I'm Being Haunted By a Tiny, Leprechaun Poltergeist

I'm going to uphold my most recent tradition of post format and reduce this post to two new poems, a stream-of-consciousness piece, and a picture of a cute animal and/or baby.

Ode to the Ballerina

Somber flames dance on their wicks
Which are coated with ashen ice
They bend their legs and
Tug on the blanketed dusk just as the
Gypsy dancers instructed them to do
Only on the evenings of the silkiest sunsets

His wooden face bathed in milky light
That paints the rippling contours of his cavernous cheeks
With yellow strokes from Monet’s impressionist brush
Tears fall from his face to kiss the floor
And Valencia roses grow where they land while the
Vintage clocks on the wall blink away their insomnia

A girl of white marble lies in an ocean of yellow
Grass below the whispering window panes
A ballerina’s shoes blush on her cold feet
The breeze which tastes of dead leaves runs its fingers through her hair
A half-forgotten smile plays
Upon her chapped, blueberry lips

Faraway, in the parish’s Elysian garden
The parson picks tomatoes with the
Tips of his rosy fingers that leaf through pages of the Bible
And stroke the names of Hebrew kings
He tastes death on the bitter wind and chants a
Psalm to the clouds of purple dragons in the twilight

The revolutionary crumples against the salty concrete wall
His florescent fingers feel the hole in his side
With all the doubt of Thomas’ touch
His soul creeps out of his mouth like cigarette smoke
As corpses bow to the wall beside him
The firing squad lowers their shivering rifles

Cannon fire makes cracks in the night sky
Soldiers march with their helmets hiding their faces
Buildings are injured horses that drift to the ground
Children shut their eyes and hum nursery rhymes
And out of the flames twirls a lost ballerina
Dancing off into the heavens


The Schizophrenic

Silken blue eyes like an infant’s blanket
Eyes of arctic rust that melt through your paper skin and leave
Doses of toxic chemicals in your damp lungs
Unblinking eyes that quiver like a moth’s wing

He hides in the corners of blinding white rooms
His fingertips, sprinkled with ink, claw at his glowing skin
A ghostly fever reddens his cheeks
As strangers murmur behind the locked door

Shadows flit around the edges of his eyes
Like cigarette burns on a film reel
Children giggle in the room around the corner
And people crawl like spiders on the ceiling

Flat voices chant muted words into his ear
And press their cold knuckles against his temple
Black silhouettes lean against the street lamp
He spots them as he peers under the window shades

Memories trickle down his brow like a serpent’s blood
They play in his mind like an old home movie
Or the spastic nightmares of a prophet
And then dart away like a doe in the twilight

Men in pinstriped suits wait outside the window
Ice sculpture angels dance around his head
He bites his yellow nails and wonders
Why you can’t see them

The dawn's icy fingers are like the shivering legs of a black widow spider that twitches against the milky darkness with its papery exoskeleton and plastic-wrap wings the sun tests the temperature of the sky with a single glowing toe and then dives into the glass clouds with a florescent spear veins of sunlight pulse with a quivering beat and the clouds squirm tortured in the sky a ghostly mist creeps along the flawless lake in a snowy robe of spherical water droplets the trees push their roots through the cold mud grass drinks in the sugary dew and stands up like the beginnings of hair on an infant's conical skull the forest retires from the whispered gossip of their social midnights spent bathing in the moonlight smoke from a freight train hangs suspended in the air like a snake in a sandstorm its muffled cries melting against the wind like a block of ice on a warm palm the train worms along the endless track and licks the dusty cylinders with its wheels' stinging friction the windows are black and galzed with a tasteless godly icing a parson bites his nails and whispers vibrating curses to his chest the Bible hiding away in an apartment complex of clothing like a frightened animal across from him a store-bought stepmother with yellow eyes and hollowed cheeks powdered with a buttery layer of cheap make-up her lips murmur her own name in a voice that you could crush between your finger tips the conductor sucks in the white-bread air through his wooden mustache his gray irises shrinking as they warm themselves under the horizon of the atmosphere a redwood forest of golden hairs dance on his arms an Indian deity is prowling somewhere on the bald back of the train and a gremlin clings to the side with its emerald claws enormous beings with florescent skulls bulge from the corner of the galactic screen they chuckle to themselves and stare with insect eyes as the Universe breathes beneath them.

You awake? I think about now you'll be ready for that cute baby animal.



Mm...that was a sight for sore eyes.

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away

Christopher