waking
throat dry
as a vase’s

shepherths pie
lantil soup or
ceasars salad;
do I dare?

After miles of self-elected pace setter cars, swervers
who pass and cut back like pinking shears, the
perpetual left turn signaller took a right off-ramp, it’s me
and the ones going by like I’m standing still, and the
poke-a-long-hazardy with dents on both sides
of body panels. On the 417, around a bend,

rows of cars slow ahead – what’s with this? then at
overpass’ posts, the nose of a copper. On sight of
the speed gun my foot springs up, sole light as drizzle,
drop sandbags from laces, 8, 10, 12, 20 clicks off instantly.

Already 2 cars are wincing on the gravel shoulder.
Speed trap dad would say, my partner would reject that
reenforcing common sense.

on my machine
not months but moments passed
since
in your recording your face lightens
hair blows from your brow
tickles
your exposed neck

I was eating a sadness sandwich
with laughter bread pushing an elephant
up a stair – while flaring a certain
je sais wot, a sparkler flair

it isn’t giving myself local rugburn,
shall we make it a Holstein up a doorstep?
A Mack truck and a slippery mucked ramp?
shall we say, a pain-o pianos of I love yous

gritted up and out, an oily dust
that isn’t part of love proper
more like, an puffed out decision
to stretch extend to the toes
I love you (anyway)

(even though I came home
saw the can lids in the sink
where they will rust it)

You’re a free spirit, agent,
(unhampered by yesterday’s clothes
on the floor) (comb by the sink
missed the drawer by inches)
(wash cloth ditto) I resist picking up after you. I won’t be pat-
ernally, patronizing. I will let your keys stay by the door,
(not on the keyhook but mid-floor) and your apple
core rust to crisp until you notice it or notice my eying it
and you in a molar-scraping bout of suppressed speaking about — you

are where exactly? evening fires
of evening are kindling clouds.
are there message I should be reading?

you should have been home an hour
before me. I came late. no note. no phone.
no indication of plans to not be here.
the night is darkening. I envision and brush
away treasuring the terry cloth that touched
you, using it like posies against the news
that your car was crushed like a cigarette butt
crumpled on the shoulder of the highway;

I would see your hair in the bobbing billiard balls
of every balcony for the rest of my life. Apples
I would eat the bitter pips and they would grow
orchards of indigestion in me —