Five hundred feet from Terrapin Point the Birdman stands with his bicycle.  His face as flat as the quarters he begs for, glares at foreign tourists.  Two boisterous parrots, Larry and Mabel.  They smell like tourists and change, and are footcuffed to three brass chains connected to his backpack.  A Muslim family approaches.  They want a picture.  Birdman places the birds on the hands of the smallest boy, and his mother takes a picture.  Mabel squirms.  Larry squawks.  Click.  A reward for their posturing, Birdman places birdseed on his tongue, and the parrots peck away, ignoring his birdbreathe for an evening snack.  The tourists clap and laugh at Birdman and toss him their spare change.  Birdman stands.  Waits.  For another family to pose with his birds.

Mabel licks her wings
and Larry says, "Picture pic."
Birdman stands alone.

Have you ever seen a male

narwhal

swimming through the ocean

with a ten foot

(foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot)

tusk?



Next time you moan and ***** about

your nose
being too big;

Remember them.


They can't even smell.

If a single apple were to tell a story
of my mother's kitchen,
it would go something like this:

Recently removed
from my mother's stem,
moved inside from out,
cord cut, window shut,
I sit on the stove
and wait.

I am a single apple
too green for a sauce,
too small for a pie.
I sit alone wondering
why I was chosen.

Yes, I am a philosopher, Applestotle,
sitting next to a pool of grease,
grease from the roast pork,
and I wonder,
why was I chosen?

In walks a woman.
Oh yes, a woman in the kitchen,
doing dishes.
I'm not a sexist.
It's just a coincidence.

Her stoic lips
go in for the ****
and the last thing I remember,
is her carbon breath,
as I tasted the bony structure of her teeth.

Perhaps it's the way his colostomy bag hangs
off his waist like John Wayne's pistol in Rio Bravo,
or the trail of **** left when it ripped last Monday
from his chair to the refrigerator.
He must have noticed,
he turned right and filled the sink with feces
and called over the nurse.
She pioneered along the trail,
and fit him with a new bag.
More **** oozed
through the tube
filling a fresh bag.

I sat there and licked
my nasal drip into my lips,
hoping the sparkle of my snotty glossy shine
would catch your eye,
like your favorite **** rag
in a line up of church bulletins.

The putrid lavender like scent
swimming through the air like flying fish,
allows me to dream
quicker than any drug.

I dream of the day where we both lay naked
with our old wrinkled skin connected like praying hands
where your feces and ***** flow freely to fill in epidermic gaps.

Seven sit around a fire,
burnt marshmallows on two foot sticks
stuck between grahams,
talk *** and film.

Had her naked like Kate Winslet,
not Titanic Kate,
but Little Children Kate.
**** on the washing machine
behind Jennifer Connelly's back.

But the part about Madame Bovary,
who really needs feminist literature in a feminist film?
Okay, maybe it's classic romantic...

I felt lost like a pebble
sinking in the ocean
five miles deep
in the Puerto Rican trench.
I hadn't seen either movie
nor was I well versed
in feminism or romance.

My mind drifted to my first time.
Started with a french kiss
from a Latina girl,
at a house on Cleveland Ave,
I wish I could remember more.

The moon doesn't seem so far away
when I lay in midnight grass with you.
I want to reach up, flick it,
and play pinball in the stars,
or better yet put it in my pocket
along with Mars and gift them to you -
intergalactic stress *****.
From above we probably look
like a capital M cut right down the center
in two symmetrical halves.
I wished upon a star
that you would grab my hand
like I know you would
if we took off into space.
If I could take you anywhere
I would take you to Mercury
where we could reach out
and touch sunspots.

But I can't
and you're suspicious of me
because you don't even know me.
Maybe, though, one day
you will wrap your fingers
around my palm
and squeeze ever so lightly
like you would hold a mouse
and ask me my favorite song.

next to prime rib
is a miniature fir
or bush
lumberjacked at
the trunk
you press like a bobblehead
plugging nostrils with green
steam and shake and
nobody wants to spitspoil red meat
and everyone agrees
so you collect veggie trees
arrange them in a forest
and reenact little red riding hood
with a cherry tomato
you bite -

you ******* werewolf
vampire where were you
when the fetus
crowned like a tulip pistil
harnesses by an umbilical noose
and the nurse paused and said
she's dead
and cried
and she cried too
while I waited with her father
her mother
and mine
and three friends
and nine months of this
for that
you ******* ******

not even john hancock
can sign a birth certificate
and a death certificate
in a nightmare
let alone in one night