Expectations

The table has an inconvenient
height, creating a scoliosis
and tennis elbow.
The writing desk with the appropriate number of
scars and water rings never emanated.
The right spruce never met the wrong
teeth.

The lacquered top is an onyx abyss entirely created by
myself, from schematic to beam and bolt.
Another wonder of the world
snarling alongside the sphinx,
lines of visitors wending, managed
by nylon straps.

The queue is too long because there are too many empty
tall boys on the counter.
What was once a stream of sights grated into
word dust is now a struggle against
momentum.
The moment is impossible to catch,
like a greased pig,
contriving metaphors out of a struggle for
movement. For forward progress,
gaining stability from the spin
the gyroscope stands on toes like a dancer,
still,
tips of point shoes white as the satin
ages from the tension and retires.
White, it turns the white of strain
and grace.

For the dancer the audition is the terror,
a job offer more petrifying than
crucifixion because it binds the need for accuracy
in thick, iron shackles.
Audiences, expecting.
The tryout is a frying pan, the performance is a
fire.
Between a rock and a hard place.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Catch twenty-two.
Dichotomies, all.
Yes or no.
White or black,
or obsidian,
or raven,
or midnight.
The empty film frames at the end, whipping
the projector in spliced conclusion.
All things in twain. Any third
ignites them.
The middle child
of the step-parent.

That got too serious. Too close.
Sometimes the friction between the words
leaves an ember near the kindling
and the flame's tongue licks the edges off
the dream fog.
No more camel, no tiara,
no hopscotch, no orange, no watermelon.
The Princess' desert dunes
vanish back into heat waves above the asphalt.
The crumbs of the family picnic removed from their corner
with a fingernail.
If you've held on to it for so many years
surely it has a meaning.
When the fibers amass on the ballpoint
the moment becomes poignant.
A palm on the forehead, mouth slightly agape.
The same pensive feeling the dam has
when the water level falls.
The drought exposing the algae stains.
The high water mark drawn like a height chart
in a kitchen door jamb.
The concrete monolith bares its strength
sitting,
waiting,
on floods that will not come.

I Am To Describe

It was written on the back of a case for my old favorite
pen. Funny how things change.
The excitement grays and then friends only keep up through technology.
The mole on her cheek becomes asymmetric
and kills her.
You wait in the waiting room for news
but you already know what the last page says.
Life creates punctuation through pauses
and endings.
I am telling, not showing.
I am to make the character want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
I am not supposed to tell how the dog makes the character feel,
I am to describe how the dog
has a seizure;
violent muscle spasms rippling under her white fur and bright pink skin.
Heaving, uneven breaths.
Eyes jerking senselessly, hijacked by an internal lightning storm.
And I am supposed to describe the pause he feels.
The locked gaze and lungs.
The ignored television, laughing in the background, changing volume periodically.
He fixes his sight on the convulsing body not realizing that he's holding
his breath.
That fourteen pounds of effeminate canine represent a tether to reality;
that the ropes tying the boat to the dock can snap
in the right wind.