A Change of Heart

Good Friday at my sister's condo in River Peak.
Salty fish brought out the worst in us.
Under the table, you removed your hand
to curl two Xanax between your lips.

The children inverted themselves in the den
and the dull pains in my arm began.
I considered our basement of childhood ghosts
who pinned my forehead as I slept.

Eons ago, I failed St. Francis elementary
but climbed the restricted staircase
to the green yard, cool with the breeze of your face.
Now, before the resurrection, I've drooled.

Have I made the right decisions? A hair fell
from my head to your halibut and blurred.
I clutched my chest and sank, singing
for "aspirin, four aspirin, please..."

You placed the doctor-recommended Bayer inside me.
I crushed it to receive the vascular release,
a new brand of ghostly fingers. Today, I learned
effective relief, damage reduction, to expect wonders.

HIP

Spring fools the rushes
in slow deliberate thrusts
of bird through stone:

a single crane and
a thousand paper pebbles
casting off wearisome battles
for the snow.

While marbled tigers net
bull profits and bare markets,
NASDAQ's photosynthetic finish
and blood-green veneer slides

into the roots and garlands
of an old woman's rosary
hiked thin up her thigh,
exhausting arthritic teeth.

Molars bend in the wind,
incisors break, pollinating
the subtle real estate of age
and need, bone-brittle reeds of poverty.

In The Room

British colonists cauterize the asphalt
lashes of the hands we've held,
the fingernail irises crossing
hairy retinas in the sand:

a humid sign-language that reads you,
some semiautomatic carpal-tunnel
diem, wiggling fingers pointed
backwards beyond the blind triggers
and sloshing at the surf of our genitals' fist.

Inroads and ice break ships and trucks
across palms and cheeks, a steamy sweat
hacking tangles of eczema fronds,
follicles grown from our jointed knuckle
speaking a deader Latin:

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
Ujiji and Mary Tyler Moore come on
the face of the same mountain with one knife
tied behind the other's back,
locked fingers ending slavery

and the triangle trade between you, me,
and the elephants

*Summer, Winter: Squash, Machine*

The chugging motion
of the seasons
forms an egg, cracks inside
jokes
outwitting us all.

"One way to beat
this system is to join
the army!"
he railed, fingers
snapping. And that's how

we clipped the topic, dropping scissor
explosives, reviewing
the internal designs of the land.

Blame us and we will fill
the cracks with cement.
Lips close
heavy with burden: the concept

of time, enormous
apples, odd thoughts,
grunts
with blacked-out faces
plucking the dead
skin of summer
squash upon our neon highway.

Protected identities
blossom in salt and ice.
Wordless whispers
follow the borders
of four territories
with unique code names:

Winter, Spring, Fall and Summer.
Only not exactly in that order.

The process does not change --
it simply repeats.
Again. And again. And again.

Eventually we may run out
of raw sources, cell
numbers, complex
thoughts, small potatoes.
Eventually
we might just leave it
to the living
room around us,
'cause there's always time,
time to leave and let

the automatic system
of 100% natural bodies
quell the verbal riot, eternal
complaint of the innate
ability to do ourselves in
right,
right in the nick of time.