Prov 28:1

Wake up in the hotel black and you know the crowd is staring, fat bulk of lenses in the ceiling light and a dark mass on the side table.  Nice work, you chuckle, you found me.  Reach slow for reading glasses and touch someone else's alarm clock.  I left it behind now eight years but payment comes due, four lines at a time, in the dark, O king, let me tell a story.

Crying On The Inside

We were so close he could touch you. I never did like clowns but you go for the kids and we had the best seats up front even though it cost more than I had thought. Stupid to be scared anyway but son i said like the old joke it's not the clown you see that gets you. Halfway through the act he turns to me and gives me a big ole wink, slow like I know you inside, and I knew our time was nearly gone.

Grandfathered In

You cannot operate a god damned slaughterhouse in the historic district!  But here's this poor little guy, bad teeth, leather coat, stinks like violets.  Stands up straight, near on to tears, ready with the whole speech.  History and death, kosher and halal, centuries paid for, steel and consecration and redemption and god knows but finally forget it, I say, this town you want a variance you don't miss the deadline, without rules we're just animals.

Pretty Sunset

The joke when he told when he told the joke was on me. You know when he passed on his friend-a-friend cough it already been the wards at State and by time it wrapped around my town it was old news. They lay down the streets like schools at nap time. We sat the last light and smoked unfiltered ate pastries and left fifteen dollars for no body.

Give and Take

"Come forth" he says, and coughs, and a million wet leaves leap out of the lawn.  Around the oak and up, coming home to tips of branches, and green into place there with soft pops, whispering a second spring.   I say, someone has to die now, don't they, with dust in my throat.    Entropy's a bitch, he says, but I can tell for once his mind is elsewhere. 

It Wasn't Me

Imagine the precipice, sixty meters straight down red rock to canyon river, and on the edge, two tufts of grey grass, and a kitten, sleeping.  Soft as you approach, not soft,  scuff in gravel and kitten startles, jumps back into air, claws, falling, gone.  You did it, gentle reader.  You killed the kitten.

Please take off your shoes

"I can't take a golem through security.  You know that as well as I."   It didn't make it easier but it had to be said -- deference to the law runs deep in the clay.  Took him apart, piece by piece,  soft under my fingernails, dug out the scroll, tried not to meet his eyes, the last to go, pale blue and resigned to submission.