This flibbertigibbet can surely torch
a song long beribboned by pain.
Her tresses rivulet
the gibbet like a Cap-u-let
in her balcony’d scene
teen girls ’er taught to
recite and esteem
difficult to pronounce as a mouthful of drug
warnings folded like love notes and stapled to the sack.
But you’ve already caught your disease
Juliet, your snare drum sneaks
out from under the fog of the hem of war
and off school grounds to smoke
on the pitted, lunar face of the battlefield
out by the mall. Some of us were born there
but not in this scene.
The moon revolves,
ok. Revolution scene, we’re both bleeding.
Ovulate and/or die. All this building
and breaking. The sea constructs a natural barricade
of what it’s eaten, our footfalls won’t last
but our sneakers will wash up on shore
after the nuclear meltdown, refusing to pair off.