deluxe
With ducking down space included for you and one friend
Thus dodging prepelled pollen penetrating pasts
Which are really tiny quarks moving in opposite directions fast

One going left and the other going right
Relative to a parallel view upon the correct plane
Forming one reality where the quark goes right
And another where the fifth Beatle was Ringo
And that other guy was the real drummer in the band
Creating awful sets of consequences for us all
Not the least of which is no Octopus' Garden
For anyone to frolic in the shade

The floral handbag hand grenade isn't done yet
Folding realities backwards along their spine
Until the school nurse gives up her primitive scoliosis test in disgust
Tired of following an endless arc
With no deviations and many too
Until it completes itself in an endless loop
With head firmly in the place of poop

Ending like that wasn't the only choice
And in other parallel places it ended quite differently
Whereas in others still the pen never touched the paper at all
Because mom never met dad due to a butterfly's wing flutter
Causing them to pass as two ships in the night with no air horn greeting
As leaves  crunched curly under fast moving feet
On a fine chill day title carded as
1969: FALL

The Man With The Black Hands

A silver aircraft shuddered to a halt out of its element
Cracked collapsed leaking lifeblood onto concrete
With all the world a stage
There's just no way to keep this discrete
What's needed is a real performer
With skill and charisma to spare
Able to toss a cigarette into the air
Walk away from the explosion without a care

The answer is on the worn paper stock card in my wallet
The lettering is barely legible after all these years
Though I barely need it
The name and number are branded upon me
In places impolite to share with the public
A shiver runs down my spine
Goosebumps raise on up
As fingertips touch the buttons to make the call

Words are spoken
With grunts of assent in response
A sound of an old receiver being slammed down
The call has been made
The bat signal shone into the sky
Signal fires upon mountaintops lit up as one
All eyes turn to the West
For he will come out of the setting sun

A drone reaches everyones ears
Faint at first but growing into a thrum
Felt both in the chest and upon the toes
Hackles raise up in anticipation
Potential conflict approaches
That's how it goes

Propellers cut the air with their characteristic whap
Twin Pratt R-4360's pushing their collective seven thousand horse
Corncobbing away in fifty-six  radial cylinders of glorious internal combustion
Flames of unspent combustion decorating the exhaust stacks
Flanked by the queer sight of one small whiny jet engine on each wing
A powerful hippo of the air
The lone Fairchild C-119K Flying Boxcar pirouetted onto final approach

Tires squawking sharply upon Runway Sixteen Right
In a bold downwind landing making quite a sight
Making the first turnoff and taxiing right in close
Turning slightly to take advantage of the golden hour's light
Flexing military style nose art for the gathered crowd
A Betty Paige cheesecake pinup image
Uncensored riding an oversize wrench sidesaddle in the nude
Precise black hand-prints the only thing covering her breasts
With the biggest red lipped smile upon her face we'd ever seen
She's brought our savior and all of his tools
Bright yellow letters arced underneath proclaimed her the "AOG QUEEN"

Rear cargo door halves kicked open
Ramps hitting the tarmac as the propellers complete their final spin
And a pair of boots brought a man smartly into view
Smoking a cigar in a hipster caricature of cool
Eyes hidden behind Air Force sunglasses
Corners crinkled in anticipation of the big job at hand
One already greasy paw pulled out the cigar revealing a smile
For this was the thing upon which he thrived

"I heard you had a little problem with your Boeing over there...." says he
And with that, announcing that the man with the black hands had arrived

Make Some Noise

A clinking tinkling of shattered strings
Hanging from where it seems Harpo's fingers only recently had been
Was a knotted robin's nest tangle of metal cacophony
Shaped in sculpted waves thusly embodied
With the sine wave of the last noise they had uttered

Noise to you
Isn't noise at all
But music to this guy over here
Whose taste has always been in question

Clapping smacking and cracking
So the similarly shaped rocks came together
Sometimes with a random flash of spark
From directly between Mongo's paws
As he clumsily smashed them together
Over and over
And over again

Mongo's music hurts our ears
We try to tell him in neon lit letters
But so busy is he making it
That all he sees is noise

