living room untitled

Stacks of mail next to tv dinners
choirs counting down faded melodies
on public access channels -
I thought I had figured out an exit from the living room
but found my hand under the armchair again,
collecting sticky pennies and drinking my own drool.
At least the ceiling provides complete shade
from the low slow sun,
weighed down by
the old machinery
of its own orbit.

Oh well, I saw an old bird chewing on
a roadkill of macabre colors.
Oh well, I saw a little girl
sewing something on the swingset,
while the barbeque flirtations went inside
for uncomfortable sex in the pale bedrooms -
mattresses inflated on the floor.
A book about dinosaurs lay open
and the wind turned the pages.
When the wind was done reading
it just blew the book into the wall.

Footprints on homework:
that’s how I felt at that age,
or was I ever that age?
I don’t remember it.

The sun turned around and mooned us,
that’s how I knew it was night.
We covered our eyes and hoped
a vision of the holy ghost in our head
would light up the hallway with its gospel,
but I just saw my own fingers over my eyes
but I just saw the microscopic geometry
of my own breath, spreading out, evaporating.

She buried her flowers in the backyard,
made a grave and everything -
named each one twice, different names,
in case the first name was taken already.
The pots became storage for bubble gum wrappers
always useful for licking the old taste off later,
The evening is a parade of grownups
they hope they’ll enjoy the day before it ends -
the fragrance of fingerprints rising from
the kitchen counter where several small bugs
were born.

chris bullock