Tinny

The wood of my desk vibrates
Before you sound
Your need to be picked up

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

I blow my breaths away from
Your sensitive maw
Your ears bring me disembodied
Voices brimming with need
For mindless chatter

I hate you
Though I look at you longingly
Sometimes, and touch you to
See if you would come alive
Startle me with a sudden

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

A trick, if I really think about it
Black and sinister
Like black pudding
Lurid invitation to partake into some

Unimagined sin
Though curiously commonplace
Can it be real
Or am I just hearing voices in my head

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

Bringing news I do not want to hear
Keeping me near persons
I do not want to be close to
A lifeline I do not need
To live

Consuming me like marriage
My ears bleed
As my tongue peels
off banalties like
banana skin

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

The Woman (first draft)

I saw a woman in an orange coat and a green hat
who loudly said, 'He was so damn cute'

I was walking and it was raining
the overwrought sky was in a sulk
miserable people huddled with their armpits
fingers in pockets
chin on the chest

And there was this woman
in an orange coat and a green hat
exclaiming loudly
not giving a damn about the weather
not caring that this
was a world of greys and steel blues
of whispers and smiles
and not exclamations!

She was talking to this man
as they were walking along
with their pointys up and out

brown jutting, an affront to the very air
oh how the people behave
these those from the land of orange suns
and indecent mangoes
and head turning flowers
and strange religious pastes

And so I was walking as I said
one step at a time
huddling into my armpits
skirting puddles with stolid shoes
with doubled up laces

and here was this woman
in her orange coat and green hat
throwing her damn into the air
cutting the sheet of rain with her cute
leaving behind her a reverberation
of a remembered warmth
that I left behind on my way