Cavve Singer

Imagery Rehearsal Therapy

You are wax shavings on cardboard

Bits, torn from its diaphanous flesh.

I see how you treat the perfumed flakes

Emitting their melancholy against

A dehydrated brown silhouette.  Wax

Curls in your hand as coaxed as autumn

Leaves exhaling after a winter coma.

The abscess of sadness writhing in your

Sockets cannot prep the ground

For the eclectic rainbow sewage runoff;

Recycled mascara and neon lipstick that despoils

Your shower drain and eludes your face

 Leaving only pale patches to hide you,

Norman, from the whore Pierrot who stifles

Your genius under a cherry blow pop wrapper.

Your skin is candy-shell and the Clown’s

Hands, three fingers and counting, burst first

Through your neck before opening your mouth

Just wide enough so that it might resurrect

It’s stillborn head beyond your teeth and wear

Your skull like a turtleneck.  It’s in the children’s

Eyes Norman, the torment and fear that cannot

Be remedied through infinite tissue and self

Deprecation.  A pie in the face makes them cry

While you turn as deformed on the inside

As you’ve drawn yourself on the outside.

I’m sure after hours though, with a black and mild

Clenched in your lips, an undergraduate

Will finish his final photography project by finding

You sitting alone, peculiar and irreverent

In your unbeknownst irony, blowing smoke

Under your rubber nose; mining in the abandoned

Shame of your subconscious.  Norman, don’t run

Back to the anatomical trough of fear, insipid

And juvenile.  Feed the children lime green dogs

Composed from your lungs and watch the reverie

They experience from the inanimate.  Remove

The rubber from your filet knife, Norman.  Time

To carve rose circles on those cheeks, and a smile

From your dimples.  Take the residue from both, dye

Your dark curls red.  Don’t look in the mirror,

Leave your glacial eyes in the sink so they look

Up at you.  Let Norman and Funzo experience

An altruistic petrifaction, equally.

The Roman’s called you a societal catalyst,

The Greeks adored their masters of satire,

And you, Norman, call yourself Funzo

The polka-dotted party clown.

Many Mouthed Glutton

I pity the shower drain

That eats my filth

And can never exhale.

What do the beads

Of sweat taste like,

Flowing off

My calloused

Palms and the veins

Of my calve?  Do they

Crawl down like Grandma’s

Applesauce? 

Are they the howling

Of coyotes, that deep

Throated celebration

Post winter?

No, those silver lungs

Nurse a poison,

An overdose

Of Dove almond soap,

The resonance forming

A fine, seizing foam.

The miserable bastard

Swallowed too much

Of me to breathe.

The Cellar Door

He drives a mid-life crisis down 84

Going to an upstate New York town,

Somewhere over the Newburgh Bridge.

His daughter’s tortoise shell Ray Bans

Sit on his face because he thinks

The retro contemporary Wayfarers

Will help him understand Jonny Craig

And skinny jean, beanie outfits in July.

There is a club in New Paltz, once you’ve run

Down all the brick homes on Huguenot

There’s a cellar door club where they play

Billie Holiday and ash falls onto the floor,

Under your heel.  He sees young girls skin

Turn pale neon inside their cells phones

Wondering if a quatrain of Franco

On a napkin would be enough for their attention.

The man lived a life of 80 and will die 70,

In a red ’78 Impala, miles from his mortgage

And his Cheryl in sweatpants and hair ties,

Miles from his children and their loaned

Futures, he thought about meeting the love

Of his life, how he wished they made love first,

How he wished they knew each other second.

“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out. ”

-Katherine Dunn