Pretty. Odd.

SHE’S A HANDSOME WOMAN
Innocence.
Sunk the glow and drowned in covers,
send for all your absent lovers things.

Sheepish Wolves.
Looking lived in eating buttons,
Wink, just don’t put your teeth on me.

Accidents.
Let the evening in the backdoor,
filled the room ceiling to the floor.

Beat backbones.
Grazed the poem and made it strange,
I wasn’t born to be a skeleton.

Go on,
grab your hat and fetch a camera.
Go on, film the world before it happens.

Jealous orchard.
The sky is falling off the ceiling
while I’m tucking fibs into a cookie jar.

Bombed reverie.
It’s useless searching in the cupboards
when everything you have is on your back.


THAT GREEN GENTELMAN
Things are shaping up to be pretty odd.
Little deaths in musical beds.
So it seems I’m someone I’ve never met.

You will only hear these elegant crimes,
Fall on your ears from criminal dimes.
They spill unfound from a pretty mouth.

everybody gets there and everybody gets their way.
I never said I missed her when everybody kissed her,
Now I’m the only one to blame.

Things have changed for me, and that’s okay.
I feel the same, I’m on my way, and I say.

I want to go where everyone goes,
I want to know what everyone knows
I want to go where everyone feels the same

I never said I’d leave the city,
I never said I’d leave this town.
A falling out we won’t tiptoe about.


MAD AS RABBITS
Come save me from walking off a windowsill
or I’ll sleep in the rain.
Don’t you remember when I was a bird
and you were a map?
Now he drags down miles in America
briefcase in hand.
The stove is creeping up his spine again,
can’t get enough trash.

He took the days for pageant
Became as mad as rabbits
With bushels of bad habits
Who could ask for anymore?
Yea who could have more.

His arms were the branches of a Christmas tree
preached the devil in the belfry.
He checked in
to learn his clothes had been thieved at the train station.
Rope hung his other branch
and at the end was a dog called bambi
Who was chewing on his parliaments
when he tried to save the calendar business.

The poor son of a humble chimney sweep
fell to a cheap crowd
So stay asleep and put on that cursive type
you know we live in a toy.
Paul Cates bought himself a trumpet from the salvation army
But there ain’t no sunshine in his song
We must reinvent love.