Self Control

There is a writhing
worm in my mind snaking around the things I want to do to your body.
Instead I open the nearest book
to pour salt on the sex-crazed snail and feel
tight spasms in my biceps, my abdominals, my calves as she withers. She turns to a dreadful dried up carcass,
reduced to
chaff blown over
the page that reads:
"those that live in love, God draws to himself and encloses them within himself"

I close the book and dusty dead skin cells shoot out from both ends

On November 9th

leaf
come down

said the blue grass

but the yellowing fellow

only gripped tighter

to the brown barking

branch begging him to

break off, but in spite

his stem pinched

plugging both hands

white knuckled in

pathetic persistence

he wouldn’t pluck

refused to fall –

if it be the death of him

to fall meant to break

the wristwatch and tick

backwards, trickle

independently in to the

unkempt pile in the street

and become

one shade of red in a million