HoboEye Poetry:
Jono Tosch, Northampton, MA

The heart should be lean and honest

The tiger jumped over the rutabaga.
The margarine tub turned upside down
and the flaming rutabaga bored through the earth.
Apparently there are plate glass windows inside the earth
because the rutabaga busted out the opposite end
like a comet with a beard made of glass.
Somewhere during the process the comet had also acquired a pen name.
It started behaving like one of those drinking birds.
It flashed displays at all the wrong things.
It is painful to watch a wet newspaper
do nothing but absorb more water.
This is no way to compose oneself.
There are no soft mattresses in the earth.

My Love is a Kind of Wild Animal

Pablo Picasso was a Spaniard
but the center of the earth has no nationality.
I have no nationality either
but when there are heavy rains
sometimes I wonder about Henri Matisse.
Henri Matisse collected porcelain cantaloupes.
If intercourse with a cantaloupe is your life goal
you should not mention this.
Things that spoil should never be considered friends
which is why people named Pierre are constantly alone.
I am constantly alone because my mattress is too small.
If I were named Pierre
I would probably turn into a documentary about knife fights.
There would be one enormous scene
in which the King of Spain would hang wallpaper
and then the breeze would whoosh everything away
and the plains would be swept up and turn into police stations.
It is not for my particular love of musk melons
that I wear baseball caps.
I do that because I am balding.
I hurry through the produce section
because I fear the bananas know
I have never sailed and I never intend to.
Pablo Picasso could climb coconut trees.
I bit him on the ankle one time
and then I joined a monastery.

Wayne Gretzky

I had Wayne Gretzky for breakfast.
The house looked pretty miserable.

I thought Wayne Gretzky never cut down a tree
but then I thought perhaps he had.

He did show up to breakfast with a sapling.
He did handle his flapjacks with skill.

Then I dumped a cup of water onto the floor
to find out what he knew about mopping.

Wayne Gretzky is sky-colored.
Type O blood and fluent in Portuguese.

This is how you say good morning in Portuguese.
He told me you butter your scone with a saw.

Chateau de Avignon

I found a radio in the street.
The man in the radio shop complimented its knobs.
Most of the knobs he sees are plastic.
But those knobs are pure ivory.
The radio man watched me roam around.
Printed on my shirt it said
I pull fast ones in broad day.
I found the shirt in the hollow of a tree,
bunched up and rubber banded.
I wondered when the bus would come.
I needed to head home that day.



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