Rachel Walker Trio: Michael's Poetry

 

All my words will not explain

The convenience of death near a dream

And much is being said again and again

But the game has not been laid to rest

Sports commentators words stumble over words

The complexity of which cause analysis to emerge as a jest
On his way out he saw the sympathy in my eyes

And I listened to an old man explain his pain

My “Hablo muy Poco Espanol, Senor”

Found no understanding in his “triste”

The loss was his cross to bear

His nationality took a hit that was hard to take
The loss.

His dreams are not forgotten.

There is more, always more

A ball is stronger than fields with many doors

Where exists lead to brighter fields

Where keys are never lost but buried

In sands of silica that turn to glass only to be found again

All of it under the mercy of an Argentine sun

 

 

 

Why an apple

Why not a pear
Did you know? 

Apples genuflect

At all fourteen stations

Of the cross

Not in memory of St Augustine.

No.

Who, as beggar

Tasted a pear

Who ate and ate

And swallowed

With greed 

After his lady

Left the room

A pause without windows

A bed covered 

With the memory

Of her cleavage.

This was of course 

Before his conversion.
After
Adam gave Eve

An apple
After
The black lady gave Augustine

A pear
I think of the apple

As his body’s navel

The end connected by stem
I think of the pear

As her body’s nipples

The ends connected by stems.

The pear was born

Long before the first

Apple seed ever blossomed
With softer skin

With softer colours

Whose fruit, her fruit

I’ve held in my palm
I spell words

I chew on,

Then spit

Out ideas

So as not

To choke on

The ignorance 

Of the power of myth If you please
Memory as habit

Apple as thorn
Pear as pleasure

St Augustine did scorn
No?
He was abandoned by the mistrust 

Of shapely worship - 

She left his bed

Never to return.

He chose the apple

As call to prayer

And then as now

What was hunger,

Is now its golden cow, forever?
It’s never too late

To bite into a pear

As acts of contrition

As legends of thought

Explore what others debate

Knowing the vanity of sin

Knocks on my gate.

Rarely in the morning

Often when it’s late.


Between the here of now and then

The ‘as it was’, as ‘is our past’

St Augustine the sinner

Like me, must wait

As novelty defines

Those hidden lines

That taste describes

As juice runs down

My chin

As juice betrays

My thoughts within
The ambition in my fingers 

The lust of thoughts still lost.

 

To touch your skin as beggars do

To others

Must wait.



Hello S.G

I am one day late – this should have been given to you yesterday – my apologies.

 

 

Garden walls I did not plant, please

Grant me the wisdom to see the beguiled

Fleeing colors of seeds that did not germinate
Let me cultivate my private estate as

The sparrow’s company of laughter is

Unable to scratch this surface
Syncopated strut, nervous heritage

Prone to an absence of reason’s lamentable sadness of

The innocence of parade ground bravado
And when they came back

Some grafts did not take

Forsaken by God’s blind ambition of loneliness
Why do I weep for this kingdom of silence

Is it a neighborly friendship that was to be

Never given the chance to bear fruit
For what are colors if not all of us are to cheer

The poppy’s determination

To offer sanctuary free of admission
Weary we pilgrims are

Foot soldiers who want to fly, yet are

Grounded by our all too brief attention span
Widow makers fail to quench our insatiable thirst

Beyond the carousel of Royal Dalton sentinels, transfixed

There are blossoms amongst the cactus thorns of submission
Driven as I am, astute observer

Chaperoned by the vanity of vague memories

Their loss of blood, the poppy grieves
Time waddles on, unyielding remittance man

I am distracted by the dye of anguish

As I peel back the onion’s crown of sorrow and forgiveness
Which of our senses are the first to leave us, the last to fade

Crimson hybrid rose, what a stranger you are

Oh my, when did the free masons of imagination ever kiss us good bye

 

 

I left an angry woman

Who was stopped, by

 An unkind sentence

A loosely worded

Flippant reply, that

Cut very deep and

Later on made her angrier
With my wordsI crushed a spirit

Made delicate by her honesty

Made vulnerable by my ignorance
Apologies are not enough

To take back

A woman’s hurt 

She may not

Be able to let go.

