| Two Poems by Peter Nathaniel Malae
Boozing in Two-Yard there's power and innards in numbers. We aren't alone like yesterday, wet and paranoid, watering down the inner wall with the Twelve-Step Firehose. With every cup-rimmed kiss, we acknowledge a higher power, soaking the impious insides in God. Take a long, hard look at my strewn and torn-down, tatted-up brothers with grooves for wrinkles and stink for breath in little rising clouds; bound and slumped like unnatural landscape, proof of life in the pen. Some weeds survive the pesticides, sprayed and withered but feeding each other homemade pruno and gumption. And the liver just tickles like a love-ache when wallflowers get out and go home. There is One Way Down celebrate! Of slight and spit, rejoice! Condemnations, desecrations, denunciatory flak, index fingers, principle provide impious happiness. Uplift your arms at once! Remind the man upon his box that soap is slippery. Perchance the box is not enough, the pulpit angled low, stack books and boards beneath his feet, go find a microphone. Say, "Hush!" to fellow gutter dwellers gathered in the mist. Then take your seat contentedly and watch the bastard fall. Peter Nathaniel Malae |