curb-side conversations

Open their mouths and let them speak.
Bedded in primrose, the white one tells of love
deep as the ocean but sundered by sea,
of inky kisses hiding in manila envelopes,
breathed on notebook paper in purple cursive, weighed down
by miles and by automated tax-forms.

A couple yards down
the crooked one stands laughing at the world,
reminding it it too is just a little off,
it too is often nothing but an empty mouth.

The grey one knows of loss.

Across the way, the one shaped like a birdhouse
holds not birds but bills, peering out coolly from
their plastic windows while in
the shuttered room
behind a couple blames the other for the state of things.

'Who paints me purple?’ the violet one laughs,
and sets the neighbors laughing. How absurd it all is.

A host of them hold high their hands
and itch to spill the tea, but it
is but a waiting game for others.

And night and day they rabble on, the same
old stories, saying it all with nothing
we haven’t heard a million times.