(SPILL-O ON CHRISTMAS, MIDNIGHT)
If we gave a day what a year drags out of us,
every midnight would be Christmas.
Spill-O cleans out his whiskey collection.
He long ago arranged his life
so there are not many things
it is not alright to puke on.
Tonight he shuffles his symptoms
until the light shows through again.
This isn’t supposed to happen.
He’s signed good treaties
with the tribes of chaos,
which they mostly respect.
But Spill-O incites them,
recites the yes no poem,
yesnoyesnoyesnoyesno…
like the electrical circuit
that opens and closes experience.
And when first scouts emerge from the dark horizon,
Spill-O says his name is Christmas Midnight.
He says hello, lets loose
a battle cry like a car alarm.
(SPILL-O’s EMPTY BED)
That university girl
had too much vulture in her for Spill-O.
And he forwent the opportunity.
The cold bridge and shaky,
silent morning were more his scene.
He admits that’s not
very All-American Boy of him.
And he has to live with that.
(SPILL-O, OUT ON THE TOWN)
Spill-O took Carnegie Hall by storm,
and what a waste of time it was.
The restless feet, shuffling pages, whispering,
and the constant tide of breath and phlegm
drowned out the music.
From this fog of unknowing,
the car ads in the concert program bragged
that there are no rules about what you can do.
But they ignored the part where there’s
no rules about what can be done to you.
The wheezing and the music
left Spill-O fundamentally unmoored,
sprinting to the womb and back again
because of what he found there.
His heart snapped instead of beating
and the telephones’ busy signal
ascended heavenward infinitely.
And Spill-O started to live,
to finally see as if the sky was crumbling.
He hit the town.
But the streets were empty,
all the people busy, indoors,
gearing up to die of old age.
Glint Literary Journal 