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The following can also be found in the book The Heatseeker. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy; or click here for the rules to writing the type of poetry shown here.

Love you, Kiki,
I love to watch legs
kicking soccer goals through German posts
Each three by five card flung stabbing my chest
Chalk up my nose, early eighties songs blaring
into my tiny head

Though the ramparts we watch are so hardly bleeding
I still watch you.
Zoot suits ring
early under caps and gowns
Newly hosed calves sneak there, too.
Kiki, how I long to wrap slender soccer legs
around my petulant chalk-sniffing Monty Python thighs.

Now the Heat Seeker
erminely reminds me of that which can not be
and pulls out the
naked gas to
douse the German legs, to
heat up the fever dream vision.
I cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot come near her
so she will be saved fate worse than
red fiery hot death
Equilibrium of those German thighs walking down the hallway,
down the hallway, down

So what? Heatseeker
laughs at me, tiny sneer
edging out of corner of mouth
Don't even think of it, boy, my child
There's too much work for us
here, too many books
each screaming for us to finish them, write and
read and hide away
Each screaming for
soldiers to fight the good
cattlecall of the 99 red balloons
Each screaming for blood, for sacrifice, for bright bulbous
red balloons of flame, O Building on fire,
that'll show them! he
announces so loudly no one else can hear except
I, who hears all

Newly formed gray
stains dampen the burning building
Eggs and fish still don't swim
corollary in the same pool, yet snuff out the
red balloons hiding in the corner, in his
egg-white jail cell
That'll show you! I whisper so softly everyone hears
So softly that everyone
inches slowly away

No more, I scream tersely.
My imprisonment ends today, you understand?
Yes, I understand, Heatseeker says, and laughs even louder
Bon Voyage! And the laughter threatens to consume,
echoing off my ribcage
Dinging and bouncing off of slender, German, soccer thighs

Copyright 1999, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved. This was published under a Creative Commons license; click here for details. Contact: ilikejason [at] gmail [dot] com.