A joyful noise is what was requested unto the Lord
And so our voices spake forth
Into the still air of the cathedral
Reflecting refracting and dissipating in and out of the whisper corner
With all our might we worshiped with song
Ignoring the aching ears of the Bishop
Who was regretting his boyhood choir training

Ignorance is bliss
And without Mrs. Whippersham's peach switch and sharp tongue
Bishop Schwartz would never know how awful we sounded
It were a joyful noise unto the Lord indeed

An adjustment of throttle and Warpig's chopper dropped into tune
Singing its stocatto potato potato at near peak RPM's
Two by two and sixteen strong with the rest of the MC
In internal combustion orchestra with all thirty-two cylinders aflame
Voices raised to the god of speed
Whose definitions of noise and song were curiously the same

Clothes Monster

The clothes pile at the foot of my bed
Is getting bigger by the day
And seems to be forming a head

Nothing distinct, mind you
But a definite protuberance on one side
With just the hint of a face

I say to myself
"I'll do some laundry later"
Sitting down heavily to watch me some TV

Hoarders is on and it's my favorite show
Going on those virtual expeditions deep into old ladies houses
Finding dead cats and bags of feces
Along with seventy pairs of half finished wool knitted mittens

About halfway through
Right when I like to get up and pee
Something nagged at my subconscious
Poking at my peripheral until I finally looked its way

The clothes pile had definitely moved
And that sort of head-like sticky-outy part
Was starting to look just like Richard Nixon
A President and thief with just a hint of flobbering jowls

Now on high alert
I looked around for a broom
I know I have one somewhere
And it is just like new too
Lord knows it had never been used in this room

I only turned away from that pile for a second
But a noise hove me to
Looking back again just in time to be attacked
By sweat pants appendages soaked with BO through and through

I coughed and I hacked
I spat and I barfed
There was no escape from the monstrous clothes mass
Which tripped up my feet making my submission complete
With the beast wrapping me up in a horrifying dirty clothes hug

Now I'm stuck as stuck can be
With a toothless clothes monster fabricly trying to feed on me

Thankfully I've found a small gap for my eyes
By wriggling my thighs
So I can see that Hoarders is almost back from the commercial break
And I'm a bit excited
As the next segment is about a guy who can't wash his clothes no matter how hard he tries

Origami Aerospace

One eight and one half by eleven white standard sheet
Became a paper airplane
Of the classroom traditional long style
The full eleven inches long
Tapered from nose to tail
Built for speed
With extra folded winglets along the edges
And tweaked with some pretend ailerons at the rear

In the gym at school he could make this design go half the court length easily
But he wanted more

More planes is what was thought at first
So a fleet of the fleet winged specials appeared in short order
Five hundred almost identical eleven inch classroom traditionals
Laid out side by side in rows of fifty
An armada without engines
Lacking only willing arms to power flight

Standing back and taking stock
And finding this to be satisfying at first
But something nagged at at him
Something undefined by folds of boyhood origami
A match was struck and the fleet went up with a whoosh
Leaving him with a blank slate to start over again

A new stack of paper and a new design later
Short and stubby this time
More suited to doing tricks than making distance
Dutifully folded crisply all aligned in rows of fifty
Laid out for a commander's review
Resulting only in more disappointment
Another match later combusted out of view

A madness overtaking the paper plane craftsman
Driving up the bill to the paper company horrendously
As truck after truck made deliveries to the workshop endlessly
Callouses building up over scabs that became scars
From the constant folding fingering and aligning
That became the new normal in his world

The girlfriend she left him
After he ignored their two month anniversary
Which was fine he said to himself
"I needed the room anyways"
As more and more complex folded paper structures filled the property

Mother called the police
Telling them to take him away
For his own good
Before he got lost in all the paper impropriety

But by that time he couldn't be found
Lost within the myriad shapes as he was

The cops called out for NASA
As what they saw looked like a UFO to them

Trucks from the paper mill had worn a valley in the street
A grand canyon with a Colorado road at the bottom
Twisting a snake-like way to the lair
Coming in slow and sagging at the springs
Leaving light and full of diesel life once again