The pain from words

Whose meanings

Are kept as storage

In an earthen floor room

Where sentences are served

Until she unlocks the door
Am I to speak no more?

Or tuck my tail,

Wipe my feet, then

Not walk on floors
No – maybe yes – maybe never
One thing I have learned

And what I’ve learned is never enough

I will choose my words before I speak

I will try to imagine

What a freshly painted wall

Will look like

After the faded colour has dried

Lesser more wisely said 

Is better for what

Is yet to be read
“I don’t know”

Is not a defence

Not knowing is the Cardinal’s sin

Found in a dimension

Where time stands still for the guilty

And holy water is given its moment

As are my struggles,

That look backwards and then, genuflects against its very own will.

 

 

This morning’s cold embrace

Was introduced by late night conversations

As icicles on strings bend to interrupt

The disconnect of words.

They are as common as a territorial army on parade

Drummers as carpetbaggers

 Written in the style of whispers.

The innuendos of stray, then lost meanings are 

Shaped by toothless winds without appetite

Then in the forecast of an apology,

They bite into my skin

In their defence I chew on words

To big to swallow, I spit them out

And watch them float on the dark briny surface

Of a sea called ‘Misconception’

As is my habit, I choke on exclamation marks

Only to swallow the dot, while hanging onto

The end of a straight stem shaped proclamation

Byte

And then ingest it all as “Certificates of Mistrust”

Oh, this is not over

Then as reminders, I burp and exhale

What was never meant to be swallowed,

What was never meant to be chewed,

What was never meant to be bitten,

What was never meant to be held in my hands, 

What was never meant to be picked. 

By the random recognition of a lovely facial expression

Meanings are to be left hanging, before it all falls to the ground.

 

 

I lay beside you

I watched you sleep

It was your breathing

That touched my cold shoulder.
The proximity of vagueness

Outlined by the hint of aftertaste

A wine tasters white cane

I will not need in your dark
Breathing gives life and

Adds meaning to possession

Of the first, of the longer lasting

As entrance confounds the meaning of exit
Now as it is of later

Encounters are wrapped

In the warmth of fidelity

As first assumptions turn into expectations 
As I remember, your breathing

I recall the first time that we danced

I watched with the most peculiar of attention

The sway of your hemline tying knots in my lust full thoughts
Nor do I tire of watching

The variations of a theme – With thoughts dressed to the nines

In the play land of your breathing’s dream
Breathe in, breathe out

What makes me smile is not the doubt

Of finding out what’s left to discover

What makes me smile is that sooner or later
I’ll look at your face – whether in your bed, or

Arm in arm under your umbrella, to find out

The intimacy of cool heads breathing

Watching for the passing by of life’s meaning aboveor under the linen sky’s cover

 

 

 

Humming sounds, all of my life

Not a distraction

But an unwavering reminder

Of the language of the planet

Understood by bees

And those connected by

The electricity of a moving multiple timbre.
Lightning rods of conversation

 Excitable by the touch and amplitude

Of ‘listen to this’ of ‘have you heard’

As women roar to the moon with

The first hurrahs of giving birth

To the children of joy as the sprouting of seed

Shouts in the staccato of rhythm and rhyme of life.
It’s not a ringing in the ears, still

It does create echoes amplified

By the drumming and chanting

Of someone else’s accomplishment,

Not of Mr. Einstein, Herbert Hoover, or

The children of Mother Theresa, bless her house

But of someone, of something, that lies just beneath the surface of sympathy.
There is a mathematical ignorance of notes spread on a sheet

Of  scoring the ups and downs of moods

Layered between cycles of distraction and creation

Cleff  to the right, clavier to the left

Leave it said undone, instead swing to, swing to…….

It is my own ignorance that suffers under cycles of distraction

Compositions and composting, birth and death, scatting and chatting.

