My plants need fire
The directions on the label say: please burn daily
I pick them up
And to the stock clerk I go
With a toothless smile she comes down from her step ladder like an old graduate
she looks me dead in my moon drunk eyes, hands me a gas canister overflowing
And orders me to pour gas on my plants every night
My plants are so pathetic and ugly and beautiful and fragile
They look like mangled screaming winter deer
But I need to burn them
That’s what the directions say
“Hey, take a look at this,” the fat bearded Irish American said to the fat bearded Italian American, holding Dunkin’ Donuts coffees over our helmets.
“You see the way they fight?”
“Little fuckin’ animals. Look at ’em fuckin’ go.
And thus, I fuckin’ went.
I know he’s dead
But you deserve a lover
isn’t it lonely when you wipe the counter and the sunlight
dances with the dust motes
made it this far
everything worked out once
so what makes you think
it falls apart now
tougher than this
faced more before
never tripped yet
don’t lose balance now
Where the tunnels are a midnight park
and the gray trains scream like haunted witches
Hunker down in a bittersweet one-eyed dragon bliss
And drool dead-eyed along tracks of electrified veins
Crawl into holes un-holed
Take a nice spin around that cold metal pole
Feel your soul un-souled and sold
Where Gil scot heron once silently screamed alone
But god damn, did that man have a soul!
Did his voice not echo truths along peoples roads?
Did his poetry not shout the truth to people without a comfortable home?
Do his words not exceed his physical state in the undying ebb and flow of an ocean of pure soul?
