Wasted

Eat that February sky, why can’t you?

Its clouds bake under the sun

you’ve chosen to forget.

Why can't you

just swallow the cough medicine

you hate?

The pasteurizing fluid swims

in a single glass on the counter-top

alone

and green like a protein drink

or the brussels sprouts from last night’s dinner.

But you're downstairs because

if your nostrils caught a whiff

you might gag.

See the moth balls on the windowsill;

if only you’d pick up those hands,

clutch a dustpan,

and tell your retirement to remove them!

But I watch you lie downstairs,

burning less calories than when you sleep,

with peeling skin atop those thighs

as milky as over easy eggs.

I hear the snow in April and

see that medicine of vomit, still,

my eyes itch from the moth balls.

Did you even hear your alarm?

The Artist

The Artist’s yellow page

turned blind

and skewered the lullaby.

There he awakens the chambers and

merry slaves prostrate

but dismayed,

their white-collar competitors,

addicts of the sinner’s page,

lose their giggle at the taste of quicksand.

Their condition—their end—will cement

while the slaves play a lyre for

the Artist.

Suffering Brothers

You feed me lies

My pockets emptied by a meter where

Coins curdle down my esophagus,

Brother you watch me

Placid but parched

Liquid rises up to your chin

Like the yeast in grandma's kitchen

But she tripped, remember?

Sighing in the hail, you hold

Your knobby brain that

Chuckles on phlegm and pain

I take an eraser to your face and

Mark that smirk away

Honey, remember grandma’s bitten lip?

Old age and purple knees beat

Sweat into eight cozy cousins

I thought you drew 
My poison—the change
In my wallet—for your experiment but
You needed cash, raw cash,
Or so the president had said