Our souls
are one thousand firecrackers
each stick waiting to burn.

Sometimes our souls are quiet,
and the firecrackers are stagnant
and wet.

And sometimes we burn slow,
the firecrackers smoldering sweet and terrible,
the ashes falling in poetic teardrops to the ground.
We are tied down and the firecrackers
are screaming to burst out with a jubilant
expression of WOWWW!

But they are denied.

Until that one moment when all the pieces are set
and finally the firework of our soul is
let loose and explodes with loud, sulfuric glory,
spreading its light and smoke and wonder
across the quiet plains.

Hearts another beat a second
A+ made the grade rare meat
Why is everything told to
us in a heartbeat
This is getting way too sweet
"Lips took Beeswax" bittersweet

Someone got stung B-
Strong sound muffler
Joyride Owl Hoot clever
Sweet and sourpuss
honey babe

Her mustard lips of custard
Hot temperature rising
The spicy lady opening
up new horizon gate

Too many sad rides
empty plates last joyride
Gas empty blame the county
Why did we call this joyride
without knowing
your fate

The others are more noticed
Fashionably they came late
Dine and the Wine joyride
romanced money upfront
advanced

Lips like jewels left their stale
You were the chosen one taken
for a ride from
a crooked male

Like bushel big loot basket
Rock the Kasbah rocket
Golden joyride ticket the
pickpocket
Getting away with ******
****** lips in the gasket

The joyride so beat looked
disheveled new love
unraveled
So messy but **** neat
looking, Lexus,
She looks mighty fine like
Venus, I beg you to zoom

And the love after all the treats
Sherlocked in his room
The devil made me do it
All flushed and deep red
Hearing his joyride of beats
What was really going
through her head
Hard rock ambient
painter deviant

The holiday like racing hot rod
Harvest Halloween of a joyride
Two peas in dark maze pod
Igniting a hot fire
Her lips need to decide
Who was underneath the
fumes of his fire

The coffee taste accelerating
Do we feel the pulsing beat
What a high anxiety peak
High intense flavor
You waiting for his joyride
Christmas and Hannukah
Tree to decide that's easier
But wait for true love above all
the gifts to deliver
Like bedrock meeting
Monster ride plant-eating Bug
More slugs my chinch
Inchworm of books at Joyride
College Dorm horn alarm
Manifestation enjoying
her joyride
What a conniver
Greece with my niece
vacation
Basil New rival tea
Pomegranate Cherry-bomb
Blonde Bombshell
Culture novelty joyride
Ring my servant bell
Met their sanity tomb

Her hand's dainty they shine
and sparkle
Her lips know how to jingle
Arace for hearts of stories
and memories
Always the death hand takes
a ride to the winding road of
the cemeteries
Just stay for the moment
think about the
Joyride forth of July
Our firecrackers went off at
the same time
Brie cheese favorite time
English tea and crackers
Like two lips sublime read
her diaries in his designer dockers

Going to the end of the earth lips
light up New York City galleries

Needing the fresh corner
Sunset taking lowrider Boulevard
Hollywood Oh! No world
Wildly satanic or the carefree type
Her joy smile he's sold on skype
Benevolent triad remembering
The mad magazine
MLM Maserati longevity Master
Of the joyride gun blaster
"Lips build like a Pyramid"
Becoming irresistible
Not to humble

Lips race Joyride to gamble
Nothing weakens to crumble
Baking a crumb cake its
doable stays together but
things unnamed not like
a marriage

We get blamed joyride
got damaged
We become gullible
What becomes of the broken heart
someone isn't reliable
Lips are not responsible
Leadership has you cornered  
To stumble upon her lips
Rendered steamboat surrender
How he tumbles
Mr. Grey Poupon Mustard seed
He plants her like his
only joyride
In need
We are all Jupiter the moon
joy to the world
All the boys and girls being
taken for joyrides

The Beach boy's video games
Spy lips whose to blame
Phillip screwdriver
But they take a ride
All you could pick a hot buffet
feasting she is still wearing
hot lipstick
Men have their choice of
they're next
Joyride Bride about the money
Wall-Street cars of hobbies
investing
Yeah right?

