my mind ponders stale comic books written by unfulfilled

artists who so badly want a turn at doing flips in cornfields that they sneer at my turquoise hands writing lonely lullabies to a lady who rocks her child in a grocery cart at night while wishing she could find her son who is off in Seattle pretending he is Jimi Hendrix somewhere in a nightclub that has broken glass all over the

floor of the bathroom stall where a hunter is hanging his head and weeping over a bleeding woman who he thought was a deer that would win him an award but instead only reminds him of the reckless

driver he so hated for laughing when the police told him he had smashed his sister's legs like beef jerky that will never again

pace the floor wondering where her unborn son will live when she

is old and gnarled like the weeping willow tree outside the

schoolhouse where the girls stick their bubblegum to save for after school but somehow forget in the chaos of jeering laughter at a kid in the corner who reads too many comic books