 

 

I like to think 

The cool arbitrage

Of words

Is wrapped in

The lip gloss

Of your late

Late night proposals
I could not

Deny the possibility

Of rejections

But then you don’t 

Give up easily
Still there is…….

This cool satisfaction

Of having at least tried

In the silence of a 

Tongue’s probing

As to whether salt

Could ever turn

Into a column of sugar
This will pass?

(Moses took more than second looks at the promised land)

And I ask, who

 

Has the last word when it is 

Written in the form of an apology

 

 

Do without and protect

What is eventually swallowed

I hear it again ………Do without and close the door

To the rooms of my thoughts.
I cannot hear those words, again

But I look at the gloss of your lips

I have this, this naked approach

But am held in check

By the warring  ‘ no, no’ of your finger.
All leads to the downplay  of my

Extraordinary  urge towards mischief.

Hello again, must I remind myself

My skin would never listen to the

Contrite commands of you objection
Stuck now are these memories

In the polarity of incompatible charges

Black widows wrapped in the black of red

Bright star of drowsy bites, and echoes

Of a throaty warble that never wants to, but always does belong.    

 

 

No two kisses are ever the same

There are no odds given 

When true love plays with two selves

As a never ending, lifelong game
When I plant my kisser

On the lips of my best friend’s kisser

Somewhere inside of me

There is a bell that rings with a loud ‘bong’

I am not wrong of this I am quite certain

That the two of us are very proud

When applause is given

By the approval of an observant, cheering crowd
Our lips are the lips of choice

That connect when they touch  

Sometimes quietly, sometime quite loud

It’s like the North pole touching the South
Or 
The East meeting the West
Or
The black and white, tripping

Over the Ying and the Yang
Or
Two units celebrating the sensitivity of one mouth

When our lips meet under the Umbrella of Joy

The pinks and the blues dissolveInto a puddle of mush.

Then eyes open with a twinkle

As checks rage with desire in the state of a blush 
Somewhere in the mystery of memory

There sits on a branch a bird called “Thrush”

Who sings with abandon with notes not at random

To his lady of love, the one he calls “my morning dove”          

 

 

“Muriel, I tell you there are just too many trees

 Look at them, they’re everywhere

They look too bossy, and I should tell you

Green is not my colour
Black is meine farbe,

I buried my husband in blackGod rest his soulBlack is my colour.

Besides, I’m seeing a SchwarzerHarry is

OK with it
My Harry was a fine, delicate piece of workSwiss movement, beautiful jewels

Never missed a beat.

Muriel, you ought to listen to this
I could tell, my Harry, he was slowly dying

It was his ticker,

 Would you believe he was worried for me

Never concerned himself with his failing health
I loved going shopping with him.

At Feldman’s I was his Queen

I remember the time he danced with me, down aisle 8

You remember – Baking Goods
He knew black was my colour

Muriel, I’m talking about …. noirNot chocolate cake, or black molasses,

But…….living black!
I should tell you my favourite black is the colour purple

I would eye black magazines in the cashier’s line up

Harry noticed, and let me indulge in my fancy

We took our sweet time, ‘specially Saturday afternoons
After a while, people started to notice about me and Harry‘

Hurry up there Mrs. Shapiro, you’re holding up the line, and we ain’t here to do some time’

‘Why don’t you buy the mag and let us get on with life’

They didn’t know that well built blackness with soft graceful lines was my strength
But my Harry, he understood

I knew I was his royalty, even as he was dying

And after he passed away, six weeks to the day of dressing him in black

It came. It arrived in the mail, a three year subscription to ‘Ebony’
I could tell Harry was happy

Smiling down on me, you know from up above‘God takes care of his peoples’ the Rabbi would say

Look at Harry, look at me
I’m doing OK with Alvin

Even his eyes are purple

The colour of Mood Indigo

As Mr  Ellington so deliciously  put it
Muriel, I’m telling you this, you’re the only one

At night when me and my man are in bed, I feel funny

I know Harry is up there looking down

And here I am looking up into those big mood indigo eyes of Alvin’s, and I know, God is good”.   