Firecrackers to frighten the animals.
Shadows of mountains run
On the surface of the fords.

I'll light every
Firework that I can find
For you.
Every ounce of you,
Including the parts
That you like to hide.
They deserve to be seen
And heard too.

The next second
Not to mention the next year
Isn't promised.
Although not the same
As overseas,
There is still reason to celebrate
The crackle of firecrackers,
The release of red lanterns,
To light the street of your heart,
As well as the sky.

We're not as young as we
Used to be.
But that doesn't mean that we have
To act like it.
The fire that courses
Through my lungs can't wait
To get out and roar
Like a dragon,
And break the silence
In celebration.

A red envelope wrapped in fire,
And sealed with the flash
Of prosperous smiles.
Every time I see you,
It feels like New Year's.
And when you kiss me,
My soul sizzles,
Stirring up this fire
That dances through my body.

The next second
Not to mention the next year
Isn't promised.
Tomorrow may not come.
If there ever was a time
To burn down and sweep up
Pieces of our old selves,
Why wait?

my mind is like firecrackers
explodes with thoughts
of you.

- kra

It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke,
calling, riser after riser, who cares

about you, who cares, splintering up
the hip that was merely made of crystal,
the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.

So I fell apart. So I came all undone.
Yes. I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones!

What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus
until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked

and then they placed me, tied me up on their plate,
and wheeled me out to their coffin, my nest.
Slowly the siren slowly the hearse, sedate
as a dowager. At the E. W. they cut off my dress.

I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!"
and the nurse replied, "Wrong name. My name
is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device,
a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.

The orthopedic man declared,
"You'll be down for a year." His scoop. His news.
He opened the skin. He scraped. He pared
and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.

That takes brute strength like pushing a cow
up hill. I tell you, it takes skill
and bedside charm and all that know how.
The body is a **** hard thing to ****.

But please don't touch or jiggle my bed.
I'm Ethan Frome's wife. I'll move when I'm able.
The T. V. hangs from the wall like a moose head.
I hide a pint of bourbon in my bedside table.

A bird full of bones, now I'm held by a sand bag.
The fracture was twice. The fracture was double.
The days are horizontal. The days are a drag.
All of the skeleton in me is in trouble.

Across the hall is the bedpan station.
The ***** and stools pass hourly by my head
in silver bowls. They flush in unison
in the autoclave. My one dozen roses are dead.

The have ceased to *******. They hang
there like little dried up blood clots.
And the heart too, that *******, how it sang
once. How it thought it could call the shots!

Understand what happened the day I fell.
My heart had stammered and hungered at
a marriage feast until the angel of hell
turned me into the punisher, the acrobat.

My bones are loose as clothespins,
as abandoned as dolls in a toy shop
and my heart, old hunger motor, with its sins
revved up like an engine that would not stop.

And now I spend all day taking care
of my body, that baby. Its cargo is scarred.
I anoint the bedpan. I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,

for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were ******* together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.

Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired. In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone
have multiplied. My bones are merely bored

with all this waiting around. But the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death creche.

The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus of the violent heart. The zeal
of my house doth eat me up.

in the distance
Really ?
today is July 6
a slight breeze flutters
through sweetly bedded petunias
my shirt waves freely
after a long  day
of  goodbye
your
battle wearied  body
in  limbo
every hug ,tear and laugh
your  legacy of love
spans  the globe
fills  rooms
with memories
and regrets
that clock
is not your friend
it ticks away
menacingly
marking the last moments
spent in our midst
seems
not that long ago
we all watched
firecrackers
together
on your front porch

Pick up the bones
Littered on the ground like a necklace
You made when you were five
Out of sea shells and mermaid hair
Wishing that you had scales and that you could swim
Because little girls don’t play in sandboxes anymore
But in their mothers’ makeup
Pretending to get fake injections in their face
Popping Smarties that they wish were diet pills
While they wait for their ******* to come in
The ones like Barbie’s: disproportional to her body—
A twenty pound weight that forces you forwards
With puckered lips and wrinkled spine—
Setting them up for disappointment and therapy
That comes in exactly the same shade of pink as the doll house
That promises real answers and quick fixes
Which figurines can’t convincingly lie about
Because they are more real as a plastic piece of childhood
Than the science behind depression and the statistically-backed  
positives of fancy water with antioxidants.

