Snakeskin Birthday

Upgrade to a new year like snakeskin

Peel this off and let you in where ever you are

Slip under these tattooed on scars of Laundromats washing

Cross guards crossing streets and clothes, roles transposed

Where I am going and what keeps me safe

Wander around naked to save time at this stage

Throw away the novelty of civility

Circumstances have been plopped here in the role of my enemies

For so long and I can sing along to an ecumenical epicurean menu

Of all these options, the herbs the spices and all of it sits in a kitchen made

Ready to consume and taste; the buds of this tongue are always late

To dinner, tardy for the party conversing for the exacerbated topic

What is for dinner tonight?

A twinkle twilight of choices blinking and I keep on thinking

I will stay in and cook for myself all those chefs and restaurants and plates

I think I will save time and stay

Home to this wine glass exposed and chilled

All of it billed to my lost supermarket rewards card

Accumulating the bounty for the Riesling

Downed and downed and it expounds

Upon the night like a frost on the window, the reptile in me gets tight

No contingency plan, cold blood in strands congealing in the peeling

Back of one more night, one more move in the groove

Of one new year in the clear, with answers like mosquitoes ramming the screens

Open the entry and at least I could bleed in a vampire feud

Biting and the tightening, believing that if I walked out on that lawn

I would be lucky enough to be hit by lighting as a rod in this sod

Praying for contact in the contract between aging and the staging

Of promised progress in the eyes of Christ for living this kind of life

I know the fallacies of seeking and hoping and believing in the rewards of doing

The congratulatory nature of dedicated hope, the finger lines crossed to emote

A dream like a letter in a drawer dusty and pulled out once a year

To remind myself what is and could be here, a ship for this mast

Lips to the glass and inebriate the inhibitions and last for nothing

Just a drowsy sleep until we meet another year, another midnight pumpkin

Just a Cinderella in reverse and

I can put on a suit and forget my glass-buttoned shirt in your darkened dawning room

But the lies they hide as I return to the form of this snakeskin man

Shedding and heading for sweeping and story books read, night lights lit

Skinned knees kissed and homework lists with robust words to teach

This ho-hum town painted in vagabond pink

These mice do not help to satiate the need for this asp to consume

A life beyond this banal, Happy Birthday there pal, another year down