Does Anyone Ever Try to Swim Across?

Circular in the slow wake, head hazed and day gazed 

At the length of patients rotating like talking-ghosts 

Who speak into vaulted ears sequestering secrets in a keeper more serious than black

So that days stack a library of restricted volumes 

Exiting a car for a watcher at the door, noting the mental cloud 

As a cushion in the lack of initiating a physical touchstone to begin the evening 

She walks around the passenger door in the absence inquiring about coffee 

He measures the space of that place he has so often been  

Where his body is standing, traversing and yet contemplating an equation 

Outside the present requiring a reset acquaintance

To be in the moment and not in the mind’s maze 

As Glasser breaks choices, thinking is labyrinth 

Feeling is a thermometer and doing is the catalyst for lightning to enliven growth 

Where are we going again; asked like a conifer descending its seed to soil 

In time where we were once before just a bit further on up the road beyond the levee 

To see rebel souls and search for the sustenance of New Orleans 

Ticket lager on credit like recognition of appreciating accountancy

In golden liquid circles recycling paths for fold-out thrones to purview the Mississippi

Serenaded by brass blown denizens of the night daring like immaculate vampires 

To show outside of comfortable zones of beginning before the bewitching hour

The orange sun sinks behind St. Louis Cathedral and a casino 

Where the gamblers parade and dancers convene 

Speaking of a cannabis cup overflowing for a place a body prohibits return 

Thinking of his brother leaping off a stairwell and speaking in tongues 

Years apart and the stories behind the stories we are telling and hinting 

Implications in what is and is not mentioned 

Like a remnant of Catholicism strangling self prohibitions inking his skin 

In the juxtaposition of atheist years struggling with the gravity 

Of objects adjusted by the pull of one distant passing the other 

Catapulting slings of every experience leading to this instant 

Placing this capsule and that as such to alter the outcome of eternity 

In forces behind the paradigm of conscious light 

Sparkling John Lennon and imaging the rebellion between a girl and her mother 

Of being told what might be if she only applied herself, underachieving tattled tale  

In a doppelganger career paired between science and art, listening and dancing 

In a two-sided war of the self 

Drinking in the silent sky above the banks like juiced nectar paired daily 

To permit a full meal of uninhibited volition and today she is indulging twice 

As if the very act to imbibe this moment is a measure of relinquishing control 

I ask her if she loves herself 

The personal like a pull-chain lamp from the sunset to the darkness on the edge 

Of a gargantuan oak enduring the electric lights of man 

She said she is scary; the tree wants the sanctuary of the night’s veil 

The aroma of what fear is wafts as if this bubble of potential affection  

Whispering into a room of requirement may fall to the realities sitting 

Like an army of clay soldiers behind doorways 

That if he sees the scars striped against their cheeks or from their swords he will run 

And that moment of vulnerability as if such departure would transfer 

From ambivalence to salted melancholy may have begun to already pass 

Lit like a wick sparking adrenaline as his foot presses the gas pedal 

In the roaring fervor of merging lanes she set a fire as Springsteen beckons 

Her music is plugged in past Antony and the Johnsons metric 

To measure where this is and may become as the buildings burn 

The night air piercing a mirage of Auburn next and week of a daughter’s encampment 

He has to see her 

And her body feels like a catalyst for lightning 

Battling a war of day and night seeking a time to let another in or not  

God banging at the gate all at once numb to the mosquito’s blood letting 

Skin so soft and his mind wanders to what monogamy means to him 

As sex licks the air like a feline arching her back purring 

For the touch of the night in firm hand bracing the nape 

The world sinks away off her feet to always see words behind his looks 

Golden shoes bricked in exposed skin for blooming petals calling one to live 

The painted bear crawls out of Houma’s hibernation to claim her place 

Intelligence beyond the jeopardy of her father’s trivial pursuits 

In an ACT score and what constitutes a woman defining who she is 

Beyond swamp or desert, river or a stage’s inherent mask 

Singing like a vocalized hope beyond the line 

That the glitter and the nudity costume the place others 

Are not allowed more so than any business suit

The intimacy of what he may see that others may not 

Disturbs her gravity of contemplating adjusting a path 

Of filled in days and nights, juggling the spectrum of two lives 

Encapsulated in twin naps and ten watches to keep the time 

Batteries exhausted and in between the lines of speaking in the river’s curve   

Boarding the freight of contemplating his eight to five 

He thinks maybe she is changing and that startled bit afraid 

Emotion like a root the priest and Edmond Dantes spot tunneling out the Chateau D’if 

Before the roof collapses and in the crush the Count of Monte Cristo becomes a possibility 

Willing to risk death in the bag of a dead man’s passage into the sea 

The sun beyond the stone, the bird in the unreachable window 

If only humans had wings and yet kisses in the moonlight are given to fly 

He knows neither has to know; just hold on and see where this goes 

If she is monster than maybe he is a monster too 

Waiting like her animus and his anima to settle the beauty and the beast

Unconsciously awakened contemplating release