Who Needs A Centipede?

Image from the cover of Tony Ross’ book: The Financial Centipede: Waiting for the Next 99 Shoes to Drop

Who needs a centipede?
Who needs 100 legs?
Who needs an arthropod
with high-maintenance shoes?
It scares the heck out of schoolgirls
and gives boys ideas for torture.
One leg off; 99 to go.
Who’s counting and who cares?
The centipede does.
It hates to walk with a limp.

Coke Killed Mary Joy

Painting by Jim Warren

She drank acid to end the pain
that had mother written all over it
in blood and vomit.
The first time it didn’t work.
That suicide wasn’t successful.
Homicidal success easier to achieve
than any other.
She drank Coca-Cola
to finish what she started.

Mary Joy: lovely and smart,
all wasted in a poison womb.
Sixteen summers of malignity,
short periods of happiness pure.

How long before glass breaks
under a hammer’s power?
She broke. She died.
She won’t get up on the third day
intact in pride.
She goes where no mothers
of eternal torment are.
She is joy now.
Sadness was her bliss.

2 Dreams

Illustration by Koldo Barroso

I Dreamed Of You

It’s been a long time
I’ve seen a rainbow,
but last night
I dreamed of you.
In colors of forests,
screaming simians,
mornings and dew.

Mimi of the
hoarse whispers,
lewd curses,
cigarette blues.
You were in a dress
of fields of blooms,
your eyes stabbing spirits,
suggestions profuse.

I followed you into a room
dark and fearful, symmetry askew.
You pushed me away.
I stood my ground.
Couldn’t lose you again
in platonic platitudes.

Lips crushed lips
like meteors
crashing on satellites.
You weakened.
I got stronger.

The lights turned on.
Eyes kept closed,
barenaked, unashamed.


Illustration by Emila Yusof

Haiku kuno

A rainbow I miss.
Painting skies
with colors bliss.
I dreamed of Mimi.