 

 

I watch it leave

To the applause of its companions

One bead of sweat
I watch it leave from

The left side of 

Your hemisphere
To the left side

Of your left eye

From your temple, downward
It trickles, downhill

Without regard

To skin, to cleavage, to hair, to slope
The movement is slow

Its path line determined

By the consequences of change
Pulled, or pushed

Gravity, anxiety, heat

Or the lack of all, or of any one
It gathers strength

This salty pearl

Snail to snake, it moves
This salamander of hope

Skink, snail, Christmas cactus Flower’s tail
Now there are two

Beads of sweat

And I watch
Two pearls, persuaded by

A push, a pull, a shove, as

Happy amigos cheer them on
Beads to rivulet

On a voyage, on the outside

Like electricity, on the inside

Movement downward, sideways

Following pleasures in flight

Morning doves chasing falcons
Sweat gathering storm.

Puddles

Movement to the lower extremities

Resistance, lather, all of it matters
As you gather momentum

As you lean to exhale

The kite that I hold on to, leaves my hands.

There is no clean and soberness

To this extravaganza

Twelve steps, to start again
I write, dressed behind 

Your mask of anonymity

I read without regard to punctuation
And that is why I stumble

As a blind pole vaulter hurdling

Over objects cloaked with the body armour of penance.

 

 

The woman with the blue tattoo

She is alone

She is looking for a touring company
It may be you
She wears glass slippers

Smokes Romeo & Juliet

Havana’s finest, what else but number six
She fancies lanky looking desperados

With desperate eyes

Who will nibble on her melba toast under canopies of passing blue skies?

It may be you
She finds attractive, the coolness of machismo

And has no truck with men

Who diddle with doo dads and gizmos
It may be you
Cell phones with messaging, that she will doI find this very vexing, much like

Reading her encrypted texting
Her 20/20’s loudly ‘WOW’ at the right art

Would you order from her menu .....If she serves it a la carte
I’ve heard her laughter, even in ¾ time

And dance the tango she does

Elegantly embracing a bottle of red wine
I have not seen the curls in her hair

I chase away stray thoughts, they run

Then hide in the precincts of the debonair
And
She loves, loves, loves, loves

Bouquets of flowers, bring them in fours

One for each of her hearts chamber
And should you articulate in a manner that you serve, perhaps wander ....

The best of her foods, they may be spiced

With the delight of Asian coriander

 

 

 

Pythagorean shadows, enigmatic, connections of nerve ending impulses

Synaptic discharge coaxes endless amorphous night trains of your repose 

Should I be so distracted by your invitation to dream awhile?
I am impoverished and shackled by a predictable insight that leads to sightless corridors

Suppose your languid pose by instinct knows my endless pursuit

Of balancing the brief and narrow, that fine line between gratitude and graft, lassitude and serenity.
Made destitute I am, by the irons of our predictable wisdoms, still

I snorkel between the abstract, content, and fully vested,

Refusing a summons to come up for air, nitrogen the silent sentinel regulating our exchanges.
Anchored as you are, somnambulistic dead weight

Beyond the realm of the incus, inert, transformed beyond body language

Delicate, half tone shades, receding tides relax your extremities which I cannot see, nor hear.
Measured breathing, nervous threads held in place by the gravity of your stillness

You hum lullabies, seraphim you are,

Morpheus your ministering spirit

Celestial countenance guides your lengthening shadows, too brief the exposure.
Circular contractions ease your expressions into a spirit divided by two

And as you pique my curiosity, I see your face age, star gazer, cloistered amongst the clouds.

Whose creature are you? Death wish prose; a Viking’s burial, from which I do not want to wake.
ST. Augustine, a refugee amongst lost souls would have declined your fine line

The current of his soul gave way to a universal grounding of orthodoxy and piety

Your penumbra buckled his rays of divine light, serene frost, scumble’d the logic of his offering.
Your creator? Who guided his lack of inhibition in teasing shadows to trespass original sin?

