1000 Piece Puzzle1000 puzzle pieces All cool grey #4 You’d rather play dominoes Or even a classic video game But they offer you only The grey puzzle To keep your devil hands busy To remove you from yourself A jumpsuit slumped While its skeleton takes a shower How many other inmates Pinned the blooms of their eyes on your nakedness Using a cactus’ spine Bury yourself in scraps of your own white meat Your hands are pork rinds Curled around the soap Your mother was no Mrs. Beasley, she was a Half-baked nova, her hugs from a toy oven But god you miss her! When they offered you the Fisher-Price funeral, the Barbie doll prayers You mounted your Tonka tractor & mowed them down Or So It SeemedI asked you To teach me how to sing & You showed up on my doorstep Through the peephole I watched your frisky wolf-eyes Nose, also canine, could smell The subterfuge of stiff cream I was whipping Under a sugar-blistered skin [Or so it seemed] I wanted you to like me Like something from childhood A bully who became a best friend, a plush ally When I let you in You were a tuning fork on the skull And all my walls Fanned out in colorful wavelengths ’Til you said You’ll need Strong lips to sing You told me the back of my neck Should bear the thrust of vowels Like a levee [Or stem tides] I could only wonder Were you real enough to know What lips and levees were? Your pupil-- his delta, his core -- Concerned you A tiny dot Reflected in your anatomical lens Pixellated nerves Responding to pitch I couldn’t wait to wear through you [Or these modes] Of outdated speech The chatter of your teeth Sent slow beats weeping from my inseam PRAISE for the RATSPRAISE the rats who’ve been gnawing at my personal wires for the past 5 years Saying Awake! Don’t miss the Revolution! You have a sign to make. Candles to hold. Glitter to shake. I used to ask the rats, Please leave why don’t you? Instead they had babies & built whole cities of lint along my spine Then licked their fur against The grain of all my impulses My expulse made of salt water Left the portals of my soul Till my hands were holding submarines & Drowned captains The rats stayed & kept My candles lit, my signs boosted But I’m starting to feel like a trap, A knee on the neck of the future, A foot with carbon soles, The cheese that molded & died To cure the dying race No matter how bad it stunk Vin Whitman is a former funeral director and radio host living in Jasper, Indiana. His chapbook 'True Stories of the Odd Equinox' is available from Alien Buddha Press. His poems have appeared in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Otoliths, Peeking Cat, and Parliament Lit. As well as writing poetry, he enjoys drawing comics, ice skating and hanging out with his ferocious rabbit.
2 Comments
Donna
8/15/2022 02:53:44 am
Love your use of words. You paint complex, fascinating pictures with words! Well done....watching for more of your work!
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Tony Egler
8/15/2022 03:59:51 am
Love reading your poems. Congratulations! Darkly thought provoking.
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