No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
The gift shop near the room where the family of a dead son gathers offers crosses, prayer books, icons, beads and jar upon jar of dried herbs and flowers gathered by the monks from slopes that surround, petals of the past as brittle as the remnants of faith forged in ancient hillsides.
Grandad read me manga, tales rendered in Chinese ideograms that made no sense, on the settee exploring a black-white world, antics of a time-travelling genie-bot.
I wake at 3:00 a.m. and fry two eggs until they burn. My husband sleeps upstairs. He used to photograph my eyelids, knuckles, fine bones of my pelvis.
If I were 18, I'd race across black ice parking lots with a crowd of strangers and a stranger holding my hand. We'd fall away into loud forgotten hours...
Twenty years married Our lovely Mrs Smith Had a million and one hobbies To please Uncle Smith. From six in the morning Till the late afternoon She spent away baking, Cooking, and cleaning spoons...
Midas Itch
Add your own voice to the chorus The heckling harmony Shrieking oxygen-deprived squall Pockets full of liquid smoke Drenched denim from crotch to knee A little capsaicin in the air, on your fingertips Brings the burn with each careless touch The Midas itch to join in, to be drowned out...