Was it the weight of his world that toppled your hair, shoe string lullabies, anthem for anarchists?

His eternal chagrin has laid to rest the magnetic sand dunes of your Sahara’s sleeping sanity. 
My descriptive runs ahead, wandering impulse ignorant by design, hereditary caution abandoned.

There is none more sublime, than your outward expressions of an inner brooding, out of context

My interpretation runs ahead, beyond rescue, our compromise a two dimensional ambivalence.
What will I concede to, as your linear equations molt and transform themselves?

There is none more holy than an outward expression of an inner brooding, his, yours, or mine

Not to be taken lightly and left on the New Yorker’s back page, begging to answer the question,

(The ever surfacing editions) of “is it art?; is it talent?; is it divine energy?”

 

 

The flow of your blood has rhythm

Barely contained within walls oiled with vitamin D

(D for dancing, your words)

It will smell of stainless steel and chromium.

The cells, red, white, and boo,

Have their favourite boogie

Chances are:Reds do the Tango

Whites do the march

And boos do the Bugaloo, care to watch

Ooaah, watch the tempo

Energy rises to the top

And sweat smells sweeter

To those who have noses……………………………….who knows?, ooaah.


                                                                                 Thank you Al Pacino

 

 

Mechanical, with cold skin

Admired by glacial eyes

Touch it and you will taste

Of heavy metal.....in your mouth
Still, I am of it,

Within it, without it,

As gravity confuses

The ups and downs of my imagination
There is no fear as I watch

Rivets returning the stare

By design their lot is not to disappoint

By choice, I look for stress fractures
I am a part of it

Umbilical cord, placenta, Pillsbury spine

Milk flowing toward mouth

As the sky is a readable quilt
I love to touch

What is not to be touched

Icarus must be smiling

As the power of myth

Waters my eyes

He fell, I landed, only

To say goodbye again

To the long hello’s of our make-believe sky.

 

 

Eyes have no secrets

The man, the woman, their dog Cross the street

Because nothing is of a quiet nature I take liberties, just so

To catch a glimpse of “infirmities”
The dog has a limp

The woman’s gait

Buckles under the weight 

Of very large sun glasses

There must be a handicap

To sunlight wanting to enter

The greyness of her eyes
The man’s back is stooped

More so than I would have thought

The sway of the boxer’s limp

The size of his darling’s dark Oakley’s

Worry him as he pulls on his Romeo & Juliet

As he stumbles over the curb

I would have liked to speak to the ladyI have a theory – women with dark glasses

Have the ability to use words That have fallout, collateral damage

That effects even a casual observer
Perhaps that is why her man

Would prefer to die

And not have to hold on to the leash

Any longer And not have to listen to words

That makes all the dogs in their neighbourhood...Cry

The dogs’ eyes tell me

His master sighs a lot

Over little thing:

Not enough attention paid...

A house with many curtains

Drawn shut...

His master replies to his mistress

With the sad sorrows of repetitive

But, but, but..............
Tut, tut

Life runs on repetitive cycle

The dog notices

His tears have filled lakes

Beyond their shores

The over flow stored in shoe boxes

Behind Mrs. Marco’s many closet doors

Buenos Aires, 

 

 

I’ve never met the woman

Who lives upstairs?
In the summers when

I come and go
Flowers in pots say

Goodbye and then hello
In the fall I hear,

I hear music

Courtesy of toes that tap

What must be on a hardwood floor
Winters are quiet

She is gone, far away to Argentina

But really, I don’t know

Spring time grows on the familiarity

Of sights and sounds, oh my
I need only to look up I smile at her clothes, hung out to dry

 

 

Keys can be temperamental

Much like my first wife

Please, I do not point fingers

You see all three of us have the ability

To open and close the things

That hang on hinges, that swing on moods
I cannot remember

Meeting a single key.

