i want

to shake

the can

and hand it to you

and watch it explode

onto your

white shirt,

strawberry-flavored froth

staining you like blood.

i want to watch your mouth

open in surprise and horror

as you taste

my fruity revenge

i want to hear the hiss

as the sugary carbonation

stings your tongue.

now you'll

attract flies

and this time

you won't be able to swat them all away

like you did to me.

i love the taste

of strawberry soda

because it makes me think

of sweet vengeance

that one day,

i'll have the strength to enact

upon you.

strawberry soda

tastes like the rosy glow of

the pre-sunset sky

a haiku by coldfront

"Writes itself, doesn't it?"

Joe slurped his strawberry soda menacingly from the shadows, casually holding a baseball bat in his other hand, tapping it on the linoleum flooring impatiently.

Love Potion no.9 by The Clovers was playing from the crackly stereo in the corner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTjs7a9l0hM

"I'm sorry Mr Pesci, please. I just need a little more time." The writer stammered desperately, a bead of nervous sweat running down his brow as his fingers clunked diligently away at the old fashioned type-writer.

"You're ghost writer number nine. You ever think about that? Care to guess what happened to numbers one through eight?" The slurping got even more ominous as he let his rhetorical question seep into the writer's tremulous pits. "You know what a deadline is, number nine?"

"Yes, I...I'm sorry, I woke up last night and wrote down my best idea on a post it note but it must've fallen off into the wastebasket and I couldn't remember it this morning."

"Oh, a Post it note huh? Don't give me that crap.. At least come up with a creative excuse. A paperclip machine armageddon, armadillos threatening you with a kazoo. This shit ain't that hard Nine. Time's running out."

"I thought the Trident Media challenge was ongoing?"

"Ongoing he says! on fuck'n going... If Lego bricks don't like knock-offs they shouldn't be so damn expensive. You get my meaning number Nine?"

"Umm... I can't say I rea - "

"Well let me reiterate. You see this bat?"

"y..yes.." the poor writer gulped cartoonishly.

"Wrong answer. This isn't a bat. It's a surgeon. You know what his specialty is? A medical procedure to extract smoothness. Things a little clearer for ya, huh Niney? Well allow me to demonstrate!"

Joe swung the surgeon at the stereo, smashing it to spark-showering smithereens.

The Clovers' comforting tune was decimated and the small office was cast into sudden silence, save for the reluctant click-clacking of the typewriter and a few pleadingly forlorn sobs from number Nine.

behind boards in a burrow

butterfly boy

karma king

sets down his cloudy jewel jersey

needs a moment

with his memories and mementos

nibbled nails to the cuticles

fortified a hidey-hole in the forest for a necessary funeral

an underground regeneration station

he’ll sleep until spring

until all this melts away

heated clean by sunbeams

and the ground glistens

more comebacks than a cup competition

stops buzzing bugs in their tracks like an aerosol-induced heart attack

the palpitation prince

will regenerate and soar like a swift when the radiation shield switch clicks

an autodidact

in fact

an architect of cyclical crescendos

and sealing windows

now let’s celebrate with some party poppers and drinks

here’s to the ninth life of the sphynx

…fly high