Pick up the bones
While little boys play with firecrackers and rocks
Popping them at the feet of faceless passersby
Wondering if the snaps are anything like the guns
From COD instead of WWII
Hoping that the girl next door will grow up to be a ****
But more interested in her mom being a cougar
That cigarettes will stop being bad for them
Because Indiana Jones made them look so cool
And leather jackets will always be in style
So they grow bored with legos and G.I. Joe’s
Because there’s no ***, no violence in imagination—
Not real violence anyway.

So bend down and pick them up
The shattered remains of what was left of the pretend baby
You thought you wanted
What was left of you before you remembered to dye your hair
And to darken your eyes with black smudges
What was left of your brother before he joined the army
Before he fell inside a scotch bottle and drowned
In the amber liquid that reminded him of *****
Passed down from your father.
Clutch at what was left of your sister before she wasted away into
The shallow shell of what she thought was beautiful
To the point of emaciation
Because pointed elbows and sunken cheeks
Will get her the movies she thinks she wants
And that you know she won’t get because she’s
Become too fake, too plastic to play a’real-boy.’

Now put them in your pocket
Because the wind is blowing and you’re afraid they will fly away
Afraid you will too without them to weigh you down
To keep you here.

Tuck them up and wrap them in mermaid hair and sea shells
And wish that you could be the person who played in sandboxes
And only cried if she got shampoo in her eyes
The one who made necklaces instead of doctor’s appointments
And laughed at herself instead of being tired all the time.

You put them in your pocket
And pray that someday you’ll figure out how to put them back together
Stand them up like a statue
One that you can make wave or frown
But not smile because you can’t remember what theirs looked like
(And it wouldn’t be realistic anyway)
So that you can make-believe
they never fell apart in the first place and that you never fell apart with them.

I've got the taste of Black Cat firecrackers in my mouth
Tongue trapped by
Exotic fruit instead of cheese  
Now nothing has a taste

I.
Well you know that I sip on my sadness, my dear,
filthy palms, filled to the brim.
And I know that you watch trains
passing by, dizzy eyed, still drunk with sin.
Your teeth reek of reality lately,
You smile facts, figures and cracked calcium.
Now, once more with cupped hands
leaking, shaking delirium up to your chin.

Well I know that I’ve missed the point, honey
I should get it tattooed on my wrists,
but you know you talk like firecrackers
so flinching gets awful hard to resist.
I make believe that I’m right like craters
make moons believe.
So I’ll comment on comets and ignore
truths popping between parentheses.

My delusion has your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue...

II.
You say,
“It’s fiction we live in. You play in pastels
and fake hollywood rhythms and I’m tired,
staring up at your screen.

You're addicted to this diction. My voice is lost,
screaming these words you keep stealing
and twist for yourself what they mean."

III.
Your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue's not numb.
Drink deep, darling. Let's inoculate.

IV.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

It's this clothing, from bedpost to box-spring,
It's all wax-coats and smoke screens,
live lit-candle lasting
When did skin begin to fit wrong?

V.
So they say, one day
Or, one day, they say,
we’ll find ghosts sewed to the seams
of Fringe Wolf bones picked clean
who waltz wicked and crooked a foxtrot to show
that sometimes loss is beautiful.
And when I ask for your hand you’ll look tragic
like this dance was only ever for me
and my feet always fall off beat
Like I beat off any discreet romancing
To pretend that this dancing was
Anything more than masturbatory.
I guess I do dance the way I drink:
Heavy handed and troglodytic
And a little listless, but I always fight it.
So while you walk away, I’m drowning drunk in cinderblock boots; Toe-tapping a slurred S.O.S. like some song you kept whispering.
You keep whispers like keepsakes.
You speak so soft but
Baby, your voice sticks with me
like sickness.

