Tepid Pink

 

A glittering emerald crucifix guarding brittle
bird bones, pseudo drawbridge skunkworks
of her skeletal architecture, waiting to hang some
future king
for criminal intent to (maybe probably) heal the world,
everyone who has ever tried has
failed,
a cigarette trial for the trouble you've caused,
reaching below the dinner table corpse of
Last Supper riceandgravy snaking
your stormy shorn panties
along goose stalks long, poison offerings
in tumblers turned up,
may I be excused?

tip-toeing under citrus star clusters
through the maze-riddled
midnight garden of your suburban spiderweb,
where once buzzed Magic
now bundled a silk suitcase cocooned
and cold, frozen diorama of
yesteryear's wonder, a cup to the door
listening
to the tempestuous divorce of adventure
and circumstance,

wrong to be
brave,
wrong to have
fear,
rigid in all kinds of heat despite the
tragedy of something irretrievable, like some
obscure life-raft has already (maybe probably)
been abandoned, a disoriented dreaming,
a forfeiture without destination,
and into my grey and unforgiving hands
your bundle of tepid pink cotton
fingerings
crawl like warm whiskey,
like virtue we never had
nor wanted
nor needed,
a long lie nonetheless
about the disparate hardships of our unequal traveling.

TA