The hairy dirty hermit that was this paper artist
Kept dragging boxes of paper into the maze
Both the method and the madness overtaking his days

Breathing eating drinking in flat white cellulose
This had gone past any stage of rebellious
Looking like something from out of this world
SETI started pointing their antennae his way
Hoping to hear an utterance in alienese
Perhaps from a frogman from Venus
Or a warrior from Mars
But much to their disappointment
All they heard were some sleep apnea snores as he snoozed in the yard

One day an undetermined amount of days later
The paper finally ran out
The mills run dry
The forests all gone for leagues around

All falling according to plans of course
Written in an endless gibbering font
Down long corridors of folded joined paper
All that a maze runner could ever want

Finally dawn's fingers of light
Found a form upon the bridge in a paper captain's chair
Firing up the atomic paper engines
Causing earthquakes in Bolivia
A small volcano in Yugoslavia
And hallucinations of alternate histories in Bavaria

Into a paper tube bellowed a captain most foul
With dirty hair and beard to his belly
Kept clothed only by shreds of matted paper

Answered most improbably by a voice from a paper speaker labeled as 'PAL'
"Countdown to liftoff has begun, Steve"

The captain paused his shredding rants
"PAL, my name is Dave
Call me Captain Dave"

PAL's sensor glowed indiscriminately
"I'm sorry Steve
I can't call you Dave"

Cutting his losses
The captain pressed on
"Fine, call me Steve
Let's get out of here!"

Sensors turned outwards
Paper thrusters impossibly burned like the sun
Pushing paper wings upwards towards the stars
Never to be seen again

Burnt Toast'd

Tiny metal hands point out 5:31
With an inset black number 4 upon silver background
Seen through a cutout in the navy blue watch face
Magnified by a lens ground into a small part of the crystal
Almost like a drop of water strategically placed
To enhance the wearer's viewing of the date

Franny walked over to my table
And I could feel her footsteps through the scratched surface
Transmitted via the firmly bolted to the floor base
Seemingly driven by a giant fist
Which had cracked the manufactured stone surface
Spidering out from each of the four lag bolts

My view took in the stable view looking down
Tracing the filligree of fissures
Until Franny's feet cradled by her red patent probably not leather mules stepped in
Patiently waiting a tenth of a second before clearing her throat
"What can I get you this morning honey?"

I just looked at her and nodded in an upward thrust of chin
Which had her jotting down a note on her pad
And leaving a steaming cup of coffee behind

Just like ten thousand times before

One creamer followed the first
And a dash of sugar later I scalded my lips
All in time to the opening of the morning paper
The sports section of which declared that baseball was dead
Probably due to their need to have a shocking headline

A whiff of burning toast broought my attention off the page
Piercing the air thick with clinks and clanks
Hushed conversations punctuated by an occasional horse laugh
Esconsed within a three walled glass prison
Framed by aluminum extruded supports

Showing nothing but blackness outside
Illuminated only by the steady cycle buzz and pulse of the red OPEN sign

Franny should be coming with my regular in a minute
That was probably my toast burning
Only to be smothered in butter so it wouldn't bother me much

I always took what Franny gave me with a smile
It's been that way since we were both in kindergarten
Though this is about the only excuse I get to be around her anymore

Hypocritical Hype Machine

Hypocritical hype machine is fueled only from the front
Approached from the rear it only exposes fear
Both its own and yours
Just do as it says
Don't pay any attention to the operator back there
Even if it is you

Tap Freise

A doo-dah tap dance
An assault of soft shoe
Right upon the corpse of a horse
Turning it to a stinky sticky glue
Hardening oh so slowly
Making of me a reverse marionette
With the strings going down to the floor
Until they hold me fast
And I move no more
The clickety clack gone from everywhere
Sparks from steel tap toes frozen in the air

Ballroom Feline Show

I'm lured in by a hairy whim
And I stay because of your porn
A collection of which
It goes on for a set of days
We are forty six hours in
And it doesn't show signs of growing thin

