--BUT SOMETIMES THERE’S MAGIC

 

Never Talk To Strangers

I’m like a bus depot well past midnight,

as desolate and lonely as that,
shadows splayed on cracked floor tiles,
ceiling fan stubbornly whirring,
fat man slumped on a stool, nodded off,
witchy woman wearing a viscose ratty bathrobe
arguing with a poster on the wall
that features a beautiful newborn.
I’m nine years old and already
I miss my youth, my parents,
though they’re both still alive.
I wonder what I’m going to become,
what I might have been,
but there’s no time for folly.
The bus bulls up, horn blowing
like a rhino with allergies
as I board, knobby knees shaking.
The driver asks where my bags are.
I don’t tell him I’m wearing them.
Instead I paint a sky blue smile,
already such a good showman,
and take the farthest seat in the back.

 

Lilliputian

I’ve become a reader

Gulliver’s Travels
Is my favorite
Those tiny people
With their own
Exotic island
It’s seems miraculous
Like hunks of gold
Scattered over an
Easter egg lawn
If they tied me down
I would not struggle
I’d simply ask
For their secret
How they make
Themselves so small
How it’s even possible
To conquer giants
With string and wood
Escape capture
Beat the big men
At their own game

 

The Screw

I am busy screwing and

Unscrewing the plastic cap
Of my Cola bottle
Parched and frightened
I tell myself what I saw
Wasn’t real, didn’t happen,
Parents do that to their children
But when Sis emerges
Her face blotchy
Ropes of sweaty hair
Swinging like wet branches
Out of breath
Eyes averted
I avert mine as well
Find a spider
In the ceiling corner
Spinning a web fastidiously
Plotting to ensnare victims
Who’ve done nothing
Wrong but be
In the wrong place
At the wrong time