Rand

Rand wears a hat he found on the street.
It is salt stained. He hates pears.
When he flies, he spits on people below.
His cape is torn at the rim. No one remembers his mother.
She had blue eyes. I met him through Sandra.
At the time he was drinking gin and soda. Ugly nose.
The fire took three children. Rand lost his spirit.
Four days in Tacoma didn't help.
A boy at school bloodied his lip. Then his fish died.
I brought him peppermint candy.
Winter was colder than usual. I smoked too much.
Rand grew fatter. Soon the ache was back.
In April he took to the water with his fins.
The ducks kept him company. They told good stories.
I made promises I could not keep. Later, I made them again.
In the night Rand didn't sleep. He walked inside the walls.
The last Monday in June Rand was gone. He'd taken the radio.
I sang for a few days, but then I stopped.
Rand always prayed with his hands apart.
He was afraid they might never come undone

_______________________________________________________________________________

General Custer had no chance against the dinosaurs

Just as peeling away wallpaper only leads to wallpaper.
Maybe God doesn't play jazz with the universe,
but we make too much of staying whimsical,
in the morning, with toast and her curled toes.
The laziness of gravity, bleeding as a better sketch
of a lesser portrait, is my vanity hemmed seamless.
Dining alone in the park. Learning to love
someone else's wife. One beer before bed.
The dog talks of poor matters in history,
as the skyline breaks down.
Her mother pronounces wash, warsh,
with sweet tea and a southern draw. There is no allegory
for a bellyache. No mystery as grand as my symposium
of ailments. I was a pirate, but no sailor.
She cares little for distinction. The loft is gone,
purring like a comet, slumbering in a cave.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Adam Kenworthy lives in Des Moines, Iowa. He works in a cube. He is thinking about writing a jazz opera that could take the world by storm.