Cough Supressant

Cough cough!
Phlegm and noise escape my face-hole
as my lungs heave and constrict.

Symptoms of this viral infections include:
Heavy Heart,
Rapid Eye Mambo,
Oesophagus Elephantitis,
Beached Whale Syndrome,
Sad-Face,
Impatient headaches,
Lazy tits,
Syncopation,
and
Double Sad-Face.

I blow and sneeze and shout,
battling enzymes with t-shaped white cells
and scream hooray when the battle’s won.

April

April is the first real month of Spring.
Today though, it’s cloudy and cold out.
Cloudy with a chance of clouds.

April always makes me think of:
Easter rabbit chocolate
poems about The Great War
Jespah
Chernobyll
umbrellas
6th grade science class
Fools

Today is the first day where I can
start to think of all these things,
as I walk in the Spring frost.

Weights

Green fabric marks either
silence or cacophony.

My shoulders and posture
take the brunt of the effort.

You bury your brain,
breathing in genetic code.

Heat combines with heart;
I only need a sweater.

My rhythm makes you slumber,
while yours makes my energy grow.

Acid

You spit when you urinate.
That’s not all I know about you.
There’s more.
Still, for what it’s worth,
it all makes me smile.

Cracker Jacks

I had to get new skin
in order to spy for the great [blank] nation.

Not figuratively, no!

Actual dermis, ripped from my sinews and muscles
like carpet being replaced in an office building.

New comfy, cozy, unmarked beige skin-carpet,
stapled into place by someone with a tie and no first name.

It smarts.

The mess made is sopped up by old receipts,
order forms, certificates in different languages.

Blood and fat and pain ooze out of my now-dead pores,
I stare blankly, with pride of country.

So now I can spy because my skin has no shades
or memory or marks of nostalgia or time.

Loosely, it forms.

I learn to use this new skin although it
stares back at me blankly, lobotomized.

Without it, my body has no bag to keep it whole.
With it, I am heroic, peaceful, blank.

Primavera

Boticelli smiles,
while daffodils fret over leftover frost.

They don’t know what this year’s fashion will dictate,
so they are underdressed.

Girls on the playground have similar problems;
their pink knee socks droop as they hopscotch to keep warm.

The little boys, counterparts, laugh and push them down
as a token of late valentine love.

Rec centers get their pools ready for the coming sunshine months.
For now, they roll up the tarps and chlorinate.

Colored marshmallow animals line the shelves of pharmacy aisles,
waiting to sicken the holy ones.

As the days get longer, slowly, birds come back from
exotic lands with polaroids and sun-tans.

It rains often; big fat droplets line the pavement.
Drowning worms get fed to big Robin bellies.

People with sneezes sneeze more
but smile on their way to work, scarves resting at home.

The vernal equinox renews life, erasing winter memory
and makes us dance like pollinating bees.