Judy Blume and the French Inhale

The sentence strung through my mind like cobwebs
so I swatted it down off the shelf,
and into the sun where it started to melt.
I could only seem to simmer one thought at a time,
one thought all the time:

Go.

I didn't mean to make the tears on your cheek bend to your lips,
make you cover your eyes when our words started to trip.

But her mouth when it's open makes the whole room blend and drip.
When we're together it's like weather,
all I can seem to muster is this sort of flustered wind that could blow a ship over,
tip the whole thing over

I felt like I was gobbling, and slobbering, and hoarding while you made a bowl with your hands,
The slick suck of my ocean pulling away from your desperate dry land, where every quick question festered into an entitled demand.
So I'm floating
to a city of ninety islands connected by one thousand bridges, and bricks tuck away all the stumbles and fidgets.
Visions revive you instead of downplay and imply,
Supply you with enough energy to scratch every lonely itch of the kitchen, if you only knew where to begin.

In the library of abstracts, everything is weighed out and laid out in lines,
it's a world inside time.
A paranoid void makes every clatter echo, and every tooth ache like an extraordinary machine.
Sharp hair trimmers vibrate higher than tremors after earthquakes that shake up your spleen.

So it is about empty files lined up on a desk! (and how many you can take)
It took only a brief second in time to shatter your teeth because my intention brought grief.
I shoved the files in my briefcase and flew out the window
Sirens were screaming-
lights!
and tires!
and flares!
But I've learned how to stay up in the sky!
I can settle like a "married-life" housewife
or stay for a day like a terrified housefly

In a house of big words, a world inside time,
the dust crawls. . .
and everything that is swept falls out of place and ruins the lines.

Meth Mouth

I smoke so much you could turn my teeth into jokes-
like every time I open my mouth it looks like fried egg yolks,
or, my gums draw blood faster than Picasso ever could-
Or I should take a note from George Washington and replace them with wood.
But I admire my ability to forget the past presidents who followed the first commander in chief,

and smile
at my vast and infinite reaction to the present
and all the while I'm cracking jokes. . . and my teeth.