Nicholas Bell


The Time has Come

It is time that I do something 
with the loose change I have amassed in 
an open neck California wine bottle.  I 

need to empty the bottle.  Deposit my resources 
into a savings account to bare me a .6% interest compounded 
quarterly, or bury it in a shoebox under a lilac bush, now, in the 
spring 

while it blooms full and purple letting 
its roots slowly penetrate the thin layer of cardboard and intertwine
between each
penny and dime and nickel and quarter, 

separating them yet holding them together in the moist soil.  
I need to empty the bottle.  The time 
has arrived to see that 

glowing light of an empty glass bottle.  Hold it to the sun 
focusing the light onto my forehead 
like a choir of angels dancing on the head of a pinball 

machine. I need that bottle, so as to fill it with water 
that it might preserve a 
fallen branch 

of that lilac bush just a little longer.  And my spare 
change might become fragrant as 

the tender growth of new spring leafs pushes loose 
petals into the wind. 




Poem for a Stripper

Its OK baby
Mother earth has implants too

She says 
she feels 
much sexier now




Chance of Showers

And then the bus
stopped
and the people
filed out
all at once

Every one of them
forgetting 
their umbrellas. All of them
left there
in a row

Along the plastic green synth-leather seats 
like jewels on a Public transit tiara.