At It Again (From ‘Like The Lost Poems Of Shel Silverstein’)

my thumbnail’s smashed so it’ll match my heart
in the underhanded sort of way I know so well
it’s a lost tie
a lone glove
a millionaire’s toupee blown down Easy Lane
tiny pink ribbons wave in the whisper trees
every time somebody’s buried
any gravedigger in town will tell you as much
any lopsided clothes-matcher will know

in the wept sundries of a never-taken stance stem inconstant wisteria’s patchy growth

riptide for you
a dowser’s curse for some

listing comes to all etceteras in the end
or count past the brushed palms into breakneck slowness
if pull comes to push
in the revolving door of your moments

order rarer things from the ordinary menus of others
keep a tab on plagues of locusts
for all of your mind’s islands are being swarmed
again
and the time of pummeling is near

my pushpin heart is swelled with a Diet-Rite ache
a ballooning empty mush
that dampens and hampers my mossy livelihood
until 7 days of rest a week is all that’s left

please
if war be without you
please
copy over-and-out copy
stop
please
do not ladle out my snail-shell soup
just yet
stop

there were nocent breath mints in your pocket
nightly
where armless men threaded needles with their toes

in the boiling rattlesnake water
in the have-it-all silence
in the oranges gone to Julius
somehow
this faded sapphire mood of mine
gone flat with exposure
has drooped its mildewed fronds
over the soppy
copy-edited
lint-sprinkled pavement
of all my first times
once again

all penchant for heliotrope has gone Sour-Skittles south for the duration of the season

my reek is chemicals in a vapid waft of hope
my name’s just a stenciled breath
my hours dip and bend
my toes creak and groan

do not heed my high-dive stalling
do not toss sunflower seeds to mice

we are humans
here
vulnerable and frail creatures filled with arrogance
lost stagnant in our cotton-candy muck
do not pay us much mind

game over