Grand Opening

(from 'Lax Content', 2003)

There is a Pocket hiding behind us
a pocket behind EVERYBODY
and it's full of our loose change

but it doesn't know
that a pocket is a very bad place
to put coins
and when THEY FALL OUT
it will curse a moonless night
of black swearwords
topped off with people
topping themselves
on backstreets
in street corners
(behind the walls)
red slits
against city gray
a skip full of bones
as i, am full of bones
but i don't have the answers
and i think i lost the questions
through the holes in my own tattered pockets
'though the questions had their own holes anyway.....

Down in the Road
there's a string dog smiling by a streetlight
and an old boy brushing the hair
from his bristly eyes
But it doesn't help him see
THE GIANT POCKET
standing in the shadows behind him
and he instead stares at his hands
as he struggles to remember
the way home.

I watch him from my window
a speck
a single concious point
like an itch behind my forehead
and know i won't sleep tonight.
i think about how maybe
under his yellowed nails
there's another community
and there might be streets down there too
with streaks of red
on a dark gray sketch
all of their own.
a stretch of the imagination at any rate
..but i still can't help wondering
if they'd have pockets lurking behind them also.

you want more?