You're sure you're not in love with me
she says with her eyes, nonchalantly,
a woman accustomed to asking.
they glint green just around the rim
some verdant ancestor refusing to die.
she tilts her head, furrows her brow, repeats
"You're sure you won't come with me?"
words swollen with entendre, you’re convinced
her hair backlit and sparkling,
"virgin" she's joked, never once dyed.
she kisses your cheek in departure,
wants to get back to the way our parents generation did it.
daunting,
the cliff of her jaw
the curve of her shoulder
all not nearly near enough;
haunting,
too many of your days,
inexorable from your nights,
this ghost who hasn't even died.
rule breaker, you think,
no,
rewriter,
carving them as she goes in gold,
a lightning strike, a mountain in smoke,
consummate impossibility.
where were you before this
lost
or worse, complacent
what were you before this
a dissident
an infidel
now
a man with a living exodus -
perhaps no better off, no closer to salvation,
but at least renewed in belief.
a heretic
commanded testily back to the faith.
Tag: love
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idolatry.
-
even more ado.
i am a cat surrounded by gotten tongues,
struggling to herd myself.
every wanderer greets me disoriented, the lot of us,
pillared by the impulse to look back,
borrowing against time's already threadbare rope.
i reach the end of mine.
so i set out, sore eyed, scorching each bridge i cross.
a little bird tells me to see a man about a dog having his day;
i find him barking a chased goose up the wrong tree.
i disentangle a horse from a cart to get a good look in its mouth.
is it a gift? or just the straight truth - a reminder to be grateful
that this horse isn't beaten dead like the last one?
i burn all the oil trying to build a two-ended candle;
dig up the hatchet when i notice the chickens' numbers have dwindled.
my empire is small enough that i watch every sun set,
biting the bullet out of pity for the barreled crab.
high water hasn't come, this much i know for certain.
can't be as sure about hell.
i try to be deliberate in my deliberations -
to talk about timing at times quite unlike these.
they tell me
a watched pot never boils but boy
it'd sure be nice to feel your cup runneth over;
that Rome wasn't built in a day but my,
it'd sure be nice to build something
wouldn't it
-
-
turnpike.
just beyond the runaway truck ramp
ROUTE 80, NEXT LEFT illuminates beneath my headlights,
a shoestring road
stretching taught between the tin cans of our hometowns.
all i can see
is the brightly lit booth in the distance,
signs detailing price-per-mile,
toll tag readers flashing against the moonlight,
everything trying to warn me:
honey,
driving down this road is gunna cost you.
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love:
v. laying cornerstones with express intent; an anchoring, a leap, a prostration, an overture; the lifetime build of an infinitigon
musée 