Break-Up Chore

Change me!

change me change me

With whispered songs or screaming bouts

Shadowed sounds: Mr. Matthews--

“We can do better than anything that we did

you know that you and me

 we can do anything”

--Unwashed dishes in stagnant sink

snakey grease-lines sunning on suds--

Hold me with shaking fingertips
and under them too--

I take my tea in other rooms

And hope that fingers shrivel or shrink away

Laptop -- laptop screen saving chores

I sit at my desk and type of hope

And love and sex and death

Anxieties crawl up like jungle gym kids

Swinging on every thought

--and Swingin’ them too

Blank black screen mirror: silhouette blink

Plum-brown dark sky outside

sip Blink sip

needing tea, another cup

 “Stand up” I plead my legs

“Stand up!”

Fin, fin about tan Tupperwares

Bulbous soap suds cling to sides

Screaming: “Save me!” The stench inside them

Around them, of them. They pop,

one             by one                        by one

I swim along to my whim

In that sticky, stink sink

Pop

Pop

Pop

Conversation on Age

“Cicadas shed skin,”

            They say, the Royal We

            “So too, will you, 

                        leave a slight trace”

Like lovers lain in adjoining tombs,

            Our mossy lips danced about jar fly songs--

            Their spittlebug buzz, and ours too.

We sat sipping wine  

Singing under orange-blue skies

            We took bets on whether sunrise

            Or sunsets -- where sea ends           

                        Or sky begins

Burgundy-black tannins slide down the sides

            --‘Til we sip some more--

            Your glass with no bottom

                        My glass with no rim

Allegory of the Cave Discussed on a Lunch Break

Kissing whispers into’n ear--

tink tink--  of a lightful flame

Ceaseless and cool to touch.

“Just talking shop,” he says, 

but I overheard him say it too

Grease stained, grit black nailbeds--

“Don’t go getting poetical

Just bringing nothing but trouble back”

Plum plump, or tasty too

and mouthfuls and mouthfuls

Toe tripping on caveyard cracks

Matchbook strikers send sparks, and us too.

I asked

It doesn’t really matter to me or to whom shall I look