Dough
I am dough;
Hold me in your palm.
There I will rest
And warm your clay hands,
Where blood has fled to safer havens.
Squeeze me; hold me tight.
Like a tree promises its leaves
That they, one day, will fall,
I will slip through your fingers
As darkness escapes an open drawer.
Tiny Floating Tin Boats
I feel sorry for the patient stars
Watching us watch them
From distances only light can travel
Waiting for us to greet them
From tiny floating tin boats
Bearing flowers born of the corpses of dead men.
Planets passed will line the streets
Like tin soldiers in a dollar store fiction
With hung heads hiding timorous faces
From thin-crusted sailors
In tiny floating tin boats
Seeking to set flame to burning immortal shores.
We will call our mothers from tin can telephones.
Our ingenuous words will travel the length of that taut string.
But our string will have snapped:
Prudence is not a virtue of a child.
Our tiny floating tin boats will rust
And the stars will revile at our asininity.
