Sleeping on Rollerskates by Martin Marriott

Cover art by the author

28 pages, 2005

 

 

BUTTONS ARE THE LITTLE JEWEL-CHILDREN THAT ROLL

DOWN SILVER HILLS AND TURN RED

Minutes are climbing up my spine to get a better view of tomorrow

A dog is relentless

The sky is dreadful

The beach is boiling and pregnant

A cat is hoping my tail will curl around it's

Belt-buckles are light-bulbs that want to be touched

Nipples have no regrets, only bibles

Reptiles are digging in to the loose change beneath the car seat

A point is pointless

Always is the name of you your endless repetition is a bridge to the sunlit meadow I never write of

A desk is on its side & glancing at an ass swaying past

Danger is just a historical left-over, the inherited memory of a tiny tail

A roof is where you are waiting for me

Feet are holding hands

 

NOW IS A PIECE OF FURNITURE WAITING FOR MUSIC

Sitting in his ribcage

Making drunk talk with the other smalls

Always the red hair of brooding with its iron belt

Always the Space Needle in its silken negligee

Always fireflies eating Wisconsin

Always I see me, climbing out of the cement on 15 th

Always me and you

Always the twin towers being played in reverse

I am being eaten by a golf-course

 

Always the lake, with its blue ferns, its orthopedic mattress

Always the lake, with its fried legs

Always the desire of the third-story window

to hurl itself at the sidewalk

Always the sidewalk, with its grinning teeth.

Every new light awaits your arrival

A posse of wet mice drag a broken-down U-haul around the corner

Scientists announce the invention of porridge

 

MY WOMAN WHO IS HEAT AND FIRE

My woman who is heat and fire

My woman who is ribcage in a bird of 11 wings

She is a turret I am climbing into

Charcoal glances      chandelier eyes      rosebud fingertips

She is a stranger      she is melting

Her eyelashes have run away from the sofa

To give birth to a green vase on a mountaintop

Goat-herder      basement-stretcher      rabble-rouser

Cousin to the elephant

Sister to a glass of water

Her toenails contain symphonies

My woman who is gray particles dissolving when they lower the shutters of the verandah

My love who is horse-hair-honest

My woman from whose lips the sun begins its flight

The moon can balance on her nose

My love who is the intimate of electricity

She is a triangle in a telephone booth around which many dogs are barking

My love is a fisherwoman

Her belly brings the sun to its knees

She is the ears of the day