there was a deer found inside the snake
Heat and a good night’s sleep.
*
2:03 A.M.
So the cat snores for me–in and out, her blind head aside the throw pillow;
even scratches here and there to remain present, to be safe in her sleep or her dream or where ever she’s gone once all the pizza has been eaten and the neighbors have stopped buzzing their doors…traffic swills along Frederick Douglass — the boulevard I’ve walked many times in my dreams but never in daylight; the clarity of all that has not happened is to brutal
like a canker sore
on that first date
or when you realized that life wasn’t unfair — it was simply whatever you wanted it to be, but as your darts fell off the charts and your bullseye became paying the week’s bill just to stay in the race
you realize you’ve lost long ago; I mean I lost long ago
I played
I stayed
I made
the
game
So many are good at playing —
so why the long face and dry mouth?
The cross eyes and gray hairs
The stammered mouth, crazy stares
all the errors of my elders I have become
gluttonous,
flatulent,
dizzy
and un-focused
even my loins have diced and broken in two, cant decide which way to flow or grow or go–
there’s no center here, anymore, I have
no
center
i am a bursting little rumble in my stomach
a curvy rusty scythe in my belly
a face faked out of functioning harm and forced charm
and nothing
absolutely
nothing
real
as far as plans or projections or descriptions or prescriptions
as far as the ring will bow
and distend
as far as the bell
will ring
cause man knows
it certainly won’t toll
It takes a solid arm to toll a bell
all i’ve left are a few inches of finger and stained skin
that only wished it knew
the comfort
of a glove
— from the chapbook, Lying Meat.
You ever wake up in the morning and have about five things wrong with you, but you just lay in the bed (or whatever you use to make a bed) staring out into the grainy space in your dark room and try to figure out which problem to deal with first? Such as: should I go to the bathroom first before I get nervous about having not paid rent or should I put socks on now before I touch the floor cause it’s cold and I can’t afford to get sick? – well the General woke up this way every morning. And his days were long agonies into the depths of his innumerable problems, with no end in sight no meaning no tags no order. Riddles that could not be solved. How is it possible to continue living when you actually do know the outcome of what it is you are doing. You don’t know what it means, but you know how it’s going to end. I ask you: How is it possible? How can it be that every fear does come to fruition, but the harm, the pain can’t and won’t go away? The cruelty in the room alone was breaking his very will to move, think, or breathe. His feelings, his imagination. And he always thought he was tough. But a tough person is just a supersensitive person inside out. The world – or at least their system in it – didn’t care if you were tough. It was more interested in what you were willing to give up.
— from “Where Ladybugs Go to Die” by Dennis Leroy Kangalee, (c) 2006
*
The best thieves are never heard of, spoken about, written up, or remembered.
They’re unheard of legacies existing largely in the minds of
courageous and misled orphans of crime.
Not greedy or proud, but afflicted and torn
Between the road of Art
& the cul-de-sac called Hell.
They have no empires to build or flags to raise.
Just a conscience to bear,
maybe a diaper
to change.
Dennis Leroy Kangalee 