JANET I. BUCK
The Drug War

Up and down. Ping pong style.
Fused emotion in a slur:
"She's gone again," my father says,
"disappeared in vapor trails
behind a plane I hoped
would land in sanity."
I'm saddened by the powdered sand
that rows you places like a boat
through dark canals of urban life,
through fisticuffs of soiled love,
all those boiled and buried ghosts
that own your pulse and beating heart.

I'm selfish too. I crave
a mother's collarbone
to cradle tea bags of my tears,
her stalwart spine
to help me with my broken necks
of dreaming gone awry in woe.
I pray for things to change to whole
like chipmunks running up a tree,
finding that a greedy bird
(weakness wings in all of us)
has stolen acorns, pebbled peace.

I've studied us inside the fog so very long
I cannot trust a rising sun
to pour me morning orange juice.
Bibles of touch are coffee rings
to scrub away with bleached repose.
Hugs seem hooking wire and worm,
a formal, curt rejection slip.
Add a dose of alcohol and here we play
with matches over gasoline.
The drug war in its battle zone of vacancy -
where little capsules are the lords,
where exit is the fairy tale,
where needles are the unicorns.