The liquor store
Was as dark as Aladdin’s cave
And you could hear the hum
Of the many machines
That cooled down the Cokes

surrender your wings
– be more dandelion

there’s no telling where
a beneficial wind may blow

now, here, the Italian woman
shakes the sheet before hanging it
over her high railing,
and a few drops reach me
in the street below. She calls down
an apology

winedrunk on the balcony,
on a late night video call
with a couple friends
I haven’t seen
lately, and against whom I can’t
pace my drinks.

I breathe to make
you terribly tender and absolutely tasty as hell.

I always feel like a crashing bike. Like a shark attack. That arthritic
woman told me about when fish turned on her in the Mediterranean.
Motherfuckers tried to eat me!

Today a rainstorm replete
with wind as brisk as politics.
Histrionic trees will flail
and shed their excess baggage,
Perhaps electric power will fail
and I’ll have to stoke the generator.

It made her smile knowing that she did a fine job at sticking me with the needle, being a pro that she was, and it probably didn’t hurt that I had large veins

I love Jesus though we’ve never met, I wonder if He’d say the same about me but at Sunday School I’m told that He knows all about me or at least more than I do about Him

I followed that trail
of hogs’ blood to your front door
and never looked back.