Man who looks like Peter Pettigrew (or has eaten him)

One bus breaks down. When the next one comes,
we all pile aboard: shoulder-to-shoulder, feet-to-heels,
back-to-chest. More body heat than we can afford.
So the routine goes on. It loads, unloads; loads, unloads.
Miracle this fucker doesn’t tip as it steers through the roads.
Suffice it to say it’s filled to the brim. Then, at this stop,
a solitary man waddles through and I look at him. I want to scream:
“Students, weary and bleary, have to suffer through a long ride
and ask only for a seat so they can rest their godforsaken
feet. You, sir, you—are taking up two.”
Time passes. I suppress my rage; go back to my book,
turn the page. A minute later, laughter in his voice,
he squeaks out, “This bus is packed!”
Yes, packed. Packed like the Big Mac I can almost hear you
digesting, louder than the sound of your fat-filled heart protesting.
Packed. A group of sardines crammed into a tin
till a corpulent salmon tries to slither in. Packed.
You’ve got the sausage-like fingers of both hands curled around
a cup from Mickey D’s. Your shorts expose your chubby, chunky knees.
You flow over one seat and onto the next, and the poor girl
on your other side looks frazzled and vexed—and who can blame her?
So yes, the bus is packed, sir, but empty enough for your fat ass
to sit. Let’s just not ignore the fact, sir, that you
are an obnoxious piece of shit.

Royal Dark

Under her dress of flowers she was naked,
aroma marked by the color red.
Her eyes were the dark side of an eclipse
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

Her brows were inquiring,
the daylight on her skin inspiring.
Her excitement was tiring
and I was full of dread.

Her voice was a lone hound calling
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

I was younger than her most days.
She was the lithe one but never the blithe one
and I’d grow weary of her ways.
I admired, she aspired,
and I’d stick close enough to meet her gaze
and wait for stray hands to graze.

Her curves were like a Bouguereau portrait
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

And her heart wasn’t fair,
and I needed her like air,
but will settle for someone kind
in her stead.

sen time n tal

earthquakes till the daylight ends
firestorms when it comes again

and a little blackbird in the north

tumbling tundra snowy white
skies like death as comes the night

and a little blackbird coming forth

silhouettes and shrouds of black
give way to light as spring comes back

and

one and two go back and forth
but third is never
and ever is fourth

and i love you dear but it troubles me so
to see you let that blackbird go

finals? what finals?

I like girls who are
hot for Neruda
and guys with their
hearts on their sleeves,
and people with
angular glasses
whose stories nobody
believes.

    Coffee and awkward
flirtation.
    Tea and a sense of
starvation.
    Sensory deprivation
    for the sake of
infatuation.

That’s what I need,
more than
another book I’ll only
pretend to read.
I’ve got too many
of those for comfort
and they don’t satiate
my greed.

Pilish

Now
I have a hunch regarding my
gloomy knack for
dying suddenly.
Evermore afflicted,
humanity’s got
my sad position down.
Anyone so doomed with our
bad oblivion has to realize:
humankind halts.

—

From Wikipedia: Pilish is a style of writing in which the lengths of consecutive words match the digits of the number π. This one contains thirty-two digits, ending at the first instance of zero.

One for Sorrow

I’m looking to find a second magpie
and you’ve just left me in want of
birds.

Think maybe someday I’ll
make better choices
in the flocks I form,
but god, right now
I don’t think I need any
nesting partners or
other things with
wings,
and I’m sick as shit
of your flying that’s more like
free-falling.
I plunge when I
want to these days—
or try to.

And I like to think I’m not
a bad omen,
just something kind of
unsustainable
and at least halfway
unattainable.

Irony & Wine

“Aroma of tobacco,” it
says.
Do I feel smoky?
Am I rising
up
through the atmosphere?
Tobacco is my childhood,
secondhand smoke in the
car as I ride shotgun.
Now I think of deviants
shotgunning their
hot
pot smoke.
It’s a flavorless sight.
I want the days back
where everything had
more significance
than flushed cheeks
and slurred syllables
and cold
extremities.

I do not rise.
I choke the aged
and the meek
and every babe
in every hothouse
round the globe.
And no, Sylvia, I
am not acetylene.
Just
a virgin.

Just
pure.

Just.

I endeavor to make
molehills out of mountains,
geysers into drinking
fountains.
I’ll give you a heater
if you give me hell,
turn your sea of troubles
to a wishing
well.
Your boulders will be
skipping stones,
graveyards only
chicken bones.

But this molecular
redefinition
is just to
prevent your
acquisition
of the proper
amount
of
ammunition.

Mourning Colors

Your husband died on Friday
and the Facebook you never go on
(except to pester us about family gatherings
and fawn over cute pictures
and forget the H in my name)
still reads, as always,
“Relationship Status: Married”.

In your profile picture you stand beside him
and he is still tall as towers, head full of hair,
kind smile on his face.
He has always been this to me,
more a face in a photograph
than all the carbon making up his
withering features.

I talked to you in the park this summer
while the others cooed at my little nephew,
and your voice was full of tears as you said
just how strange it was for a man like him,
so hairy, to go completely bald.
I remember the flavor in my sandwich
and baked beans and sauce-coated chicken
all seeping away. And I said that I was sorry
and that it was awful.

But now that you’re a widow
the words don’t seem like much.

Swansong

She is a tempest of smiling eyes and long-suffering exasperation. When she says ‘ey with that Cheshire smirk I think of how our lives seem to happen in the wrong order.

We are twelve years old, but yesterday we were sixteen. Maybe we’ve only just met. She wears her sleeves long to cover up sad thoughts that I will know nothing of for years. Secrets gleaned from other mouths. We drink coffee and I wonder: Will I ever know her?

Now we are eighteen and time moves like oil through water. The answer is a resounding no.

At thirteen I question how God could exist for all of time if even the universe has a beginning, and how this girl could already be a part of my life for always when it’s only been a year. She takes it over as a flood takes the streets, remorseless. My mind can swim but on the outside I struggle.

When we are seventeen I find it less important to avoid drowning.

Twenty years old, I think of how quickly one forgets how to be half of a whole. And so. Well. I’m not sure I’m anywhere closer to the truth.