i.
his face: a banged-up car, that insurance would not cover,
haloed by spaghetti-strings of dangling hair,
knowing too much more
than his environs allow. and how.
his #1 #2 pencil situates
like some primed nuclear warhead
in the slot canyon between
earlobe and scalp,
nestled in his right hand
a dark purple bic
that scrawls fanciful hieroglyphs,
torrenting down a half-empty sheet
to tell a story that, like global warming,
is essential to fathom: yet much
easier ignored.
ii.
these corpulent, constant constellations
of well-watered flowers,
robust rows of picked, published blooms,
fertilized by an entitled essence
better than the other leading brand,
the one whose skull and crossboned label
simply says:
"don't you know you must wilt?"
random, refreshable rain
turns these gaunt garden paths
into runaway rivers,
yet, due to their special circumstance,
none of these cherished, cheery flowers
could, or would, ever drown.
