Popcorn

Oh, you big, fat wad of cotton candy love,

You pink dream of sweetly wafted cloud,

Consumed you proved a nauseously cloying fluff

Wound upon an insubstantial piece of paper

Stuck with hair and summer dust.

There are they who with

A certain jauntiness and swagger

Bridge the gap that yawns

Between courage and bravado

And they who never mar

Their guillotining speech

With muttered “uhs,” or pause,

Or better phrases seek.

The world is meant for tigers

Not tabbies. Not one tame cute kitten

Can curl in a lap who hasn’t a claw

Deep in some victim’s neck.

Borrowed light is never as bright

As the dimmest of unreflected flames.

Go and do not linger unfulfilled

My dream and hope. Burst, bubble
  Burst or freeze and crackle.

Be a bauble I can hold and show

Without a fear of shattering.

With my eyelids razored off

I found their day too bright.

But now with them sewn shut again

I find their night too tight.

Fire, fire, burn me twice;

Cold come kill and turn to ice

My heart against its whims

So beautiful but dangerous.

Larry, are you still
  Running like a brisk Angel, fire-eyed?

What was it in you
  That died and now is not?

Are you still alive
  Haggard, wan, and gaunt?

Do you in longing thrive?

Or have you gone of want?

Your words of popcorn
  Crackle now are stilled.

Is your ears’ hunger filled?

Or do you somewhere chase

Yet after children’s dreams

Of oatmeal kindly served,
  A father’s smile, a mother’s care?
  Are the ghosts still in your air?