Ugly’s Only Skin-Deep

but who said beauty’s absolutely guts?
night is a gas flame in a dream
the altar boy aims his slingshot at a satellite

snuffs a comet drops a star
and slumps the city shoulder to shoulder with the hill
of the blonde valley of nine shadows where

a bee opens a raspberry flower
beside the sod hut where a bodhisattva’s too drunk
to play his paper flute where the fox died

of an infected paw a fly spreads its wings in the wound
the years collapse to weeks
weeks to hours hours to seconds!

and I’ve never been less iron than April
with its pollen and its people and all their pollution
it pokes a hole in grandma’s ghost

when daughter sister mother love
father brother son it’s the world on a stick
sit down drink up be kind

life is hard and leisure hardens in the sun.

by Ryan Dowling