Doctors' waiting rooms.

Sterilized thoughts- nothing but fog and haze,

Like pollution in the air.

Thick cotton candy clouds,

Dropped in the mud and rotting

The atmosphere,

Like the teeth in a mouth.

aaAaa

Scare crow boys, with nowhere to go,

Untucked shirts, stained tea-brown,

Like the morals they've been taught-

Nursery rhymes of cigarette smoke

Punch-drunk relatives and rebellion.

Stand and puff, paint tar on their lungs,

Alone,

In some stranger's garden.

aaAaa

Rag-doll girls with floppy smiles

And tattered gossamer gowns-

Casting spells and going grocery shopping in

Forgotten alleyways.

Used to uncensored ways,

No Photoshop to burn away

The dry blood and sticky,

School glue tears.

aaAaa

Tap your foot in time

To the clock over the exit,

Diagnose yourself; berate white-blood cells

And see

With sleep tender eyes,

Bruised lilac-

Texting teenagers, beanies pulled down low-

The 16-year-old, with doe-eyes and chipmunk cheeks,

Tugging at her tummy, pinching whale blubber,

And looking sickened, stinging bile

Struggling upwards

In her fly-paper throat.

aaAaa

Cries of dooms day

And don't mix vanilla with chocolate,

Out in the street, like demented mocking birds,

With throbbing Adams apples,

Nuclear waste in their skulls

And swollen opinions-

Check your watch,

The hypnotist's hour hand

And mild mannered minute hand-

Meet in slow-motion, old friends

Who hate one another

In sad silence-

Time for life to start again.

aaAaa

Pick the sleep from your eyes.

It was just a nightmare-

Right?