Renovation Mushroom selling mystics trade round headed vision buttons for greenbacks or sex. Sand flies tear at your flesh, tiny prehistoric gymnasts, dancing on parts you never knew you had in pressure cooker wetness and heat. An old expatriate with eyes the locals called demon eggs, bangs rabid jumbled words on an ancient typewriter of mourning. Your hotel in the jungle, through barking dogs miles, shadowy palms casting nightmarish visions across the white sand haunted roads. Morning sky pounds you through windows ten feet tall and wide glassless save for jagged shards, overlooking the pool filled with twisted metal and lumber, where once tourists floated like spoiled red walruses, with thick insulating hide to protect against the wide eyes children's gapping stares. In this three dollar a night wreckage of this resort twenty years past dead, you sift through another sort of ruins also twenty years in the making. A tedious renovation of long hand filled notebooks, silent hours gazing over the sea, a placid yet angry tabula rasa greening with projections and agonizing agape lessons. The buzzards fly side by side with the sea gulls, the dreams swiftly following shifting sweaty nightmares. When they become indistinguishable from one another, from yourself, it will be time to go home. Revolution monument A kiss under revolution monument, a moment stolen, hidden even from the dark. You can hide among the 25 million only if clever. The collective eye watches like a stern chaperon, or a hawk searching for food Watch over your shoulder even in pleasure! The father who wants you to be good, to find a solid man who works hard and does not beat you, would shudder at this, as you do now, your skirt hiked, panties parted to the side, the revolution has been won. (C) 2002 Rich Furman

Rich Furman

Rich Furman, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Colorado State University.  A widely published poet he also writes on social work ethics, international social work, friendship, social work theory and social work practice. He is married to a wonderful women who has more freckles than there are craters on the moon, has two children, loves to mountain bike, and is slightly obsessed with his two wonderful American Bull dogs. His first book of poetry, Holding the Void, will be available from Snorting Dog Press, 2002.