Room M14

Like rats, they gather in bunches:
One black Two blue Three green Four
I heard his short story sputter on my nails
from his volcanic mouth; his words erupted
with memories flowing up my arms to my brain,
sweltering and spicy agave jogging through
my veins as the nurses handled their
witchcraft—the apothecary’s right hand.
They doused his cauldron body:
Morphine Delotid Vicoden
and garnished their concoction with saline.
Pantera Park: It was a Tuesday afternoon.
Three blind kids raced laps in wheel chairs.
And that annoying old woman that
screamed at her little girl playing softball:
Eight swing Nine swing Ten swing
They lost the game that evening,
the whole professional crew with their
professional badges, degrees, and experience;
they wiped off their loss like a tally mark
on the whiteboard. Squeaky marker, it only
squealed of Wins and whispered about the Mess-ups.
Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen
Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen
Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one
Twenty-one
Twenty-one

---

Written on April 23, 2009

"The box is a place."

**brainstorming**

(about the green-leafed index cards)

that face i choose to wear

Faces
painted in aged acrylic oil
(refusing to dry) are never
worn, with pretense nor
explicit insecurity
they

are fully dressed
with organic yarn
pathogenic and dead Swiss
surges of Kool-Aid lips&cheeks
spouting

They
wear masks down the runway
chic, pomp, flirtatiously
leading on the victim
coaxing plans and
forecasts of success

fortune cookie promises
stuffed with Benjamin Franklin
oozing.

oh, so good.

Since when did the cat
bear knees weak
for the dog?

Or when did the snake
suggestively hiss
for the mouse?

Child's Play

Once a boy, always a boy.

A lapdog inspired to obey
the thrust of his barbed wire leash
stretching; swooned by dreams
etched in sanguine ink and smeared charcoal—
crumbly, like shrapnel on canvas.
It was the work of Heroes, said the pamphlets
to the infant Legacy, coaxing the boys with
chocolate-covered honor and candycane pride.
They snatched the bait like gluttons—a second Halloween.
(Once a boy, always a boy.)

A clever selection of children’s songs
are imbibed and learned by them:
the orchestrated symphony of rifles
humming, bombs plucking a
staccato verse for flavor.
Twice wounded, thrice glittered by
crafty glue guns blasting supernovas on
stenciled paper bodies left to dry in the sun,
dripping a mosaic of white, maroon, and green.

A siren then shrieks a note—Recess—
when boys sprint round in the mud; wind-up dolls
in frisky unorthodox tango,
unsure of which direction their feet are
forced to step. They sing their corrupt alphabet
for the younger kids to hear:
A for America!
B for Be a hero!
C for Courage!
and continue until the hype elapses and the bullets run out,
and the music evaporates with their fantasies;
a subtle indication of the truth slipping,
like a boy skins his knee on the pavement.