JYQ 8, 9, 10, 11

"symphonies without sympathy"

"you're an abysmal winner"

"i like the way you die"

"honest engine"

""

Improv of Lucille Clifton's wishes for sons

i wish them tender nipples
and breasts of those who are well endowed
which cause their thin shoulders to knot
and weak backs to break.

i wish them frustration,
and many children with natural births
who appetites are large
and needs aren't met

i wish them love interests in women
with other plans besides theirs
who take them along for a ride.
and after,
i wish them heartache and headaches'
of raising motherless spawn.

i wish them great-fullness of their gifts
and then after all my wishes be granted
i wish, that i didn't have to wish for change
in sons, that'll one day be men.

Improv of Lorna Dee Cervantes "Colorado Blvd."

I wanted to die so I walked

the streets, causally, 
down pathways of darkness 
during the light of day.
waiting for this drug called depression to take effect
and make weigh,
as if carrying these burdens weren't enough.
journeys through the medulla oblongata,
to my dismay, only straightened the senses
of the keen, kindred spirit that taunted me to end my life.
.....

Improv of Kim Addonizio's “What Do Women Want?”

Walked right up to him
stating her business.
her words unknown and unimaginable
to the thought process of a mind 
free of sobriety, dressed in the hell-favored, favorite--
a Satan made garment,
meshed within each curve of her body.
a red dress in which
she firmly pressed up against his chest,
with lips to his ears, repetitively saying his name
today, on his 19th birthday
at a gathering she'd gave,
shortly after sniffing several lines of cocaine.
she'd made him her claim.
& He'd been nice, seemed so plain
but he'd fall hard
and she'd be only numb to the pain
she'd chose to emit
because in it, she felt fearless.
dressed in her new skin.
a new life she would begin,
staring back at her
in mirrored eyes, and blurred reflections
of life's worldly lies
it would be the death of her.
and that dress, well
it’d be the goddamned
dress they'd bury her in.

JYQ 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

"my head was full of useless knowledge"

"jet-stream of emotions"

"at least there is some air in your vents"

"if i don't make it back before the sun, then all you have to do is run"

"this is why we hide"

"curls gone wild"

"we'll never evolve as a society because money has us all by the balls"

JYQ #1

"You're running like you're being chased, not like you want to cross the finish line first"

The 2nd floor

the laboratory was on the second floor
of Helen Pearl's hospital.
wedged in between the morgue and the file room
I'd walk back and forth past snack food machines,
pacing through hallways filled with identical doors,
metal railing and stainless steel.
I'd imagined the patients there.
The rooms quiet of the those who lie still, attached to machines for support of life,
or those who simply would not wake.
I'd returned shortly to my small workroom,
lined with labeled vials and unused test tubes waiting to be evaluated
while ignoring the constant shutting noise of doors on either side of me.
Files being sorted and resorted, and bodies being removed and resumed
Its taunting, daunted on me
Why I was so significantly placed here beteween these two
and why these .....