CRAZY UNCLE JOE

he piles his bricks he piles his bricks alone
while overhead the basement skylight flicks
an incessant phosphorescent monochrome
he piles one brick then two then one-oh-six
scrape-slips the last so tight it barely fits
and thinks no mortar there in ancient rome
no glue hell lights were made by rubbing sticks
and they made do with it they felt at home
with just their fists no mathemagic tricks
for them no sorrow in a dial tone
no wives so sad they’d slit their tiny wrists
to sleep forever still and stacked like stone
so he piles his bricks he piles them all alone
his mind a startled bug its shell outgrown

DO NOT CROSS

police tape
snakes its

plastic skin
around the

belly of
a car you

never know
the kind

of night
you’re

in the
jelly from

the jar

THE SMOKING POPE

is a blue hat
full of solitude.

His pantaloons

a blaze
of deeper blue.

In his hands:

the lit fuse.
How funny

to play a cartoon.

Mostly sunny.
Mitre, cap,

crown of linen.

A man to
dip the glam

of sin in.

CONVERSATION WITH BALLOON DOG

She remembers well the night they kissed.
I wasn’t always this contortionist,
he told her. Just imagine how it feels
to be tongue-tied and twisted at the heels,
your ears slung low as if you weren’t a fox.
She smirked into her scotch and clinked the rocks.
He lit his Camel like an inquisition—
the inhaled air inflating his position.
It’s not so bad being a dog, he smiled.
After all, even doggies have their style,
do they not? God, he’d wink if he could, the mutt,
she might have thought, or popped his rubber gut.
Yet when the band broke down she dropped a quarter
in the jukebox, let the soft jazz support her,
as if a sax and horn could conquer thirst.
The tension built and built until it burst.
So are you into latex? he finally blurted—
his squeaky skin so kinky she converted.

–from Alien Ekphrasis