They Love to Touch

I once saw a man at a pretzel stand
with a giant pretzel on top of it.
You couldn't help but know that it was
fake: nobody makes pretzels that big.
He just had to touch it, though, creep!
It should have fallen on him.
It must be the same thing with snow;
they always walk on the clean stuff.
Monkeys will sleep in their own shit
even if you show them how not to.
Even a dog won't do that.
Let them not breed in great numbers
or else they will slime over the world.
The filthy fools remind me of
apes in crimson capes pretending to
be their human masters.  It must
be and oral fixation of the skin and
the thoughts have all atrophied.  It's
possible they have forgotten to feel with
their minds.  Don't get me wrong,
I enjoy a good tussle in the hay
as much as the next person but
this sort of thing isn't lasciviousness.
Opening windows and closing doors
most of the time they don't know what
for.  I think they forgot.  It must be
that they spent too much time with their
hands in their pants or up their skirts
or whatever.  Self-gratification gets
that way after awhile.  Nobody thinks of
the next person who walks across the snow.
Pretzels should learn to fight back.

first published in Wind Row, fall 1984 

Hair Length

It takes a year
to grow four inches of hair.
When I see hair
gently creeping down a back,
an ass, a thigh:
that's at least six years
getting to know it,
eight years without
rash act of shears,
ten years of growing into.

By then, they either know what they are
or it's time for a change.
Black, yellow, brown, red
looking to find out in growing
how the hell to live with it.


          first published in Wind Row, Spring, 1984.