Two poems


do not leave chewing gum in water fountain

when the warden on duty passed the empty ketchup bottle,
the day was already pretty much a wildebeest of molasses.
he'd just seen sexy jake and jake's 4 sexy pals suck each
other off. he'd seen the sky turn from blue to black
to pink, and then back to blue. he'd seen earthlings
outnumbered by extraterrestrials 3 to 1, and,
when the next fleet of spaceships arrived,
it was only 2 p.m.
**
the warden turned around, picked up the
ketchup bottle, removed the lid, and
sniffed inside. smelled like
ketchup, with just a hint of
malfeasance. when he sure no one was
looking, he slipped it into his
pocket, and everyone just thought
he was walking around with a hardon.
**
later that night, when he was
off-duty,
the french fries were the best
he'd ever had.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem appeared in Chiron Review, Issue #97, Autumn 2014.)



triton the magnificent

the sexy young man has spent the
day with his friends.  they are
all inside now, and he is
out here in his own back yard,
all alone. it is a hot summer evening.
now, while he's out here in
his back yard,
his friends are inside his house,
drinking beer and watching television.
and, for this moment,
he's here, alone in the back yard,
drinking beer from a
sweaty brown bottle.
he's felt lonely before,
but nothing like this,
as the evening falls,
and
the first goddamn star
peeks out like
a silver button,
on a lost coat,
that he wore in
the winter,
on the coldest
day of them all.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem "triton the magnificent" also appears in my book Be Kind to Strangers, published by BareBackPress in 2015. And "triton the magnificent" first appeared in Chiron Review, Issue 97, Autumn 2014.)