living heroes (issue #5: serpentia)

arch your spine
over and before them
soft, white underbelly exposed...

and they’ll forget
to keep those wicked coils from draping
around their necks

(these scales leave traces
so that others will know
just where this noose came from)


          [this girl
          eats her lunch from a brown paper bag,
              (cold soup and caffeine)
          and from time to time,
          she wonders
          if she really is the last link in a chain of mistakes

          oh, tell me it can’t be this way

          the water slips through her fingers
          even as she laughs]


you didn’t grow the apples,
though you found the tree

    (but tell me why,                      oh why,
    were you there to begin with?)


slip, slide, and scrape
your way inside,
leave them at a loss for words
with thoughts only

of action


(and maybe, for a moment,
you will feel alive...)