Staircase of my name

 I climb this wooden staircase
The empty spaces between the slats of wood
Call my name, with each step up I look between
and hear the voice say -up one further

When I feel the slat under me
Shaky and unstable
I transition my weight to the next slat
Hearing calling far below

Like ghost parents
shouting toward a baby at risk
I was that baby
Not big enough to get to the top

Not small enough to fall through the slat
Just big enough to hear the subtle applause
As I go from one slat to the next
each one creaking my name

That Sturdy Cactus

 Bulging out of the sidewalk saying- how is it?
A metamorphic sex toy scaring grandads and grannies.
Taking up too much space so the dogwalker struggles to slip the gap.
The columns climb up to block out the neighbors windows.

When it's wet the fat thug doesn't droop or even yellow
When it's dry the thing shines and keeps growing anyway
While the rest of the vegetation dies off in the heat of the day
It just seems to stand prouder as if imitating a champion

It hangs out and waves
You never see it complain
Doesn't need twigs or leaves
Doesn't need fertile land
The modified stem grows out of porous neutral sand

Jeanine

 I saw you scratching words into the desk, while Mr Robinson wasn't looking.

Freckles never looked good on any girl, except for you Jeanine.
Blond pony tail, you knew how to dance. I was too goofy to ask you teach me, therefore I'd have a reason to rub up against you. To question your questioning eyes.
Where did you get those scissors and hide them before Old man Robinson sees, he's got a screw loose and he will break something if he sees. If he sees you scratching up the desk, he'll kill you.
Anyhow I'm passing you this note, so that you can have my permission to humiliate me infront of the whole class. Because I want to kiss your face. I want to kiss your lips.
I'm sick of being young and coming up short. I want a young and wild girl like yourself to kiss and get lost in. I want to take you to the backfield, just to see if you won't let me in for just a time.
Share secrets, share silly young notions of love. Hold hands, touch.
Give me my 101 in romance as you probably have a better understanding.
Or even better let me sit closer to you in class. So that I might touch your hair, or at the very least warn you before our tyrant of a teacher catches you scratching words into the desk.
Somehow I could see your hostility, but it didn't put me off. I just put it down to that fighting spirit. Growing up in small towns must be torture for beautiful girls like you.
What a miracle it was to know you, in our small pathetic town where everyone judged everything. 

Shutting up

 People would do well to shut up.
To stay trap clamped
To politely abstain from their yarns
Their rants and laughter

People can make it easier on the world
By shutting up all of you can cure the world
Words spoken spurted through lips
Tongue so proud, tone intact

But forget all that, use ears
Or eyes to read these letters into words
These cattle into herds
This sewage into wastewater collection

Like volume of cursewords
Rising from the stadiums
Of dumbfounded excited nobodies
Who have squandered their personal integrity

To join a mediocre collective 
Who scream their voiceboxes until wheezing
Just shut up and sit down
you have a lot to prove but a big void where the brain is supposed to be

Yes Charles I want to be a writer

 It does come bursting out of me
Like instinct
Like embrace
Like surrender

Dominance
excitement
anticipation
Creativity

It does come out of me
Do I want the fame?
The money?
The lifestyle?

You said I wasn't ready,
You are right.
It does come out of my soul like a rocket
Without it many vices would consume me

Why yes the sun inside me is burning for me to write
So I write, dear God I write
And i will keep doing it until I die
Or until it dies in me

The fruit of my words

 My poetry doesn't move you enough.
I wish it was me that was missing something here.
But it was you...
I took my words and formed a garden path for you to follow.

Down down where all seasons converge, all weather, all twilight.
There I have grown a fruit tree with the most delicious fruit you've ever tasted.
But you don't bite in...
Instead you pretend you know the flavor.

Your imagination doesn't turn.
My words just fall flat like autumn leaves under that same tree!
Or worse the uneaten fruit that spent a month on the tree.
Developing through those sunfilled days, sits rotting.

It doesn't move you.
The metaphor was built like a house whose curvature,
surrounded the eternal fruit tree of my verse.
You grin and say- They're just words!

Just imagine if you could see and taste the fruit.
A pomegranate persimmon looking fruit.
whose perfect sourness livened your senses.
That exposed flavors you never knew existed.

That exposed illusions in your waking life,
that leave you unsustained.

Yellow dusty passenger

 The roll of flab comes over the arm rest and enters my private space
It was my turn to keep my prejudices to myself
While he gave me a huge roll of fat all over my arms
The sweaty watch strap the three chins and the beady eyes focusing in

I didn't give him permission to flood over me with that roll of fat
Or encourage the man to eat or avoid treatment
The steamy vapor changes our seat space
He burps casually relieving himself with several heavy breaths after

He laughs at a joke using animal puns on his instagram
The flab flexes, expands and contracts flacid and moist
The first yellow dusted snack makes it's way from stained fingers
Those fine yellow dust particles accumulate

Then the man sneezes and the yellow cloud covers the slim hostess
Her shriek made the man jump and the bag of cheetos spilt all over us