Creatures

Tall, slimy, with the bodies of eels
and beady eyes
sunken into their faces
and lips so pursed
only steel claws could pull them apart

They creep into books,
poems, magazines
and sprawl across billboards
and television screens

Whenever I see them,
I wilt a little
and I get even tinier
because I know
I’ll never see myself
in their place

The Mother’s Warmth

As her baby bird splatters,
naked body contorted
into a crumpled discard
on the sidewalk,

The mother continues building her nest,
weaving twigs and nurturing
her valid children
underneath her directed warmth

Less Than a Fire Breather

You desired the soul of a dragon
stashing gold underneath your talons
feeling the cool metal of riches
and scourching your tongue to feed your defenses

Now you must viscerally
gather the pocket change you have
to keep your blood flowing
and leave the cloak of desires
at someone else’s doorstep

Your words

your words are
a pinned moth
in my head

on display for
me to look
back on them

language that was
once alive and
pumping but now

is sitting in
the boundaries of
a wooden frame

Winter Paws

Round Coyote paws
in the snow, meandering
away from Rabbit

What if they were there
in chorus, stepping toget-
her, chasing, falling

But that is an If.
here, Rabbit will never meet
hungry Coyote

No Jackknife

take a straw in your hand

and shove it in my eye

twist it around, around

perhaps counterclockwise

or without direction

carving a hole into

my eye, my sloppy eye

no jackknife, just a straw

how creative you are

your plastic urethra

digging itself into

my iris, my center