Your porn keeps me around
It picks me up and puts me down
With impossible sexual displays
Showing endurance that lasts for days
I'm in love
I'm in hate
Give me that porn
I fear you and your porn are my fate

When the porn ran out
There was the food
Cooked at ten thousand degrees
And full of popping fleas
A delicacy you told me
But not in this country
I replied with a badly concealed heave

You shoot me down
You shoot me down down
With pork chops shot out of a copper cannon
A cooking utensil full of hot oil
That doles out perfection
Showing me how wrong I was
That salad was even half of the answer

Now I"m tied to your table
Oh no
Not with ropes
But something more like an umbilical
From you and your kitchen to my gut
Which rumbles and stretches
Showing off
Strutting the fact that its a food slut

Damn you gut
You betray me once again!

After the food could no longer hold me
When you'd made every dish under the sun
You pulled out a whip and a gun
Prompting me into a still warm lion skin suit
To be the center of your liars Las Vegas Show
Tattooing ferocious teeth upon my face
With which to scare the marks
And arouse your kitten passions
For a dangerous man in a fur skin suit

A man you've looked for all your life
But has eluded you still
Because I'm not him
But you don't know it yet
Though when you will
I'll end up like the last three fellas
Just another layer of loves lost in the depths of your personal landfill

That's right there sexy baby
Keep it up
Oh yea

You're setting me up for a fall you are
Little do I know how soon
And you do it in front of a full house at the greasy spoon
A slight kick to my chair as I'm roaring my loudest
A crack of the whip to my face
A cock and fire of the gun
I was a critter off the leash you cried out
And it was all self defense
You loved me
And now you've left me
Left me to die

All but unfulfilled
Almost but not quite
For I had quite the thrill
Living as your passionate man cat
A sexy slinky pair we were
When you were my domme wife

Handbags

Handbags
Handbags
Everywhere handbags
Hanging in my closet
And off of my face
Handbags made of hands
It's a horror movie disgrace

The cloth ones are so casual
In patterns so swell
I fill them with hobos and sell them to seashells
Full of bits of Sally from the sea shore

It all happened in a rage after one too many tongue twisters

Faux patent leather vinyl affairs are for looking trashy
When only looking trashy will do
With oversized glasses reflecting my eyes back at me
Matching all the stares I get with my matching outfit

A single piece shiny red pvc suit
With a six by six golden fucking buckle baby

Leather purses smell of Coach hell
Where things are a bit expensive for bits of flayed cow
And the stitching and latches are guaranteed for life
Which is a living if you can call it that
Stuffed with my shoplifted 'purchases'
Smuggled back to my mansion in the hills
Hiding from the paparazzi beneath an oversized hat
As I hustle across crosswalks in broad daylight
Unshaven legs propping up a crossdressed Prada delight

Such things make me feel pretty oh so pretty

In such a hurry to get back to my flat
So full of handbag finery
It vomits out of my mouth from overstuffed belly
Swollen with handbag delight
The swag of Rodeo drive in my gullet
Paid for with my good looks hauled by a pair of meathooks
In most gruesome fashion from a runway in Paris
Shown in an oversized handbag palace
Where the waiters are walking wallet advertisements
Touting the champagne pissed by chimps in Paraguay
Collected by the natives upon the jungle floor
Sold by the ounce to discerning sets of jowls that jounce
In our cocktail dresses red as lipstick
Beards upon our man boobs
Hems barely long enough to hide our dicks

Handbags
Handbags
Everywhere handbags
Woven of the hair of sinners and saints
Stretched on the racks of the rude
Ejected from the show for talking too loudly
Chewing their popcorn a bit awful proudly
We grow their hair like Rapunzel's
Till it gets fed into the loom machines
Powered by steam engines in the basement
Leather belts flying everywhere
Threatening the limbs of the children
Whose fingers are the only ones delicate enough
To weave the handbags we hold so dear

And it matches your dress
It really does
Now wax that mustache high into the air with a prayer
And give us a deep tongue kiss

Mwah!

