A SIMPLE CASE
OF MISPLACED EMOTIONS

with my gasoline soaked
sneakers
I am a man on fire
ready for the wet
concrete streets

Jesus found my lighter
but stole my cigarettes
so there can't be smoke
where there's fire

burning
feverishly mad
all my deliriums
focused on you

I am blind
for the tears and
onion hot air
blasting my face

like a loosened tourniquet
six months of blood
floods back in one
hot
rush
bleeding and
reeling
and teetering on shaky legs
this rush has me
totally disarmed
prostrate
invisible heat
blisters the skin a toasty brown
I could
drop the match
before it burns my fingers
so
why am I holding it
so tightly?

I WANTED TO KISS AN ANT

I wanted to kiss an ant
but it has no lips
so I dug the earth
with my teeth
eating dirt

I found a colony
and swallowed
them
individually or in clumps
my tongue not sticky
like an anteater's
it suited well enough

soon I digested
ants were inside me
flowing with my corpuscles
and palettes
building ant hills in my lymph nodes

Now I have kissed my ants
more assimilated them
I am so happy they are part
of me

I want to kiss my lover
she has lips
damn

Timothy Kane graduated from UCSD with a degree in Writing and is currently pursuing his Masters in English. The poem “Honey Stuck” was previously printed in 1994 by Cafe Latte. He has published poems in The 5th Wall and articles for Verbatim and NuWitch.

Copyright 2004, Timothy Kane. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.