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. 

Have it your way

I could walk in any store any day any where in the world and get the same meat sandwich and fried potatoes, I said, staring at silent blue sky.  It cost less than I made in ten minutes hard at work.   My great- grandson's eyes fixed on me, hungry, wanting to believe, and my stomach was full of guilt.   

Credo in un Dio crudel

She put the best face on it, but we both saw it fast.   One way out and three to go,  white eyes and comic noise, stage lights sharp on the steel.   A pool, like a sigh, spreading, and it turns just like it had to.  Your turn.

Bridge Failure

I didn't mean to do it but then I had to press on uptown.    Over the bear was under and then in the river, floating.  Clarke wailed but angry to himself cause he could of been next and he knew it.  Staring straight and walking fast, I couldn't catch up.   Next time you hold on to what you got.