i heard what you said / listen to it rattle round the inside of my head // gyrating like a jackhammer / unmuffled sin-chimes from our camel-hair bed // so / you tell me / you want me dead // or out of the house for a few days, instead / i can manage that / i think / give me awhile to give it a tink // if you don’t mind / and even if you do / if you would be so kind / it’s the least you can do / you don’t know that i’m privvy / to what i heard that you said / it’s all tucked away // up here in my head

a jumble of support, enthusiastic acclaim – and me, trying to untangle it all. but I do so reluctantly, loving the promise of validation and the approbation of your longed-for embrace

i hear you shuffling towards me / and i sense the impending certainty our lives’ intersection will impose / there will be no cataclysm of personality // only a continued indifference, the yawning chasm of you living your life, me living mine / fruition a thing of longing & beauty // when might we ever pass this way again

tiny things, bursting. molecular studies of grapefruit, clandestine affairs awash in moonlight. you feel me good. i’m not what you used to think i was, i think…

albuquerque. in the glare of a new mexico sun, caballeros with itchy b*lls. red leather fringe suits santa well in the southwest; the old guy dons woolen muffs for venturing into maine or northern minnesota.

door to door vacuum salesman wearies of ringing yet another bell. hey. it’s five o’clock somewhere…

a shim, a sham

a flim-flam scam

do you fear your life

is just a flash

in somebody else’s

pan,

man?