C plods through clods dud mud, visaged
devisaged from shaky bridge sin/drome
e-net underflows caramel can't stop sweet talk
she's late but give the cranky morning sleep
blacker coffee, cashew crunch like mourning bacon
can't stop talking walking stalking stockings red hair
blond hair skimpy hair mons without hair minestrone thin

C gives me the steaming slap me mock jock
how's your cock, why can't intimacy ride the wide
tobaggan off away, smash itself to Smith Orleans
I'd give her the sweet kiss raven tresses say nono
we're coming live from barbell testicles, a homily
to the untested egg, the crusted ovoid molecule

C has a hormone gaze over expiring omelette
and sausage, I just want to have a normal
child. life. re/lay/shun/ship, she says, as if
you could buy it at the till, but shopping muscles
are deformed from birth- come on girl you've got
to sell your self/ selves, there's more than one way
in a two way universal soup. lick your stamp, lick
your pearly forehead stamp, you're off
at a running postage paid alert

stare out my eyes my C
shake yourself out of that pleated blouse
we'll tackle the whole number problem
if you have won / one you will have awl / all
don't snip yourself short with your eyebrows
raised, leave the self-deprecation to others
you can see I' m in love C with anyone
it's what tastes best in the heaving afterglow
cooked eggs over sleazy puts meat on
hormone cruise. how can your mother
not approve? a case of dysfunctional
calling disfunk/ shun all blacker. so, my
father was a ray-cyst too. he did eventually
leave me out the generation gap
I will fill it with resounding mayhem

epilogue for C: ice floes like derelicts, cold
morning street currents ever work ready
dying of the consumption, wheez coffin
traffic burgeons into cultural hysteria,
becomes a news report - live
cliche imagic, adolescent thong throng
spike through your vice strained heart
jump start to a dead stop, so old so old
C, it's beginning all over again, like finding
a new name for everything, such romance
we're all French in space, walk, talk
the stiff beanstalk, it's a damn good thing
we're pliable. on permanent channel surf
our culture scan is splintered radio eyes
piece quilt of atavisms, anachronisms
adapted feces for our faces, gives us
the patchwork grin, semaphore in the upscale
biblical twitch sense, I've got Jesus but much more
sense, to not incite hysteria, let them know
you too are shitless terrorized. and buying
everything to prove it.

Bruce Strand
Copyright � 2003