Oh

Oh, dear Satan, your delicious
merchandise finds me
tender.

I am a raw sunflower gasping for
clean air, for rare light
to open my thin arms
and feed my beginning.

I could be a generous gift,
a miracle fragrance in the breeze
of a season,
but I was stomped deep
in the Earth, fed on by worms
before I knew how to dream.

When dreams slipped in to my feeble
stem, they were
manipulated, filling my roots with
poison.
Now, I sleep with deadly seeds
growing in my brain, too weak to survive
cold seasons,
surrendering to dark demons, until
spring brings back
the warm light of hope.

The Desert

Weeds are sleeping. High Noon. The Desert opens its dry mouth.
Legs wobble over loose gravel, barely stirring the lethargic,
thirsty Earth.

The arid land has an asphalt tongue. I sit on it.
I melt to it.
A plastic shadow. Dried up. Destroyed

by the sun. Liquidated
by a watching light.

Red bugs have armor. Guardian’s of flight. Protection
from the land.
Turtles carry
shields,
and teeth. I evaporate.

An old actor rocks on a blue porch. He doesn’t
know the desert like I do. Never has sunk in its smoldering
August sand or been whipped by flaming winds.
He rocks.
Protected by shadows that do not melt, shadows
that create the desert.
He rocks.
Whiskey in hand.
He rocks.

I evaporate. Into the weeds.
To sleep.

Lampshade

The lampshade walked in the house
covered with dirt and cobwebs.
It had spent a few years in purgatory,
with tools, hoses, and rusty chains. It
infiltrated
my nostrils with the hardy
scent of automotive oil.

It walked out the day that he did. Hand-in-hand,
they stepped on clouds, right over my head they
stomped! The heavy weather came
pouring down on
my head. Lightning struck
me so hard that I couldn’t
move or breathe for…two years at least!

I just stood. Struck into that moment.

Recently, I saw him walking back. He
noticed that I stood still; staring in his direction.
He took my hand and guided me out from
beneath the clouds and he sat me down on the couch.

That was when the lampshade walked in. Covered
in the filth that I stared at for so long.
I pulled out the vacuum and sucked the
grit out of the shade, polished it and handed it to him.

I watched him set up the base of the lamp and helped
him search for a brand new lightbulb. One had been
sitting around for just this occasion.