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To touch the sky, grope it illicitly —
Megan’s law for the ephemeral bits

of nature,

to be on a watch-list for (a lack of) life —

for a vomit of – what we shall call

“gesticulatory punctuation.”

      Oh, cheers and jeers coming down like a ballast,

a ballast with a bible verse etched on it, no less.

 

The man in the business suit does not just touch the sky

      (yodeling off-tune)

but with a button on his lapel of his face smiling,

slides a finger down a private part

of the now.

Not to stand on the shoulders of giants,

      he never heard of Atlas tossing the earth;

the brass tacks of the matter underpin the matter.

 

Fat man —

a man as fat as his head

with belts like equators,

      holding his illicit thoughts in—

wears his emotion around his neck

on a fat gold chain marked “Happiness,”

starts a monopoly mainly to not pass through,

and brands like cattle the ass of the poor.

 

He’d have an illicit affair with himself

if only somebody would turn the lights on.

 

With a pudgy little finger,

      wearing someone else’s wedding ring.

Sometimes,

his thick hands go to the globular,

      and he puts the sky in his pocket,

calling it a perusal of his dream —

where it most definitely, certainly, absolutely, conspiratorially,  does not want to be —

him hoarding its freedom.

 

      The shadiest characters can make their shadow

from a spotlight.

To the world, he’s the uncle in the corner

      whose articulation is vulgar, but not avuncular,

a whodunit of soul’s murder,

of one who does not own for himself

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Michael T. Smith is an Assistant Professor of English who teaches both writing and film courses. He has published over 150 pieces (poetry and prose) in over 80 different journals. He loves to travel.

Show Michael some love via PayPal at kael.thomas.smith(at)gmail(dot)com.