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Amanda Oaks

Tender


Eight hours of my day

spent

where death

overshadows life.

It clings to refurbished walls and

in and around pull-string lights.


Blank stares,

missing smiles

and gurgling throats,

this is their last go-around,

an unpleasant march

to a peaceful rest.


Christian nut nurses

pricking the skin,

pumping the morphine in,

DNR, NPO,

it's passive euthanasia girls,

i'm glad your beliefs

don't get in the way of that,

you're playing god while i snicker

behind your back;

it's a foul smelling utopia

before the heart stops,

and they take their last breath.


I watch the snow fall under fluorescent lights,

while copying numbers on wasted trees,

and think

i am handing out smiles

with little ease because

i am the catcher

in this suicide squeeze.



Booger- FIP (Finally In Peace)


I didn't know him that well

I only met him twice

but name any cartoon

he had the characteristics of at least

one personality

from every show


I know he had a three year old daughter

at the age of nineteen

I know he stole some of my cigarettes one night

I know he had spent three months in boot camp

I know he had recently gotten into

an unjust fight

I know he liked fast cars

and I know

he was just a kid

lookin' for an out


You got any pills, man,

got any pills?


Anything to alter the reality of things,

an escape from his fucked up family life,

his back-stabbing friends

and his pill-whore war-pig of a mother


Last night,

his friend was life-flighted

and he was dead

doing a buck-ten

on the narrow windy roads of the countryside

they found them,

the car was split in half

after hitting three trees

and when it hit the fifth one

it burst into flames


Missy identified the body

she said he was burnt from the chest down

his nose was smashed in

and his lips were cut open and bruised

and the blood,

oh the blood,

one of the pigs

had to help her back out of the woods


Tattooed across his wrist was

life IS pain


I hope

he died on impact



Weekend Drive/Write Me a Love Poem


Her hands fluttered gracefully out the window

struggling to cool the breeze

It was one of those days

that if you didn't have the luxury of an air conditioner

you would have trust in condensation,

in all forms of the word,

dripping down your leg,

from your soda

or pop bottle,

depending on what side of the state you are from

or I guess it could be one of those good deals

from the Kwik-E-Mart

where you can get a 44 ounce fountain drink

for under a dollar,

have you ever finished one of those off

without summer's air charming it to it's fate?


white lines-

epileptic shock


She flicked her cigarette

out the window

I wonder if she realizes

that it takes

up to

or more than

seven years

for a cigarette butt to biodegrade- like a broken mirror

depending on the environmentalist you're talking to

or what superstition your giving in to


I bet she knows


I saw her

playfully fooling

with the air outside the window

She tried to cup up the freshness

and bring it into me


but she never comes through


                               I never come through 


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