Mike's Telephone Poetry

A magic in plastic, wires, and string.
Your voice is pounding in my ears,
Words you imagined spoken aloud to a crowd of strangers.

A stool, perhaps larger than your legs standing erect.
Black like ashes dampened in the rain, and just as thick.
Holding you on a pedestal. Above the grime of city streets
Inside smoky rooms of secondhand love and
Women drinking their weight in grief and
Sweet liquid courage, garnished with bitter thoughts so
Hot they burn their throat with tears before the
Alcohol scrubs their greedy lips with an unspoken agreement;
Irony in the form of nothing clean and fresh.

A stage, wide like a sea and deep, morbidly lain.
Hiding fishy secrets, selfish like a child with dirty fingers.
Stretching its haunches and flirting with a crowd of hopeless
(Yet, entirely hopeful for what reason we will never relate)
Tacit silence swallowing the loudest breath your lungs can expel.
And there it is, draped in maroon overlay and spackled with glitter,
Physical memory in feathers and the smell of sweat.
Your feet, shoulder’s width from one another
The most suitable for not falling away from the crowd
And being afraid of faces or fever.

The lights, toasting your skin brittle, though you couldn’t be more damp.
Palms holding something special like diamonds,
Drops of fear and rage and tears breaking from your pores
Like rain, a storm, in steady decline.
They’re blinding, as they should be, when you pretend
You’re a child.
If you can’t see them, you’re invisible.
Different colors, and if you stare long enough
they follow you where you go
And your lashes beat them away like flies.
Waiting for the clock to run on fire.
Dial tone.

An arm of wire, a coiling snake and something treacherous in its jaws.
Worse then a crowded room.
Worse than strangers who smile.
Worse than dreaming naked.
Words spoken aloud to a crowd of strangers.