“Every espresso is a lit stick of dynamite in my gut”
By David Angelo
Bullet train rush going going gone.
I’m my own auction selling thoughts
to the highest bidder, my imagination
pouring out of every pore, an overflowing
teapot, a library choking me with words.
I’m a matryoshka doll stacked to infinity.
What is infinity in this over-caffeinated state?
I’m a frog leaping into the quantum
state of joy – look, I’m happy everywhere
and at all times at once. I’m a probability
lost to the bees and wildflowers
perfuming space-time with their sorrow songs.
“November”
Someone has crashed headfirst
into the skies, knocking down
bucket after bucket of rainwater.
The foxes are wearing jumpers
several sizes too big. The cats
are reducing the furniture to CAD files.
Dogs are becoming as stiff as statues.
This is not autumn’s afterthought,
but a halfway house to winter.
The trees have already packed away
their stock in anticipation of the snow,
days as long as your elbow.
We dry ourselves with stories
told in the company of next year’s selves.
“Fruit Bat”
The unruly children of the sky
are causing malarkey: Faces
innocent as a joey mask
screams unstitching clouds.
They pluck fruit like cello strings,
paint the land with their droppings.
Skulls as conical as Apollo 11’s
command module are crafted
for mischief. Gliding like Da Vinci’s
prototype from tree to tree,
every wing is taut like an umbrella’s hide.
How disappointed would he
be with these aerial hoodlums
showing disregard for the evolution
that gave them their gifts,
while our childhood is as hard
as a peach pit – bearing fruit
like a plot twist, some unscripted
moment improvised on the spot.