1997

I come to meet a man
With eyes wet as his lost
python, and just as blank:
He never mentioned it again,
though he lived
in his Grandmother's basement
and wasn't sure where it had
gone.  Cold medicine makes
my eyes ovulate, giggling
antihistamine bubbles coarsing
Through my veins like mercurial
crosshatches aiming some
where further below.  He stands tall,
this short hulk, pimpled with the
rage of steroids, all his features
resembling acne about to burst.
"Where's my fucking money?"
someone asks.  Drop stop then
roll, I tell myself.  Faulty method.
Kitsch slang erupts from his
foaming mouth, cars pass by
as a hungry knuckle cracks
on my pale jaw.  A dream,
fission, a tooth unhooked
on the stars.  I am at a bus
stop far from home.  I ask a grizzly
man without one about snakes.
"Lot of them around", he drawls.