The teeth oil clatter
of the bicycle men
gear-head lug-nuts
kitted neon top tubes
lubed and polished saddles
circled,
girdled air on gravel

A rumble of crankset
skeletons arrive in bunches
bodies hunched,
panting rubber gloves
with multi-colored fingers
sucking air in,
spitting it out
clam-skinned
hamstrings clutched

And in the parks
gutter punks
keep an eye
for the bicycle men
swap bed rolls scout box cars
muttered mantras
plumes and ash and footsores
circled,
girdled by path and sign
by steel spoke
averted eyes

All men disguised
as wheel rims
zoetropic dark and thin
chow cold beans
spoon and tin
circling
and circling
teeth-clatter chainrings
and the blur

To take a stand made us dizzy
we had to make a move
back pedaling
skidding from bottom
to bottom knowing
every pothole 
every bulb-burned street lamp
every stop sign maligned
every eye that stared us down
Nothing to call home

But the call of the bicycle men

By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
September 2014

we hunkered down
in the unholy holes behind newsprint
sleeves rolled all Wall Street
all auto mechanic
all greased & slicked
we hack-sawed concrete sidestepped knapsacks
asleep on park benches
we fouled pinafores spoke in pinpricks
pacifiers planted in pie-holes
we watched you evanesce with panache
we watched cocked and maned we watched
one thumb with silvery polish roll into a ditch
tin can cocktail weenie
someone said
pickled punks
someone said
boiled pigs feet
we hunkered down in a moshpit of unclaimed legs
& crumpled bits
labia in pubic nests
ear lobe potato chips
a wad of chewed bubble gum
smeared lips
the color red
no one will ever read this
someone said
turn it off
your boy spilled Tinker Toys
dropped an f-bomb
we eye-rolled handed off
the remote

we tuned in
we hunkered down -- hamboned the gig
riffed & licked
cat-gutted it
chopped chords heads rolled spurt spurt
a kneecap snapped like a forest twig
we jukeboxed -- hair stiff on her cheek
an eye adrift sky-ward as-if
oh heavens above
someone said
while the doc dug earth from a socket with a toothpick
we hunkered down dirt-nailed hammered-home
wanted something to stick
in our hole
stop-gap
what we did to fill ourselves
what we did
carefully tread
missed our femurs our metatarsals
we missed our spleens our tongues our tonsils
we off-handed those harelipped kids
those kids flew into the vast indifference
those kids landed piecemeal
the Barbies we threw splayed
and indecent