Maid of Winter

Snow, you swirl to me exclusively
We are monogamous you and I it seems
For whenever I step outside you find me
Plastering yourself to my skin with cold wet dreams
Of thickly frozen still mountain lakes
Fed by fast moving ice cold streams

I drift along with you for awhile usually
Until I wake up hours later stuffed into a bank of snow
Fingers and toes blue and unfeeling
With face giving off a damp red cheeked glow
Asking for some warmth to recover
All you ever answer with is a chill wind that whispers "No"

Someday I know you'll be the death of me
But since I cannot stay away from you
Perhaps deep down I'm in love too
With your cold crystal kisses
And velvety white coldly melting against my skin embrace
Tugging at my warm lub lubbing heart against my wishes
Maybe I'll just lay down for a nap covered in your fine pale lace

Just as I suspected I awoke to find my fears realized
I was trapped beneath an icy road
Which flexed in a fine sine wave broad across
As tractor trailers traced a path with their winter load
Pressing down in unmeasured pounds per square inch
Exerted by storied sets of eighteen wheels supporting steel
Along with my hopes that a gaping crack was a sure cinch

Luck did not go my way
And the ice simply continued to sway
Growing further distant from cold hard eyes touched with bitter
Held not by a mistress of snow as I'd suspected
But pressed to the breast of the maid of winter

Inspector X

The flow of parts never stopped
Just like the finished aircraft out the front doors
Just like the creeping progress of the war
There just didn't seem to be an end to any of it

Hank's workbench was full of assorted parts when he arrived in the morning
Taking over from the swing shift inspector
Who had faced the same sort of semi-organized pile when he had arrived
And on and on

Cup of coffee nearby
Hank made sure his magnifying light's lens was clean
Then got to work
Picking up a random bracket
Noting the part number upon it on his list
And giving it the old once over

Looking for cracks in the metal bend areas
Sharp edges anywhere, especially around the mating surface faces
Fingers caressing the surface of the part almost absentmindedly
Unconsciously feeling the primed surface
Fingertips ready to register any irregularity for further looking at

This part was seemingly just another in the long blur of parts that passed through his hands
To be weighed against the known normal for such things
Quickly
As there was a war on
And wars do nothing less than eat planes and pilots like a fat man at a dollar buffet

As he often did
Hank wished he had more to do with the effort directly
But a childhood accident that had left him with half a left foot
Insured that he was a supporting character in this grand play

Always on his mind were the GI's who got to work directly with the planes in combat
The constant activity with regular maintenance and repair
Along with the morale boosting art on the aircraft fuselages
Messages scribbled to the enemy on bombs and drop tanks
The general feeling of giving the finger to the Nazi's almost directly

As Hank was musing on these things
His hands, eyes, and fingers were doing their inspection thing
Touching, peering, making notes
And almost without consciously realizing it
Hank didn't put down his grease pencil when he was done noting the part number and condition

Instead he moved it to the long flat side of the chunk of wing spar he had in front of him
And scrawled in neat draft block letters
"BE ALWAYS STRONG"
Along with his small ink inspection mark next to it

After writing it
He glanced at it for a long moment
A smile tugging at the corners of his mouth
And a rabble rousing version of himself giving a massive finger to the Fuhrer in his head
Before he put it on the transfer cart next to the table
To be taken out to the assembly area
With that bold black blessing upon it
Carrying a strength with it that Hank would never have guessed at

Idle Hands

Scruffy McBubbles performed his regular antics onscreen for me
Vainly attempting to entertain and educate the audience
Both things seemingly out of his cartoon four fingered reach
Consistently for the entire run of 8 seasons so far

Today's debacle had something to do with counting the fish he was catching
Tossing each rubbery muppet brand fish onto the pretend glowing coals of a grill near him
With Scruffy calmly explaining the circle of life and prime numbers
All while the latest flexi-foam trout writhed in mock agony upon the metal grating
Staring with blank puppet eyes at the camera with each pan and zoom of the lens

It is no wonder I bored of watching
The trifecta of faux animal cruelty, mathematics, and recycled Lion King philosophy was nothing to hold my attention
So I sat back in the old wooden chair with a creak and groan of wood
Drumming my fingers upon the old square pine armrests
Looking around my vicinity for something to occupy my hands

