Tuesday, September 20, 2005

A teddy bear made of
Lava and raspberry jam,
lukewarm lava,
very hot raspberry jam

Eric cuddles his
little bear, beneath
covers like hoods of lava,
low roof of his cave-bed

The lukewarm lava
has congealed, sealed
ceiling. A teddy bear is
somebody’s heart,

somebody’s heartbeat dropped
from a very hot
place down, chilling under
covers in the low caves of the bed

Heartbeats under
Fur and fuzzy
crises of nostalgia,
sealed heart of lukewarm lava

Who’s heart is it?
If it was yours,
you would know that you had
dropped it, right?

Is it hibernating
in that fur?
It would be terrible
to treat a bear so

emptily,
to take your heart out of it.
Justifiable, yes, but
Poor fuzzy-wuzzy-wuzzy house

poor fuzzy-wuzzy-wuzzy house

Saturday, September 17, 2005

“Hello bed,” Eric said.
“You’re a faithful bed.
A little smudged and smeared
But your dirt is good dirt,

Who says dirt is always
Dirty anyway?
I love your good clean dirt,
Which is my skin-cells rubbed

On you to clean myself.”
Having said that, Eric threw
Himself down on the bed
For a nap. As he slept

Sebaceous craters bled raw puss,
Which colonies of skin-eating microorganisms
Sucked up for lunch, and then
Deposit acidic waste in Eric’s pores.

Every pore was a flower-pot
Filled with tiny monsters gardening,
Eating and regurgitating flecks of skin
Reshaped by microbe saliva into

Huts where microbes love to live.
Eric woke and showered; handfuls of
Lavender soap in his pores killed
Many. The busy bed buzzed

Constant invisible industry of Earth

Sunday, September 11, 2005

The bed has become a shopping cart
with a bag of brown fruit in it
Eric has to push it, but ice
stuck to the sidewalk shines

The sun has begun to
melt Eric’s body. This morning
when he rubbed the corners of his eyes
crystals of ice like icing sugar

When he blew his nose, ice-crystals
When he brushed his hair, ice-crystals
Eric’s skin is covered by this frost
Except where he cut himself shaving

He has to move his cart
11 blocks, before the wall of ice
forming like a stalled storm-front
solidifies at the corner of Hope and 1st

Hope Avenue
is slippery; the cart goes
any direction, and Eric has no
traction on the sweating sheet of ice