Suburban Haiku

Boys with .22s
shoot bottles out in the woods,
heard but never seen.

Skinny high school girls
vomit on manicured lawns
while parents travel.

Silent lanky deer
graze from sprouting flower beds.
Let them eat it all.

Angry teenagers
spray paint "fuck" on traffic signs
for no real reason.

Slow, stubbly fathers
skin their large, greasy knuckles
fixing bikes and cars.

The ice melts inside
the big, blue cooler of beer
sitting by the pool.

In My Dreams, I Burn For You

I'm just coming out of the grocery store
when I see him forcing you and the dog into a van.
He's tall and wiry with a balding head and scraggly beard
which, luckily, happens to be soaked in gasoline.
I use one hand to drag him out of the van by his filthy, thinning hair,
and the other to spark my cheap plastic lighter
which I use to ignite his beard.
He tries to beat the fire out but can't,
and I am determined to hold on to his hair until he stops flailing.
You wake me. My heart is pounding.
I pull you closer, mutter a brief synopsis
and then try to go back to sleep,
and hopefully back into the dream as well
because I'd like to crack open the bastard's skull for good measure,
and then set fire to the rest of his body
so we can roast marshmallows
and make s'mores right there in the parking lot
and maybe save a few choice charred chunks for the dog.

The Adjacent Patient

Through that wall, she sits in a lonely half-dark,
Creating herself in a pupa of blankets, tubes, and gauze.
She tells me that she wants me near, and
Through the wall, I feel her, tugging meekly at my soul.

But I can't. When I appear, she is instantly
My girl, not the perfect patient, recumbent
In her antiseptic splendor, willing
Her cells to salve her sores. My girl

Is not a patient. She idly casts her body toward me
Like a paper airplane, desirous of crash more than flight.
Her limbs, deadened by disuse, spring free
Suddenly, oblivious of the feeble stitches binding them together.

I see it in her eyes. Even as she sits there, watching me sustain her,
Wash wounds, she is quickened. Her flesh trembles against her frame,
Desperate to free her of that fractured figure. That look - so
Compelling, I fight myself as I leave, not to check if she's gotten loose.

Sometimes I hear her, down the hall, rustling sheets or taking a drink,
Organic taps that rumble in my blood.
They are my trophies, my tokens -- the sounds of my patient
In her native convalescence - safe in mild sorrow.

So I can't. I won't. Instead, I wonder, removed, if the next visit,
The one I have to make, will bring forth screams unimaginable,
Wails of terror, progress dissolving to scarlet-stung stains,
Or will it bring riotous energy, terrible joy, and scare me away again?