Aha!
What did my little eye spy
But a really cool roller thing on a yellow handle
Which I scooped up with nimble small fingers

Pick, pick, pickety pick
Two fingernails plucked at the edge of the black rubber handle upon the device for a few minutes
Producing a soothing noise to accompany Scruffy McBubble's empty hearted teaching moments
Until my thumb found something to squeeze

Oooh!
When I squeezed the handle on the yellow thing
A circular blade popped into view!
Wow, but it looked sharp

Scruffy's voice was completely drowned out now
At an ironically inappropriate moment oddly enough
As his big flapping face mouth was just then cautioning all his young friends watching
To never play with things adults might leave lying around
Because something could happen
Just look at his friend here
Lefty Bumpkin
At which, a one armed muppet wanders onscreen trying to carry a large pizza box
And failing miserably
Flopping a cheese pizza onto the ground
Topping side down

Splat!
Though not even that distracted me from my new toy
Which seemingly of its own volition
Was busily carving straight lines into the old chair armrest

The old wood accepted the blade easily
As dry pine will
Creasing in an addictive way around the razor's edge passing over and through it
Flaking off the clear varnish in small scale-like pieces as it went
An original finish applied sixty years before by a man named Hank Winston
In a factory only sixty miles away
When camp furniture was all the rage for a new middle class
Who needed such furnishings for their newly built cottage vacation homes

After converting much of the smooth wood surface to something more like a knurled finish
And the silky varnish into confetti on the floor
Wandering young fingers found a pair of glasses
Hmm, I wonder what this blade would do to these?

A quick motion later
Accompanied by a very quiet sound much like nails on a chalkboard
A one half inch curly bit of plastic fluttered to the carpet floor
To lay there with the other leavings of my idle time activity
And a grand deep scratch now decorated the exact center area of the right lens of the glasses

I felt a bit guilty at that point
So I hid the glasses in a drawer I found within reach to my left

Now satisfied that I had hid the evidence
I blankly watched Scruffy McBubbles berate his one armed companion for being one armed
Telling old Lefty Bumpkin muppet puppet that after all
It had been his fault for playing with his grandfather's dynamite in the barn
Which was only to be used for stumps

At that I laughed with a tiny snort from my young nose
Since I was just sharp enough to realize that the dynamite Lefty had played with
Had done what it was supposed to
Sort of
Since instead of removing a stump
It had made one!

My right hand still gripped the yellow handle with the black rubber grip tightly

My left hand came up to fiddle with things as well
But coming into contact with the round disk razor blade head
Cutting deeply into my palm
With an ease that put the lines I'd made in the soft pine wood earlier to shame

For a shocked instant
My eyes looked and registered nothing but cut meat
Blood hadn't had a chance to flow yet
And that moment held itself for an eternity in my mind
A Polaroid photo of a parted skin sea
Where the water walls were red and glistening
Like fresh steak ready for a barbecue

Then I breathed again
And the picture started moving
Blood filled the short trough in my hand
Overflowing out and across
Then cascading onto the cream colored carpeting in a miniature waterfall

The yellow handled roller razor cutter with the black rubber grips got tossed off into the corner by the television
Where Scruffy had switched to baiting some poor homeless rabbits into a debate on unemployment
And I found my sneakered feet moving automatically
Carrying me into the kitchen at the other end of the house
Tears leaving streaks upon my cheeks
Blood leaving a half-footprint imprint trail back the way I'd come

I'll blame it on grandma
I silently decided

She shouldn't have left that thing laying around

New Years Baby

He's a New Years baby

Climbing out just in time

To suckle moms fresh breast

And celebrate with bubbly wine

After drinking his fill he defied some physics

Jumping and spinning like CGI come to life

Holding the doctor hostage

Along with the rest of the staff

New Years Baby is the newest 1920's gangster

Rocking a tommy gun and pocket watch

In pin striped suit and jaunty hat

Talking that Cagney gangster talk

Just like he heard on late night TV

A terror on the Chicago streets

New Years Baby is certainly something to see

Taking out the competition and smuggling booze

Just wait until he hits puberty