Goblin Blanket Flower

by James Kwapisz

Who would have thought our summer
could be saved by your convict-cousin?
We knew he would be our savior
when he gave you his fifth and said,
“Drink this. Put some hair on your tits.”
We were lost pilgrims until
he, Bud-Light-in-hand, enlightened us:
“Drinking brewskies and quoting movies:
That’s what guys do.”
Ah! The good life was ours.
We would no longer need to
think for ourselves;
and now we know that “San Diego”
actually means a whale’s vagina.
He would probably punch me in the nose
if he heard me compare his brain
to a cockscomb—
but what I mean is that it’s bright
and beautiful; his Pittsburgh Steelers-
fitted cap the protruding petal.
He was our goblin blanket flower,
spiraling drunkenly and pissing
on your guitar pedals in the backyard
where we performed for young teens
drinking punch and sitting at picnic tables—
but at his core he was red with love.
“An apple a day
keeps the parole officer away,”
he had told us a week before
he robbed another convenience store.
When autumn came he went back to jail—
and you and I went back to school;
the walls seemed colder, greyer,
the lessons less amusing.
The days grew frigid and all we had
to keep us warm was the hope that he
would return once more, when the sun is red
and most overhead, bearing a fifth of whiskey.