Cin Sweet

Like the lonely winter tree
Outstretched branches with never any leaves
Lonely skeletons, with lonely smiles
They look away while trying to hide
...

I'll remember you,
Every time I see the green,
That paints our rolling hills,
When the weather turns to Spring,
...

When the sun bleeds
On and through the window panes
Indiscriminately so
Him tasting of my sour skin
...

This is it,50th and C Streets
Damn school's crumbling down
Right down around our knees
See them apartments, them over there
...

depression wilts me
fear binds me
i sag, shrinking, sinking iron heavy
i'm five-'o-clock stockings
...

You, doe eyed, those lashes
Hand grabbing them up
Like a miner's gold dust
Scratched up little red car
...

Will I?
I dunno, I might like you enough
in Chicago
enough to go to bed with you
...

everyone 'round here
so slow, barbaric
they know what they know
anything else, they say
...

Seventeen, a beauty queen
What was it like in your dreams?
When you stared up at the stars
What did you wish for?
...

Happy now this Higgins
with his natural bristle head
zoom brooms for legs
lunch-gut in his belly pantry
...

I sat counting up all the blackeyes
i'd ever got
All the broken bones bloody noses
from all the battles i'd ever fought
...

Poppy only spoke at the courthouse,
Whittling imagination leftovers, fading
Blood full of red Cherokee
His brow carved tight in apathy and drink
...

Peril,
Umbrella that breaks the rain
Dry and tight, the wishing
Hungry for the sun
...

shh, i to me, whistling, blowing, leaning
one day, or wide sky blue full of eternity
either, I reached up to claw my mind-itch
this, geographically half-way to my dead
...

Every day another dream
of anything. everything
you imagine it might be
Every night another day
...

Howling, these coyote eyes fixing on the moon,
Howling, even then, in this now weathered skin,
Wrapped much tighter, much tighter then
Much tighter around these now brittle bones
...

read about me today, printed scrolling waste
something someone, I dunno, someplace said
remembering me, huh, as if I were dead
am i dead? has the medicine man killed me dead yet?
...

different,
i cartwheel past,
berry-like
me a scab on your khaki eye
...

If only I could
I would
pick up where
I left off when
...

i'll wear my smile 'round here just like anyone, , , , , , , anyway
i'll be looking up like anyone no matter, , , , what you say
i'll take up my little space just like everyone, , , , , anyone
i'll take my time like anyone, , , , , until I'm done
...