Poems that you love

[milo]

The Return of the Shopping Dead

I love the smell of vegetarians in the morning.
My beard is long and gray and when I’m yawning
the walmart boys do crocodile things –
I squeeze some red tomatoes and I sing
a giant bird nested in canned food
some have pictures of missing children.

Sometimes I see my lovely mom
waiting in line like a sad elephant.
I grab her flabby tail and I follow
the grocery muse to an abyss of weight.

Hi mom. Thought you were dead.
What’s in the bag?
In the shiny bag, mother?

Spare ribs, chocolate bars
some cigarettes, a lighter.

But the neon brightens,
and the ghost that pretends
to be a cashier stretches her hand.

While I study her transparant veins
I hear some sirens doing the street,

the noisy beggars I always believed
baptised you a thief and a virgin.

Martijn Benders