i am number nine
i have been orphaned
through a hole in
the world’s pocket
i am a fatality
of the revolution
a straight roller
gone awry
i am a yellow brain
on a black pedestal
i am the breakfast
choice of dead men
i am the goddess
of click click click
No sooner had the words leapt
from my mouth than they just died.
They fell and crashed like eggs on smoke.
Perhaps it’s good I lied.
My tongue was roped, then given hope,
then surely lashed and tied.
I saw a verb against the curb
bleed vowels from its side.
My head’s become a cave
for dying sentences, it seems.
They leak out nightly, gross, unsightly,
prodded on by dreams.
And as the wellspring gives them life
from somewhere deep inside,
just rest assured that every word’s
an oral suicide.
The nodding schedule
of the world unencumbered
exacted a diagram
of freeze-free trees
and glowing hair.
Of wastrel gasses
and canned contamination
not a peep was heard,
fences and walls withstained.
Reality had a hardball factor.
The zen pool soon imploded.
Factual orbits identified
and rerouted groundswells.
Larva covered lava.
And the fish ran away
with baboons.
A crowd appears, to peer at piers,
and beseeches a beech at the beach,
wheeling at the wail of whales.
Going, gone, where escargot.
Boats bode. Tides abide.
Sand is the sentinel, snail, the trail.
Ocean flora, coral peace. It’s all they ask.
Battered rook and powdered knight,
salted bishop, set to fight.
King and queen are in the castle.
Leave the prawnlike pawns to hassle.
In this world of sixty-four,
refined moves define each score.
Every route and battle path
boils down to essential math.
Behold now the L-shaped knight.
Salted bishop stays on white.
Pawns move two then hesitate.
King spends life avoiding mate.
While the bold and mighty queen
captures all and in between.
King is like a nervous wreck
waiting to pick up the check.
