Vanilla Money

Soul “Pool Shark” Cruise lights up

Blows smog across his green kingdom

Taking another steely-eyed, clove-scented drag,

He erects a pyramid of colorful jewels

Which he will pocket like crack money

Clean and swift below his gleaming armor of black leather.

Through aviator sun-shades, Soul scans his nemesis

Andre the Stingray

Gives him a skyward thumb

And slyly sips a vanilla malt.
 

Soul breaks, like he did with Girlfriend Number Two last night.

His favorite espionage theme plays over the radio.

He would have danced on the table in his younger years

But there is no time for such trivialities.

The Stingray fires and misses.
 

Running a hand through his lucky greased bangs,

Soul earns stripe after precious stripe as the jewels collide.

He scratches, that was intentional, just wanted to give Andre a leg up

But the boot comes careening down on the fifty Soul has just dropped.

Stingray unloads a five-ball combo, then heat seeks Soul’s ass.

Shit.

Soul leaves to slash Andre’s whitewalls with a Tachi sword.
 

Seven Cents

Seven worn cents fall from your reluctant arms

Vertigo apologies

I stroke my seven patinaed beards in mid-flight

And doubt the sincerity

The dust-varnished mahogany greets me hard

The table sweeps me low, under the broom

There I meet a leaf

Wrinkled brown in her old age

She becomes my sensei.

I train in the ways of the airborne

Only to understand that my fall

Was the lift under your wings.