VI.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

Alright, it's fiction that we live in
It's intended for men like me, bottled, up-ended,
but at best I just seeped through your teeth.

VII.
I stitched script to my chest like a scarlet letter vest that attests there's no Soul here worth Saving but ******* come save me anyway.
Your voice sticks
to my ghost-sewn, sea-floor bound foot steps like sickness.
Tread lightly, my love. Let's inoculate.

VIII.
So when they ask for me at the after party
With neon eyes and harlot tongues,
You can tell them I traded this stale air in
For forest fires and tornado lungs.
Because I’ve been reading up in matchbooks
how to dance with disastrous fate,
and I'm finding my rhythm so wake silent
or sleep long, my love. Let's inoculate.

Chinese Firecrackers

Celebrate New Year with firecrackers|
lunch time is good
the smell of food mixing with gunpowder|
loud noises
drown out the clack of chopsticks
red paper
strewn around is all that's left
apart from the ringing in the ears


Malcolm Davidson Feb 12th 2013

Chinese New Year**

Chinese New Year is all around
red lanterns hanging from the trees
people laughing, boisterous
everyone goes home for the holidays
to share rice together
one big family
you can feel it in the air.

Malcolm Davidson Feb 1st 2013

It is victory of light over darkness.
But his eyes filled with bleakness.
It is victory of hope over despair.
But a poor child with no one to care.

Jam packed are shops of sweets.
But pitiful child has got nothing to eat.
Crackers stealthily they all buy.
His stomach is empty, lips are dry.

Bursting firecrackers, light and sound.
Hapless child quietly sitting on ground.
To burn people have enough buck.
But not enough for burning stomach.

He lost his arm
By a cooked bomb
His world lit up like firecrackers
He was engulfed in fire and metal shards
Then his body went numb
So he was stitched up
And sent back home
There was a new brand of limbs
So he volunteered to be experimented on
For a prosthetic arm
As he went through new trials during the day
He suffered at night
He had night terrors about where he was evacuated from
Seeing himself holding a ticking time bomb
While bullets whisked past above  
The bomb sunk into his hand like a solider in the slums
And as the time ticked one
His arm turned to glass and exploded
The shards from his arm imbedded themselves in his skin
This was his dreamed
He beg to be fixed
But even though they could give him a new arm
They couldn't fixed what he saw when he closed his eyes

i guess there are
some people
who just don’t realize
how preposterous they sound when
using social media.
yeah, maybe you’re one. no one
is safe from suspicion:
-the comedians (their own biggest fan types)
the witty commentators
                    jumping in from the far corner.
(you wonder how
someone who learnt every word they know
     from about six Archie comics is allowed to
use social networking)
-oh and the girls
                   who post new selfies
every day. (in fact there’s one,
i swear, posts so often
                      so regular
                                      i barely need a watch.
“here’s the three-fifteen cleavage shot.”
—she’s long since been hidden!)
and wait here’s that
fella who speaks out about injustices;
firecrackers taped in a doberman’s mouth,
which is awful, sick, repulsive—and bravo
for making the universe aware, i applaud thee,
but it’s the rambling included about what you’d do
if you ever caught them
(curbstomping, mutilating, beatings)
that gives
me goosebumps.
i don’t wanna see this kid’s mug in
the paper next week/point & say
“christ i knew it!”
..so maybe keep the ****** fantasy off the web, eh?

