Dragon's Kiss

Blazing bright
lamppost lights
glaring brilliant yellow
torrent in this
haphazard alley

You lean,
lazy shoulder on the
nasty old red brick
pulling a long
death-breath drag
off the skeleton fag.

Bastard!
Hadn't seen you in days
Months....
Years...
and I didn't miss your rotten face
 

yet
 

there you are...

......Temptation

 

With your luscious lips
held loose
around that cancer stick.

I can think of better things for them to do...

You drag another...
and look at me sideways
out of your dark suspicious eyes

You know what you do to me.

There you lean
lazy shoulder on the
worn out red brick
pulling a long
death breath drag
off the skeleton fag

My heals clack the tarmac
loud disjointed awakening
deceiving the tempo of
my heart beats.

Bastard!
hadn't seen you in...
who cares how long.
Didn't need you here

Not now!

But there you lean,
lazy shoulder on the
weary old red brick
pulling me to you...
a night bug to the zapper
fuzz lamb to the butcher

I didn't care, don't care!!!
Your eyes no longer
side step dance,
with me in front of you.

Still, there you lean
lazy shoulder on that
subtle red brick
pulling a long

 

I snatch that nasty cig
from out your mouth
finish that thought

as embers strike wet asphalt

 

And I claim those lips!
We share the smoke
A dragon's kiss,
long and fiery.

Bastard!
Hadn't seen you in
too long
didn't need you here.

© 2010 R. Renée Vickers   (All Rights Reserved)

This Guitar

     Jack was a boy of 14 who, once again, found himself in a new school. He lost count on how many times he had moved in the last few years, but it didn’t matter anymore. “Sorry honey, but the work is better there.” He remembered his mom saying. It was the same excuse she always used, but no matter how many times she said it, it was no truer now than before. Empty words.

     In truth, he knew she couldn’t hold down a job. Just like her relationships and the rest of her life, her love of alcohol was all consuming and came first. She’d wreck her life once, sometimes twice a year. And they’d move to new town with new faces.

The Hard Path

     He stood on the side of the road. A wide expanse of nearly nothing but dry dusty fields surrounds him. The only blemishes on the landscapes are the ancient, rundown one-room bus station, a light pole and a few signs. The attendant coughs 20-years of her smoking addiction in one long raspy wheeze. Something Tommy heard effortlessly through the half rotten walls, even over the howling wind.

     He rocks on his heals adjusting the heavy pack on his left shoulder. “Twenty-five minutes before my life to start.” He thinks aloud.

     Tommy Clearwater was a tall young man of 18, with the sun-kissed skin of his people. The Paiute. He decided now was the time of his life to set out and see the world, to find the opportunities outside of his small town. He knew he’d miss his family, but he had to do this. Still, the thought of sacrificing his relationships of the ties to his family’s way of life was a hard pill to swallow. He didn’t feel right about making this choice, but what could he do? He sighed and kicked his boot at the dusty ground.