They come attached

To each other

On chains of prosperity

Held together by promises

Of openings, of closings
Like homing pigeons

Noisy, gregarious, opinionated

But keys unlike pigeons

Never shit inside my pockets

This is good

My first wife would have said

This is bad, “why do you write this stuff”
Ah, did you know keys have pedigree

Recognized and documented

 By the containers they open

And close, I suppose

Bloodline without fur, but

Lineage that is defined by

The complexity and hardness of their teeth
As if Blue Blood’s permission

Approves or denies

Entry, above ground and below
Treasures to protect

My keys sometimes forget

The lighter side of life

Where light dances

On the reflections of polished crystal and

Before long, some of my keys

Will grow old and their teeth will loose their bite


They will loose their grip on life

They will not survive

Death as an experience

Banished to card board boxes

Tarnished, abandoned

Where brass will grow with mould

Still a better fate

Than crystal eyes

Of shoulder draped 

Red eyed, dead foxes
This is what I think.



 

 

 

I sit, she waits

Conversation couples

With consternation

Something deprived

By necessity? I hesitate
I wait, she has looked away

Eye contact lost

To the eternity of FrostMilk is spilled then

Left to dry as Einstein always wondered “why”
She may have wondered

Waiting under the umbrella

Of the 11th Commandment’s ambiguity

Calling out “Why are my sins numbered”
Still I wait, I watch

Her fingers suggest “piano”

She must be a player

Her eyes suggest

The possibility of more sharps and flats
My eyes move to her out of range toes

Does this surprise you

Should there be more

I suggest you turn the page

And then turn more as you work your way towards the door

 

 

Equatorial of origin

Ancestry of ice, drifting aimlessly

Lured to, captured by

The buried veins of Lapis Lazuli
His urge to move north

Was the reward of sacrifice

Lit by the flames of numerology

Of shrewd Mayan priests
His arrival was unannounced

The stink of defeat

Carries with it

The conquered ambitions of a foundation
The spirits of the dead

Were piled to the heavens

They had not been given permission

To find their way home
He created a kingdom.

By acquiescence they were given leave 

To enter his house of anguish,

A place, where bones are to wander aimlessly
Unable to find their way

The spirits came to face the terror

Of death by default

For he was jealous of rivalry



They were left to choke on acrid smells

Of incense burning, joss sticks

A yet to be discovered opiate

Growing in the jade gardens of remorse
“Who were your celestial parents”?

The two created the devil himself

Incarnate of Sheol, of Hades, of Hell

They will eventually meet you there.
As the spirits came to your altar

You showed them their mouth and anus

And sucked out what was left of their life

And spat on the hapless bones that connected the two.
In their dread,

They could only focus

On your fleshless expanse

Of flattened nose, hinged less leather of jaw
As you reigned

You lulled us to sleep

Forgetting the sight of our shredded torsos

We came to accept the inevitable.
There is patience in all that is dying

What does the rain man teach?

What does the grass woman preach?

Life is an illusion, as is death

Your breath was slower in coming

In the cold warmth of your yaw

There was no longer the mighty of will

To slow the cancer of inevitability
The kaleidoscope of your civilisation,

As toys in the busy hands of the masters of ceremony

Did not recognise the growing impatience, the fury

Of citizens not rewarded with the promise of deliverance.
As the blood flowed in ever larger flows

The painstaking process of awakening

 Was driven madder by the realisation that life is not forever

As is the season of the corn.
Born of distemper

The tenacity of servitude and ceremony

Will make the inevitable happen

And those who were once terrified, disappeared into the jungle
And your ambitions, as of my writing may have come to an end 

 

 

Two Schlumpolas, dressed for the weather

Lot lizards by trade, always money to be made

The air from ‘Rough Mother’s in their hair

The ladies with baggage needed a break

From the lethargy of too much beer,

Too much smoke, too much wine, too early to dine

Thought a walk would be fine

They needed a break, the needed to talk.
Two quick stepping

Pistolas are betting

Of getting their whistles wet at ‘Rough Mothers’

They were discussing the mystery of

Celsius and Fahrenheit, the conversion of one into the other

In jest, in jest – “Multiply one be the social insurance number of the other and it should be fairly close”

Besides who really gives a duck,...