& then of course the weirdness
too weird to
properly recall
example:
an acquaintance's call for attention “i need a hug :(“
and the random girl
probably th’sister of a friend
(which is bizarre in its own right,
adding a friend's younger sibling..
but i
won’t bother delving
there tonight)
who replies:
“hey you should come here instead
and see the skunk that just came
by my window
if you wanna?”
—what is this absurdity?
and hey here’s an answer
to your original call:
internet hugs don’t work.
    computers don’t hug in binary, man.
0110101110101101111001010010101011011010110101110101010101
 ­                                        >—O—<

—i’ll never understand it.

film.  prayer.  kittens in a box.  serene nudes thrusting the skylight.  trinkets in a first floor gift shop lifted by a man dreaming beneath a decompression chamber.  a one use snowglobe.  ash.

hole in a rabbit.  a woman who talks once a year to firecrackers.

earth on earth.  a baby without toes applauded for having two heels.  a pregnant person who’s played on god

a simple hoax.

The orange leaves on viridian  
Dripping trails of season shade
Tangerine carpet sweeps path
Roads runs on a white stripe.


Oh such making of nature in change
Birds find mellow mist on their wing
And firecrackers zoom towards skies
Where the bonfires explode and burn.

Love Mary ***

A chain of beautiful accidents
light up like strings of Chinese firecrackers.

I follow trails that may or may not be blue.
They tip toe to the coast and snake around wild peacocks.

Funny things happen when you close your eyes,
lines from A to B are never completely straight.

I come for the sun and stay for the drinks.
Sometimes my thoughts make spider webs in my eyes.

Twelve doves like fingers walk in and out.
Off centre circles revolve around shapes caught in my throat.

For the long nights I played movies
that I wanted and hated as much as cinnamon jelly beans.

I don’t really know what brought me here.
Perhaps I’ve fallen through the rabbit hole, but

Maybe it was only a chain of beautiful accidents.

This is for all the men
Who tell me I am beautiful
I can't hear you
Through all those years
Of being an ugly duckling
This is for my dog
Big blue eyes
My baby snugglebug
Sniffing for donuts
Chewing my hands in the morning
And the nail biters
And the chefs
Who lose fingers to the meatgrinders
And the farmers
Staking lives
On a drop of rain
I am vain
This is for the men
Who have faith
I am not the ****** Mary
Just another pretty face
Another lacy thong to take off
This is for the underwear makers
The firecrackers
This is for the characters
Who explode in the night sky
Like the fourth of July
And ordinary people
Are blinded by the colors
This is for the mothers
And the big brothers
And the Prozac poppers
This is for the bees that have stung me
I've eaten their honey
And my cakes would not taste
So sweet without it
This is for the surgeons
And musicians
And fishermen
For the men who have bought me dinner
And never seen a return
On their investment
This is for the beards
And chest hair
This is for my little sister
Who is finally growing up
The word "love" on her tongue
And this is for America:
Land of the free
Home of the mancave
Beauty is only as deep
As your mineral rights
The copper and coal mines of your eyes
Beauty flies as high as kite
Melts away like cotton candy
After a baseball game
This is for the men who called me beautiful
For all the beauty in the world
All the beautiful
This is for you

When fireworks implode above us,
I understand why people say
"When I kiss you, I feel fireworks."

At first, it's like sparklers.
Small, short, but entertaining enough
to make you want to try again.

Then it gets up to firecrackers.
They get you heated, they make you
wanna throw a party.

Then they're fireworks.
It feels like you're exploding and
you can't help but be in awe.

And it's beautiful.
It's a moment you wish
you could catch on camera.

It's what keeps you waiting for
the grand finale.

It's what keeps me wanting
you.

I want to smush my face in a big fat delicious frosted cake,
and blow out candle after candle and watch ice cream melt

as I dig through the moist sugary cake-bread with my fists,
and I eat everything I want in this delicious, nice restaurant

I want to pout at anyone else who makes grumpy faces,
I am the **** queen so it's my gosh **** party, dang it

I want to drink until I almost throw up and then do drugs
and grab ******* and scream with laughter and true fun!

