Fav'rite childhood memory #6

There were many men in my head,
wounded, compromised,
propelled by motors and unspeakably dead.

I clipped plans to minds,
guns to hands and set
enemies careening into crimes.

My fav'rite army man leapt
in a single bound
onto a woman as a building wept.

Her father who they had found
dead "for some time" recently
bled into his grave, sniffed out by hounds.

No longer able to lie, he
rose from the dead and into a new place
fled, free from God's, my, decree.

Fav'rite childhood memory #5

Dad's withdrawn in more ways than one,
fallen sun darkened by women.
Tonight, processed meat confuses the tongue.

I climb a tree to hide from the land
because I understand an empty gut. There is no lamb --
I can taste the salt on my awful hand.

At the station Dad will scam
pennies from the tower, and we turn
to what we chew most: bad teeth, spam.

Fav'rite Childhood Memory #4

I burn my bridges like I bury my skin --
halfway to the face. In this world,
sooner or later, breathing is a sin.

I sit on the floor,
young, cold and dripping devils.
When you die, you go to a hell of a war.

I like to count the number of evils
I think and soon will become:
when I was born, it'd been sealed.

Fav'rite Childhood Memory # 3

The earth was a silver bullet.
Not a cheap moon
but a silver bullet.
I been using it since noon
and can't keep track of time,
though I want to sometime soon.

Fav’rite Childhood Memory #2

Still awake, the sun was dead.
The cheap moon in the parlor
was a silver coin. I heard

Dad from bed, his nighttime hollers.
I put my head on a pillow
I bought for Mom but it outlived her.

The dog died at four,
and a willow tree died as well.
Water boiled in the hollow

branches and after the willow fell,
the others, too, fell. The trees
bowed in rows, the branches knelt

in rows between. Lonely places—
the metal shed behind the house,
dad’s tools and shitty faces,

and the picture frames. What an ass
in his bed, nothing but bad
in his head, just a ton of shit and puss.

That night, all young and mad,
I lay naked on the grass
until the sun, alive again, was red.

Fav’rite Childhood Memory #1

Awake and the sun smelled like bed.
It looked red. There were lint specks,
planets orbiting a thread

of choice: to dress,
or not to. But I want to stay there
in my head in bed and undress

further to cuddle the dear
colors of heroes, escape
the shouting Dad’s worn to outwear.

Some crumbling fabric: his toupee,
cookie crumbs bouncing on the sheets,
wind splitting shards of glass. Okay:

So, I suck them up and curl to speak
of the beer cans on the lawn,
the piles of nickels, all mine to keep!

I might’ve found the pawn
from the set Dad threw when drunk
through my window into a cracking dawn.