Goldfish

Colds do strange things to my mind...I think some of my brain cells escape when I blow my nose.
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#1.
My goldfish jumped out of his bowl once.
He flipped his tail and got out--
I think I put in to much water.

He flopped on the carpet
and I got down on my hands and knees
and looked at his tail
and I told him he looked a lot prettier
when he was in the water.

Then I scooped him up and slid him
back in and he swam around, but
I don't know what I would have done
if he had looked prettier
out of the water.

#2.
My brother said that when he was
little, he cut open a goldfish and
popped its eyeball out
and I though of a shriveled eyeball
just sitting
underneath a desk
until a broom came along and
rolled it into a dustpan.

#3.
We were at the zoo
looking at animals in cages
and I ate goldfish out of
a tupperware container
that was shaped like a fish.

I looked at every one
before I ate it and
I thought of a lot of
goldfishes swimming
in bread crumbs
behind the bars
of a really big cage.

And when I am a little older,
I told myself, I will let those monkeys out
out of their cages, and the cheetahs
and polar bears, but not the hippos,
because they smell, and I will feed
them all goldfish for lunch and dinner,
but I couldn't decide what to feed them
for breakfast, because that is
a very important meal
and goldfish
just would not suffice.

Scenes

To be read Mitch Hedberg-style.
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I inject my brain into the blackness
and my eyes widen in shock when
the neon green screen appears
"PG-13: Parental Guidance Suggested."

The music soars and rumbles
and my brain feels a little tipsy
like it's drunk on sound
and will at any minute pass out
from the effects of its inebriation.

The first scene and the opening line
and my eyes are fixed glazedly
on the massive screen in front of me
angled slightly away and a little to the left.

I am the main character and also
the girl in the corner. Sometimes
I am the mouse in the trap and,
occasionally, the dastardly villain.

I feel the pain and my brain
cries a little when they do--
little nervous butterflies dance
in mating rituals down

in my stomach when she is
stuck in the burning building
or the drowning car or even
that really bad relationship.

And I am the kid that locked himself
in the closet and is scared to
high heaven because the monster with
the green eyes and the warts and
the saliva dripping from the side of its mouth
is nibbling my toe.

And when you tap me on the shoulder
and ask if I want Raisinettes
I'm probably still the convict with the suspicious eyes
and if I turn to you and say

that I robbed that bank, I really did,
you can just smile and, yes, Raisinettes
are fine.

Unveiling

I read Louise Gluck's Averno and decided that I, too, wanted to be introspective.
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There would have been a time when he didn’t exist
and all there would have been of him would be labeled ‘possibility’
and placed in a jar on a shelf—
though labeling, in essence, denotes existence.

would have been a little blank space
floating in a wispy pink cloud
and ready to be filled with matter and ideas

and like other small blank spaces,
would have waited
until a figure in a long white coat
held a needle and said to himself as a notation,

“Stand ready to inject the possibilities with
reality: an egg is meeting with sperm in Sector 3972.”
Then a blinding light would flash and little reality cells
would form.

and when the birth light flashed, white hot pain would run over
the cells and last forever until finished.
and the cells would hold all the emotion in time
but would know at first only love.

and angels would sing over the use of a soul
and would ready their weapons to protect its innocence
while demons gnashed their teeth and tore skin and bone
anticipating the time
when the soul would choose.

The figure in the coat would watch the glowing
reality cells form a baby
and when he took off his coat after the birth,

He was the beginning and the end, and in the throbbing
silence of the light, he was all the possibilities of love.