Three of a Kind

Now's no time for goofy behaviour.

Now's a time for darkness and spiked coffee. 

I read the news and ask Kyle, my parrot, the bane of my existence: 

"Have you heard about the disease?"

Last night he destroyed me at poker. 

"Nigel, why do you look so sad?" he enquires, 

Smugly, a glint of malice in his asshole eye, 

(and, truth be told, in not so many words). 

I reply: 

"Because today, Kyle, we are to die". 

"All three of us?!"

A seed dribbles from his beak into my coffee. 

I gaze eastward to China, 

My precious doll, who supported me in last night's shit show, 

For an answer. 

But yet again

I let her down. 

"Baby, I'm so sorry. 

"Why didn't you come to bed for some loving?"

She does not reply. 

It appears that we aren't talking. 

Well then, that seals it. 

I load my pistol

And take a final shower.

For this, I want to be clean. 

I want to be naked, too, because

My muscles are showing

After depression made me lean. 

One last time I feed that fucking bird, Kyle,

And see my brains splatter around his dirty cage

With a final Squawk!!

But now's no time for goofy behaviour. 

A Green Mermaid

Salty seaweed and crystal ripples

Anxiously swirl

Beneath a moon and my canoe. 

Over years I've come to know her

And to know her distractions, that melt anxiety

Like crème de menthe,

Repressing seasickness

Of a torn t-shirt and blown-out crotch;

She is on top of me,

An eastern Juliet. 

A devil in the bathroom mirror,

French Canadian, dirty, atop a log,

Commands me

To eat a pineapple

Off of her.

Her seven notes

Turned me on

To electricity, and to life,

But I don't know if I can deal

With all the problems that come with these things.

Dugout

Lost at sea

I encountered

A mermaid.