Compass Rose
© Copyright 2004 Brittany Baker

With few wallows, versatile, unscathed.
Yellow, bleeding onto rosy flesh and chiseled abs.
Green oblivion with shopping malls for neighbors.
Death Valley secrets, innumerable manatee floating harbors.
Slip n’ Slide backyard hypothermia.
Run through the sprinklers, cascades of blue and red and white too.
Terminate me o mighty one, sitting, breathing in Sactown.
Your wife looks like a skeleton.
People. Lots of people.
Some reached Nirvana or got stuck in the rain.
Mothers consumed by the ball and the foot and the kid.
SUV mania, bad driving, red light bellbottoms.
Elementary children high off the ecstatic fumes of Expo markers, board hysteria.
Hallucinating inhibitions of dirt, filth, pigs, chicken eggs.
Stars are very bright (shiny, not smart).
Tokyo dreams on the big screen, beautiful anorexia of the heart.
Futile in the dispute of perfection and disease.

Gas station meter full of leaks- spilling onto Middle America.
Your pocket change is gone.
Hurricane-racer, cat-got-your-tongue nothingness, no shores and no fish, but chickens, many, many chickens.
Cooped up, startled by the sunlight and gray nose hairs of the farmer.

The mut sleeps his nocturnal presence away.
Don’t worry; I’m a mut too.
John Deere can have fame, lackluster fame, but no place in Hollywood.
Tractor poker with no SUVs saying ‘Hit me’
Picture frame blues on sticky August nights.
Smoke in bars- pass go.
Orchestras of seemingly harmless bronchitis.
Not all is bland, the bitter sounds of torn plaster, wood and shelter, lives turned stark, naked in the eye of the storm.
Hear West! You do hear, but God forbid you should wander far from your Pottery Barn homestead weary armchair and Egyptian cotton.
Don’t stray from the glowing embers of your fake fireplaces, or listen, or yell.
Dust bowl marathon starts at 7PM, eat quick.

Super-sized glass cages of hypertension and high blood pressure.
Keep a close eye on the copy boy; he likes to photocopy his ass.
Waiting for a face to confuse him.
Pigeons refuse stale bread from the blind man and the tall man and the meat man.
Post-Its go up ten cents on Tuesday.
Stick it to me.
Torn shoes eat at the stale gum on the streets.
The memorable Crest Whitened smiles on the billboards and trucks and fingerprints are apparent and broken.
Hip-hop nonchalant desktop explosions rock the East.
With each new college comes another fresh rape case and suicide note.
Use the last thousand on a Rolex and hand the bum a penny, or a dime, or a grunt.
Second thoughts take too much energy.
Hold my hand and sing with me of beautiful sweatshops and corrections.
Fathers torn by the court system, jacked up insubordination.
The children’s kites won’t fly anymore, dear.
Aloha leave me out and shiver down to the bone Eskimo.
Move your snowy hats and gloves away from the President’s hunting gear.
Print me some words on those dead trees.
The compass never lies unless your brain contains lead.