tinkle

2020

The gas stations succumb to beer,

the strip malls are overcome by fear,

democracy is defeated by free enterprise,

and finally,

nature is destroyed by reproduction.

And it doesn’t matter whether the chicken came in first place or the egg.

And who are these people who stay awake while you sleep?

Where do those live whose devil is your god?

And does it scare you to think that antibiotics may eventually be the undoing of the human race?

But by the time you’re 30 your world might as well be over anyway.

So if the world finally quits teetering on the edge of destroying itself and goes down like the Titanic, you will be able to have peace of mind as you dress up in your Sunday best. And have one last half-hearted laugh at all of it.

And maybe smile sweetly at the memory of a few things.

Like being sad for your mother when she seemed bored, or feeling 249 dollars poorer, or letting go of your capsized fantasy.

It would jerk a final tear, which would gush out of you like grey water from a washing machine through a lint trap down the utility sink drain.

As if suddenly you realized everything you wanted to say when you sat there in silence wondering whether silence was better anyway. 

And with your insides cleansed, they would leave everything that holds them in behind, and quietly dissolve into the horizon. 

Hard To Get

 

Deer in somebody’s front yard

I stop to say hi

You just stare back at me

And when I make a drunken advance

You turn and stalk away.

 

I want you.

I want you to trust me

I want you to see how earnest I am

I want you to have so much faith in me that you’d let me touch you

I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t considered bestiality in the back of my mind somewhere

I’d never lie to you.

Even if it meant losing some of my innocence in your eyes

 

You used to be a fawn

And now you are the most seductive, elusive thing in the world to me

But when I see you run away, I know you are as helpless as you’ve always been

 

And I know that this is how it’s meant to be

This is how the creator meant for it to be

You will remain an eternally beautiful mystery

Because everything I can’t understand about you

Makes you beautiful to me. 

The Checker of Doors

Why is it that we demand of ourselves such vigilance in the nightly routine of locking the back door? Is there perhaps a person who walks the neighborhood trying every door just in case one unlucky house owner slipped and forgot his or her responsibility? A Checker of Doors? And if the Checker of Doors were so lucky as to find an unlocked door, would it behoove him or her to enter and find whatever it is the Checker of Doors seeks?

But perhaps the Checker of Doors seeks only this: an unlocked door.