Around A Scorpion
That golden sweat on the top of a tap can,
can resemble small desert rocks or lesser pebbles
of the sort one might find surrounding a scorpion.
Except, that if there were a Southwestern arachnid
around, any simpleton would draw their hand back.
Avoiding that prong which longs to transfuse venom.
So the poison won't kill you, it just makes you sick.
Until you're searching for more hidden diamondbacks each day.
Digging twenty five bugs from the rubble each day.
To glow aureole against the many vertical grays
of the city, each day, rile one until it strikes. ( Gold! )
Any damn fool would just draw their hand back.
Singing Galway Bay
When I was nine years old
my father and I went into
an elderly woman's house and it
was gasoline dry that Summer so
she had vasoline on her hands and they
went from lamb grease to ice cream like
a smile might move to a frown but ( So )
When she found me a rugged dip well
I supposed I had just best eat it because
my father weighed four hundred pounds and
his hand was like a first baseman's glove so
if you caught his kind of cold you
might sneeze blood all night and when ( So )
we sat inside that front porch screen
he started singing Galway Bay his big frame
it was vibrating and entertaining and she
began to cry because that song reminded
her of her still still Irish husband and
when my old man honed that final note well
he could have been a pro why everyone said so
but he was a pro of another kind so
before she had even sponged her eyes
she wrote us out a check for ten times
the amount of what the work was worth but ( So )
I didn't really mind too much because
I only knew of cheeseburgers and such and
baseball and coins and Evil Kneivel toys and
that I had best varnish off the rest of that
vicious sheep meat ice cream until
I could see the Flintstones and Dino
and they could see me
with lapped clean
porcelain eyes.