I want to flash strangers and get birthday kisses and hugs
I want to smear lipstick all over my face, I want GLITTER

I want to roll in checks from relatives in far-off places
with the clothes and money and drugs that I will buy

I want to cry big crocodile tears over wrapping paper
and wear a pretty crown and take pictures, please yes

I want to smile so hard my cheeks hurt, ouch, and get away
with being a little ******* because I'll say sorry tomorrow

I want firecrackers and free things and fun fun fun fun fun fun fun
because it's my birthday, and I get to do whatever the **** I want!

Civilized mankind has a unique way,
To party and celebrate a most special day.

Potassium and sulfur, mixed with some coal,
Can reduce a mountain into the hill of a mole.

Gunpowder is thought to have China as a start,
Ceremonies commence, fireworks a part.

I always thought, it amusing to find,
Warfare and festival are two of a kind.

Powerful explosions that disable and destroy,
Have the ability to give the masses such joy.

Here we go, let the bash begin,
Guaranteed to give, your face a grin.

Let's add some luminosity to this summer blast,
Firecrackers and sparklers make the jubilee last.

Pinwheels are nailed safely to a tree,
Furiously twirls colors for all to see.

An aerial assault aloft, hear them roar,
Yellows and greens, in the air they will soar.

Flash flaming fluorescence, blue and red,
Envelop your eyes, dancing in your head.

See the trail of a missile, zipping in flight,
Shiny illuminations, all through the night.

On the ground at the end of a fireworks show,
Blazing stars and stripes, a flag created, watch it glow.

The fourth of July is America's time,
A birthday blowout, drinks with lemon and lime.

This frolicking is filled with food, family and fun,
Independence day, I wish it never was done.

Please visit poemsbypaul.com

rotting horse carcass.
green glowing filament by moonlight ******
& mistrust us.
radioactive drums of waste &/or dreams.
boys swimming.

fistfights at night
by headlight & tooth crackle. (spit) then bonfire pallets
lit & danced upon.
plumes
of gas-can outcries.

the days & abuelitas
& ghosts
pinched cheek - pinched cooler - grandaddy
on the grill.
his gasping yellow dogs.

judy is in the underbrush with a walkie-talkie
& a p.b.j.
desmond leaps from high rocks; he
descends into another world by way of molecular-mishap.
dove deep.
riding the portal boar.

wasps hover above spilt wine
& declare war upon brothers with b.b. guns
& firecrackers
& spf 50+. the saturday/sunday sagas
between beams of heat laughter breakdowns
to knees, to bees,
honey.

homecoming queen dead & wrapped
in plastic.
body found with
turtle bites.
fungi.
the slabs of granite.
old iron tractors bent & held by tree wives.
toast.
jam hewn hwedges of crisped bread.

For you it is red, white and blue; firecrackers,

cookouts and American beer. How easy it

must be to assume that by saying “God Bless

Our Troops” you are patriotic. I have an

entirely different view of the 4th of July.



Every boom is an IED, every pop a ******

round. If your God was present when my

brain was shattered he did not show up to

see me through my recovery. You presume

that every soldier is a Christian like you.



I was an American soldier. I’ve bled and

killed in service for this country. I left behind

pieces of myself in faraway lands. It was my

choice. Do not use me to support your moral

propaganda. I am a veteran. I am not your

political stage-prop.

The crimson flame
Of firecrackers
Snipping and snapping
Biting at your skin
Tempting terror’s sweat
To pour sweetly  
With an adrenaline rush

Running recklessly
Till the asthma
Catches up
Till you can’t
Catch your breath
Killer Cramps
Cramping your style

Slight cuts
That glide across the skin
Thin lines of bleeding
It was better than seeing
That failed form in the mirror
That chemo skeleton
Dying hurt worse

Living to die or dying to live
What a terminal
Pain ******

Firecrackers at night
Orange flash, saltpeter smell
Pumpkin flashes smile

Hot oil burning  kernels
                      Jumping in stomachs
                                       Exploding and delicious
        Hot and   steaming    burning
Red like pokers
                Molten from flame
                                Bursting lips spark heated
Words like firecrackers.