Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Is that a security detail walking beside you,
or a cane?

The car won’t start
and the mind won’t stop.

If you could unlearn me, you would have by now.

Quality demonstrates craft.
Quantity illustrates consistency.

Dizzy hopscotch girls jumping into the sun.

I wouldn’t spend another dime
on this nickel of a life.

Afternoons are best for me.
Mornings should be banned.

3 feelers in the feeling room
curb stomp nemesis weather patterns
down the dirt of country roads

Himalaya high on rock
crushing sound of the power band

a zoo for the wild ones
Thomas Wolfe as a showerhead

the blood I bleed was never mine
erect neglect in barrier reef

3 feelers in the feeling room
tanta-lies for a horny truth
shimmy wires in a playground play

3 feelers in the feeling
room.

Go exist in a decommissioned
missile silo in rural Kansas
for top dollar

for all I
care

I have seen the whole
of the human race
live horribly

and continue
in the worst
of ways

betraying the ones
they love
so convincingly

the moon could land
on itself

and call
foul.

to be avoided at
all costs

a ruse of the Russian
or the Chinese –
let’s say the Chinese
for effect…

Disarming
just like Oppenheimer
before the bomb.

Getting you to smile
when your face should
know better.

My car fails
in front of a line of orange pylons
and I take it as
a sign.

Cars fail all the time,
you say
but I know better.

The pylons are there because of construction,
you argue.

That’s how it may appear to
a layman.

But I live in the abstract,
see the many patterns.

I know how the fates conspire.

Getting out of the car
I take my place two-thirds the way
down the line.

Standing straight
and forever silent,
my arms at my
side.

Not orange yet,
but that’s what evolution
is for.

He is up each morning
the real-estate developer
building sandcastles on the beach below
with a purple pail and a yellow plastic shovel
his work tools, the tools of his trade
and halfway out the front door
on his way to work
he stops to kiss a hat rack with a styrofoam head
on the cheek
(his wife of many years)
before taking the elevator
down.

There was this recent study published
by one of the “bigs”
that claimed there was a direct correlation
between intelligence and sexual activity

which made everyone mad
because it suggested that the smarter you are
the less likely you were to be sexually active

implying conversely
that people having lots of sex
with more than one partner
were less intelligent

and having it with those
of a lesser intelligence

producing offspring that
well, you guessed it…

which explains a lot

if you have ever tried to navigate
a Walmart parking lot on a Saturday
three weeks before
Christmas.

She lights a candle
and I think she wants it
to imply wisdom

when all it means
is that the power has
gone out

but again
with the candle

holding it out
in ceremonial
fashion

dripping wax all over the carpet
which doesn’t seem wise
in the least.

Fly in the suitcase, why have you died on me?
We still had many good hours together
pestering one another, but secretly in love
me with a rolled newspaper, you playing hard to get
the ceiling fan spider oscillating third wheel jealous…
fly in the suitcase, did I forget to pack oxygen?
my scatterbrains spilling out over my shoulder onto my shirt
so yours do not have to
the hydro company now buzzing
for you
out along the high wire
fly in my suitcase, let me ball up
my socks beside you
let customs ask their many inane questions, my friend,

no need to
answer.