1.11.2007

softest skin

i am a homeless milton bradley,
plastic telephones inside and out
step over borderlines,
as red suns speak of flames and distant shouts of
softest skin sending their sounds
around my pressed
white shirt.
i am a silk-tied train station,
cases of drivel chain-linked in the light,
the fluorescent hum shoots blue invisible
as uptown and queens trains tiptoe under streets
that support displays in windows incased where
softest skin presses against
top models.
i am a lincoln log donation,
no real grain or rings or dust,
true blooms don't sit next to five and dime
boots or bottles or envelope openers
as children pass by and in the wake of their wind,
softest skin touches buttons on a
gameboy.
i am a cold concrete dance routine,
making ends meet around a chalk line,
synchronous feet stomp babies in air
as central park wrinkles by and adds to the collection
of fatherless fathers who can barely watch
softest skin fold money into a
bucket.
i am a rainbow-stained puddle,
painting the curbs of carpeted streets,
and hiding the wrappers of cancer-lined paper
where i can see everyone in their horse power stride
as the clank of a turnstile ripples my face
where softest skin once reflected
desire.
i am a tombstone flower,
petals of white are actually yellow,
and creased crinkled edges add to my allure
but no one will see me, in fact, in my
death.

if only the hands of the ones below
would reach through the earth and the roots and the leaves
and pluck me to smell me, i could map landscapes of
the
deadliest skin, so soft to the
touch.

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