Peeca Mark

18% to eat you

old fantasies
of times when I ate leaves
and was told
to put my hands under my ass
to keep me from touching
what I was really
sitting on

Remember when I said I'd always be a kid?
I don't
but I want to say
I thought that with you

We were a great team
me and you

banana-split gorgeous!

fighting off beggars
and liars
and cheats
and dirty ex-husbands
and saints



Galactic memories
of times when i tried
to eat the leaves
that fell from your bark
tried to taste their journey
over vicious terrain
and their climb
over some of the highest
mountains





recurring dreams
of times when we ate leaves
in the park
beneath the pumpkin moon

And that is how the moon is I thought
A dangling carrot above me
above all of us
down here

But as I was dreaming
I realized you'd already
left
and I was standing alone
eating leaves

tasting their pain
from prodding blunt objects
and being yelled at
like some kind of obscenity
or curse



festering memories
of insanity
When I had to
dry heave thoughts
to create explanations
for exhausting games of tag
and cracked pictures in my head
framed by merry-go-round chases
of parting gifts
from window dreams



knock, knock
whose there?
Waiting...




I held your hand
considerably shorter than you

but we worked...

you trained me well

now what to say?

I've gone off and become something of a metaphor
in your life

no longer bartering jellybeans
for lunchbox specials
or watching
from the wing of foreign walls
as your frowning
gargoyle eyes
release and open
manually

as you speak
fantastically
on staircases
and tight ropes
and think like Fraud
in some grand
light speed manner

I was a
Grissom hero
with a screen door
telling my baby sister to go to sleep

Remember?

When I could
touch the bottom of false beauty so easily
and then quickly
swim to the top

create maps to find that liquid sky
where silent harks of joy
are born to nice guys
and let my Macho confessions punch
a forbidden future
twisted vision
be my demise




I'm beyond competitive backpack expositions now
and
brown bagging lunch
or
Needing assistance to
persecute the philosophy of others

I've run my boyscout muscle ship
into this weird rotten hell

i've got your dance down

and i see myself sometimes
I'll past myself on the train
seated by the window
writing
Eyes glossy
as if
dazed and confused
as if
THINKING about the world around
but unable to see it

I wonder what you're thinking

as young as he is
with as much as he hasn't seen
he writes a great deal
leaning against that universal high
secure in saying nothing but
suspicious or unattended words

I wish him a safe voyage