BOXES

car box

automobile nihilism

a windowed coffin

protecting me

against

hazardous stray emotions

elevator box

a vertical cool green crypt

daydreams of ancient velour

crumble slowly

slide down my skin

as I languidly rise up

through a swirling hourglass

cracked and faded feelings

underfoot

job box

a godless cubicle flattens my ambition

while a cathode-ray beast

mewls beneath my fingers

claws at me

as strands of fictional lovers

jolt me

out of empty milk carton reveries

as I stare into white noise

house box

a peeling aluminum vase

stuffed full of limpid feelings

and grey space

balanced on a precipice

of faded dreams and intentions

rewound nightly

inside telescopic dreams

of star systems

skin box

99% water

1% emotion

emotions circulate randomly

lost somewhere

in a maze of flesh and blood

I wait for a wake-up call

to magnetize grey-soul conduits

carrying buried feelings

to the surface

as I ignore cries of dead souls

plotting to grasp me

when the connection clears

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

box to box

failure to failure

I'm a rigid rectangle

doomed to spin wildly

on an axis I designed

devoid of love

Copyright 1996 John Wesley Mullennix