Bear necessities.

 The bear necessities

I felt a tug at my jersey.
Something hauled me out of my hole in the trash heaps by my shoulder.
I heard shrieks of laughter as the twins laid eyes on me.
Their father’s crooked grin and reactive laughter. I played dead to not freak them out.
I felt the lift of the foul smelling wind and whoosh I was in the back of the pick up truck.
Among the broken furniture that Mr Barker intended to take back home to his workshop and fix and repolish.
The twins looked back at me from the cab's back window as we got onto the freeway.
I sat up and watched the landfill disappear.
We pulled into a long dirt oil stained driveway then into a garage with its own yard.
They leaned me against the garage wall and the twins poked and prodded me until my stuffing started to come loose and the white candy floss material started to fluff and burst from my seams.
And as I was slowly emptied of my white cloudy puff, the banging of the hammer and the chiseling sound of the saw continued.
The twins lost interest and soon I was alone. I jumped up and collected the stuffing that had fallen out during the interaction with the twins.
I pushed it all back in. even the humid sickly parts that had become sodden in the last rains. I slid under the front gate and hobbled the five miles back to the landfill.
I passed the tall sycamores whose autumn leaves would make the highway look like shit.
I passed the small convenience store where there were no middle shelves making the customer the center of attention.
I passed the empty parking lots of real estate offices that were open but unmanned.
My knees got dusty as I took a shortcut onto the long winding Landfill road through the weeds.
I got to see the real world. Lady bugs, small spiders and butterflies.
I came out onto the landfill grounds. I made it to the edge.
I realized in the back of my teddy bear brain that I wouldn’t be able to find my old cubby hole.
I embarked across the methane badlands and found a convenient snug hollow to tuck myself into.
As I tucked myself in, I felt my sense of self leach out. And slowly my vision escaped me.
The last images of the hyperactive twins disappeared. The last echo of Mr Barker’s fatherly voice was gone.

And that was that I was gone. Yet I was still there.
And it rained again that night.

Ocean madness

When you become absence
The way the sea longs for

The earth is swallowed whole
I grow awakened, but on you there's a price
A flooding dreadful coastal bog!

Your eyes see only shadows of waves
Fading embers of life's fresh beginnings
Feeling begins to diminish
Dread cannot be escaped

Freezing water frightens your chest
Uncertain underneath creatures twist
You kick and struggle reason falls apart
Depths of the blackness

Not only to survive
To resist this watery ending
To feel warmth again
Deep self deception

Even in the battle
In your private life collapse and discomfort
Discover new kinds of hollowness
Each one a temperature, freezing

The muted light beneath towering clouds
Crowd the surface of lifeless ocean
Icy water holds you
All life's reminders and everything endangered
Terrible alarm that ordering you awake

The horizon is blinding midnight
See disguises people wear and their quiet attacks
The sun is still there, behind the darkness
Trying its hardest to reach out and restore 
But cheap costumes continue to bewilder

Bleachcroft courtyard and the rain

 Waking the warmth gone
Rain is falling in 
The roof is gone
I draped a blanket to stop the drops

But they kept on 
I turned over
The color of my existence
Color of my dreams

Getting leached out
The dye of the purple sheets fading
My face looks up at imposing mornign cloud
Tears camouflage

Waking the on the damp concrete
The inner sanctum
No slumber
No relief and soon there will be aspergillus

So I walked out of what was my abode
Pavement looking up at me 
mocking me urine colored brown
Also fading

The rain spares none
I looked up as each drop ran down
beachfront grin as I realized
It wouldn't change me

Beaven dessert server

 Beavan came speeding in happy napkin
Sparkling disposition
Team player apron sewn together with slogans
He arrived cheerful fully buzzed up

A ton of witty remarks up the sleeve
Or under the apron
Pen and pad and saliva for the consonants
A motor of a man giggle

Back with over sugared dessert
Full of creme and m and m's
Insuline spike and elf beaven left the room
Speeding around like a humming bird on crack

Consumption is the meaning of life

 life is a feast
Eating is hell
Bread is from yeast
Chicken eggshells

Life is a rump
A romp and a flop
Stools made from stumps
Ornate table table tops

Thus crowd over food
Excrete and bleed
Hunger renewed
Once again feed

Savour ingest
Extract digest
Hunger a pest
Linger a chef

The moon refuses to return

Pining miles from the town
She thinks of the moon, needs it close

Exposed scrub brushy like a death fringe
She remembers watching moonlight split and splatter

Grinding grey drooping dry
She wonders whether the moon misses the earth when daylight arrives

A stubby round structure stands clay and fiber
She imagines the grace of the moon 

Erected like a wooden cross in the breeze
She imagines the moon caught between its arms

Empty form hanging on underneath peeling the dust off
She wishes she could hang her dreams there 

A human woman stands there hot northerly scorching crops
She thinks about the moon touching the hills of her being

Naked in the shape village men's dream
She imagines being painted silver as an extension of the moon

The house is oval and needy like the faces in the village
She looks at the moon and predicts it's own desires

Drying clothes outside touching her arms night wheezes
She imagines sleeping under the cross as the moon peaks and tickles her

Awaiting a maid who left the village a decade past
For a man who got lost in distant mountain ranges seasons passed.
She waits for both and even the moon refuses to return.

Her smile is the experiment

Smile begins before she knows 
a tiny movement at one corner a clean pond this mouth of hers
Pouring into another then another
until her whole face seems to have agreed
Her dimples arrive late enchanting our hearts
as though they have travelled some distance to get there

When she laughs it keeps changing
opening, narrowing, breaking into smaller smiles
One appears when she understands
another when she is amused
another when she catches somebody watching
and suddenly the first one seems like an experiment

Something unfair about it
carefully displayed
Mouth repeatedly discovering happiness
Two dimples perform on her face
Everyone nearby waits
for her grace