Reason & Bone

Them days,
Lick like dogs
Their wounds

Incessantly

No pretense and flesh,
It's down to reason and bone

Room full of things
Ransacked for a cigarette,
No good was the wind,
Fingers so cold
Could of slept in a flame

Oh, that wind who come to chase the leaves
Who laugh the footsteps that lisp,
Legs scissored lawn crooked in two
Horror cut so fresh
Bled panicked motif

Scampered to a nook
Corduroy shriven bald
Last match died
That nicotine could live


Zoo Eyes

San Quentin wool
The cocoon of midnights
Desirous of Burmese fingernail dream
Worlitzing toilets forever flush
Amid the myriad incessant rales
Was the North Block Emphysema Choir

Sanity loses purchase
Pawing cool pocked wall
Silence is crushing hearing
Smile fell to teeth's foul shore

Shoes bereft of street

Pssst
Why don't you run them zoo eyes
Up the jade jut of Mount Tamalpais,
Her naked solace gorgeous
She tossed the gown of night

Psst
I seen the zoo eyes stricken
By years never really having lived
Never gonna live


© Gregory Carter