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mouth
I have never pulled a live bird from my mouth.
A feather, once. Very small. A pillow escapee.
Cat hairs, my hairs, questionable strands in pies.
Never a dove of peace or owl of enlightenment;
no greedy crow or swearing jay immodest parrot.
I did pick mockery from where it had lodged to
suppurate where my wisdom tooth had been, but
it had no flash of white about its stubby wings,
only a sly variety of songs.
Room 121
Room 121 is smug.
see how tall it's mattresses are?
Look at its wide clear window!
Close the drapes if you want, and then peek
through the gap at the (shudder) roomless Outside
with no subliminal Gideon, unopened, beside the remote.
Beyond the neon pale, the wild truckers, the claustrophobics
(and the mellow smokers with pets) make ruddy fires in paper boxes.
They burn old maps and wrappers from Mounds Bars;
stale potato chips; tangled ribbons from an anonymous
Christmas, frou-frou bows stained with fruitcake and wine.
You can almost taste the silky rustle of the flames.
Press your face against the glass: the clatter and rush,
the Outside, less than half an inch away,
could be Mars, for all it matters, all alien and untidy
with gullible riffraff, making toasts, spinning planets
on the fulcrum of a seal's nose. But not
room 121. It is entered through the Lobby.
I have never pulled a live bird from my mouth.
A feather, once. Very small. A pillow escapee.
Cat hairs, my hairs, questionable strands in pies.
Never a dove of peace or owl of enlightenment;
no greedy crow or swearing jay immodest parrot.
I did pick mockery from where it had lodged to
suppurate where my wisdom tooth had been, but
it had no flash of white about its stubby wings,
only a sly variety of songs.
Room 121
Room 121 is smug.
see how tall it's mattresses are?
Look at its wide clear window!
Close the drapes if you want, and then peek
through the gap at the (shudder) roomless Outside
with no subliminal Gideon, unopened, beside the remote.
Beyond the neon pale, the wild truckers, the claustrophobics
(and the mellow smokers with pets) make ruddy fires in paper boxes.
They burn old maps and wrappers from Mounds Bars;
stale potato chips; tangled ribbons from an anonymous
Christmas, frou-frou bows stained with fruitcake and wine.
You can almost taste the silky rustle of the flames.
Press your face against the glass: the clatter and rush,
the Outside, less than half an inch away,
could be Mars, for all it matters, all alien and untidy
with gullible riffraff, making toasts, spinning planets
on the fulcrum of a seal's nose. But not
room 121. It is entered through the Lobby.