We each respond so differently
To this last year
The last year our roof will be his home address
The last year of his public school
The last year of his childhood
You want to push him further and further
I want to pull him closer and closer
Either way
It does not matter
As he pulls out of our orbit into his own
the night dripped onto my shoulders
and ran down my chest to the place where my collar bone used to sport hollows before they were replaced by fullness.
love has done that to a lot of my body.
replacing gaps with flesh
resting new inches around my legs and my waist
i am more body than i was when he met me
i’m more of other things too
can I swim in the aqua pool
of summer sunset
tread clear water dive
to turquoise depths
touch Venus
for luck in love
then nap on stratus raft
of faintest pink
where birds serenade
with cirrus song
and pluck me a snack
of moist marshmallows
LOCAL GUITARIST BARELY ABLE TO CONCENTRATE ON BLAZING TRIPLETS DUE TO ‘HUGEST’ FAN’S REPEATED SCREAMS OF ‘FUCK YEAH’
The first time we met
we talked for a long time,
much longer than we should have.
I got to know a lot about you then
but I didn’t actually get to know you.
The second time we talked wasn’t as long.
We made up for that with quality of words.
I got to know the shape of your body,
you kept yourself covered, letting me touch you,
leaving a lot for my imagination to dream up.
Things got interesting with the third meeting.
You let me inside just a little bit
let me sleep in your bed
let me touch your skin
where you wordlessly promised so much more.
Then we really started our courtship,
setting aside pockets of time for talking.
One by one, you started revealing secrets,
telling me what the story should be.
I listened.
I’ve yet to learn you completely,
but I’m not deterred by your remaining mysteries
and my efforts at our relationship
keep reaping their rewards.
I’m so much closer to your essence now.
Soon i will propose.
When that day eventually comes
the people will see all that I see in you.
We’ll be married then, married forever,
married to success and all the fruits it will bring.
The day we first met
You were a sapling in the undergrowth.
Not more than a foot tall
I took a shovel and dug you out of the earth.
Placing you in a sack
I drove home and planted you outback.
Withered and yellowed
I wondered about my transgression
I watered your roots, mulched and sheltered.
One day I noticed
New growth.
Soft, spruce green.
I continued my diligence,
I push my saplings on the swing
Wondering about the day
Theirs too may swing from your branches.
i come slithering, bearing seeds,
into this wet earth like a new genus,
Abstracktus Africanus (Some Fuckin’ Dirt);
my profile a 200 year old pencil & watercolor
painting handdrawn by an old Victorian Crone
and her Sub-Saharan Understudy…
i come slathering, pulling weeds,
a dark portent like a stout guinness;
i’m an inebriated griot (just a fuckin’ jerk!);
this moribund style has left my petals duller…
spiritually withdrawn until monotone –
my pistils & stamens still good tho, nice and muddy.
I found your name in an encyclopedia
searching for a word capturing
your barbaric ways.
And you were nothing but a pup
purchased at the vet
to console my younger daughter
when the older abandoned us.
Your kinky Airedale fur
drew hands to your lion head
for a cuddle caress, not that
you’d hold still, preferring
frisking, scampering away.
You probably knew right away
we were as untrained as pet owners
as you were as a terrier pup.
The time we left you in the laundry room
with a radio playing
while we went to work
didn’t bode well
as you tried to claw your way through the door
and wound up trapped behind the drier
and chewing through electrical cords.
And by the way your manners never improved.
Visitors frightened by your 70 pound
muscular body hurling yourself
as they entered the door,
your massive paws on their shoulders.
We finally settled on leashing you
to the bookcase in the living room
when guests were expected.
Your brute strength could have toppled
the books but you felt contained
and so were.
All the years of walking through the neighborhood
you straining on the leash pulling me along,
neighbors saying who’s walking who.
The last trip to the vet where it took two of us
to carry you to the car and on the way
a sweet smell erupted, your spirit leaving.
And the next day me lying on the sunroom hemp carpet
weeping, bereft in the empty house.
At various times
she tells the truth.
Watching TV.
“I don’t have regular instincts”
Walking.
“I am a tree with a seemingly infinite
number of extra limbs to drop”
Parties.
“Detached gets me by”
Trial, observation, and error don’t work.
“There is no normal. Tell me what to feel”
