A Beatles haircut and loose Khaki painters overalls rendered the child sexless. He or she walked over to Hugh’s side and standing tiptoe peered into the casket. She, for Hugh had determined it was a girl, stroked the silk lining.

“Eat more bugs,” said an old one.

Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope way back in the Sixties. There are so many other earths out there that they are almost infinite. Now in our other lives we have to shuttle from planet to planet reading our poems. And o

When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…

I do not know the species of birds here. / The two I see playing on the balcony at night / I can never call back.

The capsules tumble around, one of them plinking against the crown in my upper-right jaw. I hate the crown… a mute reminder of the first time Brad hit me. Swallowing the capsules, my tongue probes the left side of my mouth, finding the other two crowns…

‘It's perfect,' said Maggie as she lay in the casket. Harold Barnes offered his hand. ‘It's a shame he never got to see it,' Maggie continued as she climbed free of the coffin.

At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.

The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

and pressed an area on my forehead between my eyes

Once or twice, it was only once or twice. Three times, if I really count. And I wasn't giving or loving. And my self stayed hidden and I kept most of my clothes on.

The first days of October are ordinary in the way that milk just hours away from spoiling is ordinary milk. You can baptise your cornflakes with it, but part of you knows the whole thing is just shy of almost right.

‘A whole damn plane is missing and the only damn clue we have is a 9mm bullet,’ Picasso said to Victor Bravo whom he calls Torv. He’s his partner at the Picasso Investigation Agency. They questioned the guard assigned on the night of the plane

I wrote her a poem.She said, “I hate poetry.” I said, “OK, just read the words then."