I thought Gunslingers with pride take short trips along their golden mile.
The men heard the women, scatter gun voices with impact

And who listens after the bullets have found their mark

Always too late to duck and too early to step back

Still, Banditos have pride with eyes, ears, noses to the ground

Bloodhounds are gentlemen with eyes that travel

Players of the game who squeeze blood from a stone

Took notice of the shapely Schlumpolas, 

Two easy chairs, with removable covers.
Strange things of beauty can happen 

In the late of afternoons between pavement and gravel

Meadow larks meeting hawks as pigeons looked on

Debating the distance their courting croons travel.

The high heel stilettos’ dropped a hint with a humid “Hello Boys”,

 The other two fumbled their play – ball dropped – what’s there to say?

Optimists with pride picked up the opportunity in stride

To cover the odds of advancing this play they stick handled well, between black, white and gray. 
But then ladies and gentlemen, the world is always on a stage of recovery“

Hey Thelma, these guys look OK”

The Kid kept quiet, but Butch replied“Thelma, it’s a pleasure.

Would your friends name be Louise?”

“How did you guess?

Let me think, let me think”

“You all must have seen the movie”

Hands in hands the larger holding the smaller, the only thing I can think of

Is - “Just smile, will you please”. 

 

 

 

Sip, Savour, Swallow
Sip it without sound

I must not upset

The flavour that labours

Beneath my tongue

Yeast is the liquid’s custodian

It will not let me forget

To savour under oath

There, life began

At my first taste

Of what the hands of oak

 Delivers in a glass.....Merlot
Then swallow and let fly

The offering of my sins

It is the red of wine

That washes away

The neglects of long ago
Somehow I draw on the vintage of forgiveness

Late in the day

 

 

Water flows and washes clean

The thoughts we have in our renewable dreams

Each tells a story, mostly true

In the blue of memory that belongs to you
Water flows and washes away

All that is left behind at the end of each day

Please, dance with me under a sun in amber

Into the night then sleep to remember

When we met in the warmth of last September

 

 

 

 

 

Had a conversation 

With a vegetarian

She said

‘Vegetarians are good lovers’

‘Just ask me’
I did
Even before she spoke

Her eyes narrowed

I felt like a rutabaga

About to be scrubbed

By Ms Curly Kate Herself
I would not have complained

The rougher the scour

The better that’s my usual …..
She says ‘I’m a closet carnivore’

‘In a certain way, if you know what I mean’

‘Really’ I  said,

‘I would not have guessed it’

She says  ‘I know that has something to do with my appetite’
Hm, I hmm’d
‘That’s why I don’t eat meat’

‘My appetite for you’

‘Probably wouldn’t even register’

‘On the Vegan Scale of Arousal’

‘If I was, strictly speaking,’

‘A true vegetarian’

‘Does this make any sense?’
Hm I hmm’d
‘It’s very difficult for me’

‘You know, should you and I connect’

‘In a spiritual type of way’

‘Look, let me give you an example’

‘I shop at this IGA, on 3rd and Gormley’

‘And should we go shopping’
Hm I hmm’d
‘Well I shop at this  IGA’

she says

‘The only way to get to the vegetables’

‘Is through the meat department’

‘Which means I have to pass by Harry’s meat counter’

‘And I’d be staring at the meat, and cold cuts’
Hm I hmm’d
‘I couldn’t take my eyes off his meat counter’

‘I know, I know and’ 

‘I’ve given it a lot of thought’ she said

‘I’d be embarrassed, for the both of us’

‘With all the iron in the air’

‘I couldn’t bear to live’

‘With other peoples stare’

‘With all the iron in the air’

‘I’d look at you, and all I’d see is a rutabaga’
Hm I hmm’d, ‘I’d like that’
Here’s the rest of the story
Here we are, 35 years later

I’m still in love with Ms Curly Kate

I’m still her rutabaga

A few things have changed

Near as I figure it, there’s more

Much more iron in the air

And if anything, vegetable have given us

More meaning to our lives.