enough

's enough I
will string you up

make you choke and dangle

daughter you have taken
my money and my marrow

what causes you to believe
in an unlikely tomorrow?

on the intricacies of memory

you're wrong but then again
perhaps not. my memory

languishes in a polyglot cell.

And love
lingers, a shy teenager shuffling
scuffed shoes on a coarse welcome mat.

First you're in then
you're out. Your grin

enchants me with its optimistic doubt.

research into nothing

she cannot
stop. birdsongs feeding
into bloody eardrums

flattened palms
pressed tight; sticky gauze
wrapped not at all

right. time vanishes,
water balloons pop
inside deep velvet pockets.

good stuff, poet

and you too, poet.
thank you for posting
in your eye, poet
in your park, poet

your handkerchief is slimed
with pus and snot but

what is that crack in your skin?
it lets the sun in; it burns you
into cigarette holes.

disease rules
as in times of yore
when a sneeze
spelled doom and a kind word
meant a truce and nothing more.

end me to the dance of love

rough words spill
into a cardboard suitcase.
round and round the park
I go—foraging for

your scent. May is here
in name alone. Life closes
firm upon ghost lore.

"a shame," I can almost hear
you say; your liquid voice
so far, so far away.