Once upon a bicycle,
I fell and scraped my knee.
The stranger came upon me
and bellowed, "Come with me."
My bike was left in the dirt
where weeds poked through the spokes.
The metal rusted through the silver,
the leather cracked, the reflector broke.
He wrapped me all in bandages,
my toes to head to chest.
Only my bloody knee was exposed,
the blinding crimson expressed
all that I could not;
my mouth was bandaged, too.
"I want my orange bicycle,"
I tried to say to the man in blue.
"Don't move," he said. "Don't try to talk.
This is serious work I do."
I hungered for the handle bars,
the ground rushing past my seat,
the air biting at my lungs and face,
long grass whipping at my feet.
He's tying me with bandages,
long and white, around the bed.
"This won't hurt. With any luck,
you'll never hurt again."
Once upon a bicycle,
I fell and scraped my knee.
The blood is spilling on the bed
as the stranger watches me.
YOU ARE READING
Rotten Pleasantness: Dark & Strange Poems and Prose
PoetryMy first chapbook is full of things dark and strange. These 24 poems and flash pieces work to demonstrate the loss of innocence to the dark forces surrounding us. The reader is invited on a journey through childhood nostalgia, teenage awkwardness...
