Licking salt from lips, he leans in
tripping on banana peels
and circumstance, forgetting the weight
of pocket watches. Clumsy,
butterfingered, he breaks china
haphazardly
fumbling with her
waistband, routine, survival instinct
and something more
vulnerable. Distracted,
she gutted the fish swimming loopholes
around her sternum. I suppose,
she remarked, gravity
gets the best of us
at the best of times.
A captured German teenager holds out his arm as a US soldier examines the injury. France, 1944.
LIFE
There Will Be Tears - Frank Ocean
you could have warned me
you wouldn’t be here, right here
you wouldn’t be here for me
wary of unfamiliarity, doll-like
inert, she relents
knee-deep in cat-mouse rigmarole
gulping
chunks of regard, if ever
scant and limited
between sheets, willing
his vanity to rummage
for satiation
for lucidity
within the impasse
but quiet, she asks
for passivity,
for stillness
let solitude appease you,
or else,
three meal cycles, nose to the grindstone,
jackhammer humdrum
of DIY trappings, let the routine unmake
you
and our strange compulsions
to pull teeth, test extents
to which we permit ourselves
to dip
into vulgarities
perplexed, with un-furrowed brow
he grins, with cheek
he conducts
traffic: sentiment and sensation
towards
the wrecking ball
these: abstract questions
of the economic downturn; Al Gore’s
shock propaganda; simple virtues
of a litany of gods in expressing
mental disorders
in vogue; dolls in bikinis
with red hot lips; and permit me
a nod to Foer’s animals
are a privilege
for the socio-economically sound
white, Western conglomerate
that apologetically rapes the third world.
