flamingo flight

City faces scamper in the limelight
distorted in shards of a broken window to the back yard
where, next to barbed wire and old fence posts,
a pile of tires burns.
The Chevy now sits on blocks,
stripped of the worn rubber 
that across hot asphalt
once trailed a fleeing flamingo to impact.  

	Distraction meant death 
	for a lumbering form, not so fleet,
	bandit-striped and whale-tailed insubstantial.
	A furtive, shadowy shape paused to watch
	then fluttered on.

The plume of flame evinces mountain lakes,
mating insects meadowed and frenzy--
just a distillate to mean my thoughts,
plain and pandering but gone too quickly.

Flickering ashes drift in singed agony
to click-pop chorus without a conductor
without a baton.

The fire dies and the heap smolders 
until dew leaves morning alone to deft companions:
cloudy, sunny, green, and pine-scented,
which carry my kite to the melody forgotten 
in life in love in vitriol.

Asp curls in the palm of my heart. 
Chest against chest
tumbles the teetering,
when the balancing girl tucks the other leg to plummet the earth
and ascend without me.
Roadside weeds shiver and bow
with tired condolences.

Spike heels drop blank checks for a numberless commodity.
They pay well for alley burn, little more,
says a grizzled bum who mashes butterfly wings through pinholes,
intent and gleeful like a polecat with a prize.
Combat boots crouch on the fringes of a discarded lace corset,
and the hard-boiled egg in a front pocket 
cracks against the crease of splotched pants.
Through frayed fingers slips the greasy sheen
to smack pavement and roll away
undevoured but lopsided.

Jackhammers punish the sidewalk and a mother freefalls
for an injured child who came home late
after lefty scissors plunged point-first.

Lipstick and sunsets and hazy hues of flaking paint 
blur on prison walls where an inmate calls,
"Two days," as if sentencing another
to the echoed reverberations of stone cold.
And the latch snicks shut
fiddled with but unconquerable 
when the buzzer sounds and the deed is done.
On lifeless eyelids rests the shade yearned,
glancing off steel bars and
reflected on the shined cueball
that just hustled $20.

Back where you came from