Sourballs

May Day

Bright mild weather claims
its fees: thwarted dreams of leisure,
recurrent stifled sneeze.


Distracted by Your Watch

You cannot hear the groan
of  the elastic space-time continuum
plucked like a huge rubber band
by the careless hand of God

because of the steady tick tick tick
of the Timex on your wrist.


Space-time Curve Ball

I had a sure hold on time once
but lately it grows slippery

folding in upon itself
when it should stretch

or stretching, endless,
toward the work day's end.

It is no lounger accountable to me
and twists in lethal curves

like the space beyond
this safe-seeming little cul-de-sac.


Petri Dish

The planet turns into the dark.
Lights of human occupation burn
in patterns like the growth
of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,
across the agar surfaces of continents.

Debtors

We are born indebted to the stars
whose dead bodies we inherit.
We then spend our brief time

as singular objects
dependent upon the fire
of  our small, yellow, living star

which would incinerate us all
without the spin and volcanism
of this happy accident, earth.


Heavenly Body

The body that will break all bodies
circles unseen,
following the thrust and tug
of gravity,
serene through parsecs and centuries,
awaiting its
torrid introduction to the Earth.


Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Wash the day's dishes.
They will l return tomorrow, dirtied.

Wash the jeans you wore
to weed and trim the yard.

And after that, the white
undergarments of the work week.

Routine and repetition are
the little prayers of civilized life.

The wage of sin is squalor.