Eleven Hours

Attempting to remember the details of a Friday, an exhale, and a Sunday

In, out, and in, the transformation of an acquaintance into knowing a person

The stilled pots on the stove bubbling stock

The aroma in censorship lodged in mementoes

Of what a person might be, the fraying rungs of ashen ladders

Scurried into a dust pile in the corner afraid by the throes of self-definition

And ego rattling nodes of affection sirens bellowing in hallways

To bring out the pan and broom to do what needs doing

The act of an education rooting evolving into knowing

What is kindness, what is beauty, what is the stitching;

That is capable of fashioning love as a possibility given

The nutrition of intimacy and choice and environmental texture

The taste of coffee on her lips from the venue where we met

Embraced and jostling in the liquid vessel to paper

Motioning to the posture of a park bench cushioned in a living room

Painted crimson in the tongue of Jazz Fest and Springsteen and Louis Armstrong

To pick-pocket the bus tokens and unstrung buttons she told me

Of men that made rules and cut ribbons and told when I call you

Wait until I speak before speaking because someone may be listening

The nature of control and being controlled and strapped laces

The call of feminine care and who comes and who drives and who waits

The drug numb and the tax deductible receipt and the phone conversations

In simulacrums of lobbies with IV’s and the turpentine of judgement

Somewhere like a specter rubbed off and the applications spray the non-vigilant

The Brian and Dusty and Mike and James and the ages and the remembrance of roles

And the comfortable nature of we can be this if we chose, but not that

And the convenience of vasectomies and the shadow of a man who shows up

For the Super bowl but misses the regular season contests, botches the extra point

The Hoosier nation and Wildcat pandemonium of I moved there so I would not be alone

I didn’t try with her or for her; that is the difference the pencil ghost statement

In the margin of the coach saying this to the player of by default

A daughter is included in the non-effort, the reluctance or acquiescence to lethargy

The indolence of the shop keep and the want to indulge in the pipe or

The hallucinogenic Barbie doll turned lecturer the other dot on the eye

The why don’t you try to prim this or shade that prompting obstinacy

In a blather confession of lesbianism to spook the hen house

Feathers and bound family Bibles and who gets it across a Mid-South-West

Balderdash mad libs of who is putting words in mouths like garble chalk teeth

Mulling the spittoon of half-lives of full-loves of medical odysseys

Of what goes on in a young woman’s brain

The developed photograph and the rising hurricane waters to blur

Away the pieces the hours and hours of conviction wheeled into pottery

And ceramic destinies, woven in yarn and knit to keep mothers of mothers warm

When it snows in the desert and the owls are hooting nonsense

The did you ever live with anyone

This friend did with one who was not aware

The not listening to the body that chose this above the others

As a place to stay, the bedsheets and half space evacuation strategies

Of the mortgage holders of the realm compared to the graduate school debt holders

Told to get moving, packing and the accordion two-stepping into the trunk space

The yoga mat rolled up for the tripod headstand into flying pigeon

The feathers fluttering into reshaping a self, the image of discussion while posing

The reorganization of a body of meteors a planet does not see coming

The impact of skin gravity of proximity arousal and the curves

Of a body pulled into orbit, the rotational geometry of ellipses

Revolving spinning inward as the mass of the central core survives

Impact after impact explaining pebble rocks like depression

Sequestration and am I a good person

Of bigger pictures painted and hung on a wall evaluated

For form and perspective the grading of what is art

What does it mean to be a human

To have these cogs and clocks sounding off

Set alarms intentionally early, to make time

To intercourse in the morning before the world starts to masticate

Lungs whole like flecks of bacon and charred remnants of mammals

In assembly lines squealing and hawing waiting for the blade to the throat

To end the lightning bolts of awareness inside a skull

That this is it; this is all the time we have; that door is the now’s guillotine

So better love and love hard and powerful and as true as truth can muster

In this aroma of coffee and bus tokens rolling around through fingers

Seeing a sea of seats occupied and vacated and debating the commitment

To attempt saying I will try here; I will attempt to inhabit this space

The being viewed as the vessel passes and the voyeurism is ubiquitous

The windows are like microscopes and the how are you doing;

Are you adult enough here to own real property, a life, do you own a life yet my dear

The pounding like Verdi on the anvils asking and making art out of the dissonance

The thrumming dulled into a pillow and time, the sleep and bare knuckle fight

Of being of passive resistance, the non-violent weapon of love

To love oneself and to be kind and patient and able

To feed a child who is allergic to the buffet and help him walk through a market

To pedal a tricycle and talk about what sugar is in the brown water

That outside world from the New York towers

Where people have to sweep up the dust