copyright 1998 Doug Robinson


 

 

 

Commuter

1
big white dick angling up up with wings
wisping smoke or wavy tufts of some
almost colorless gossamer stuff that you
can't take roughly into two hands like
the law in that small Southern town
where there's a college but no airport to pull
the white winged bodies down onto the
rainslick tarmac stretched thin between
green hills shaped greedily by kudzu's
bright viny sculptor's hands till the
trees gasp eyes wide aching for
air

2
eight dark hours clackety
(all)
clack through the heart of the
(night)
country farms flat and flocked with
(now)
snow stretched taut like
(you)
white shoulders halfuncovered in
(sleep)
cotton worded reach from
(across)
my swollen heel in the soft summer
(hour)
night the rumpled unfolded
(bed)
hands not needing to pray for
(aye)
what they so greedily tenderly
(stroked)
spanned fingers trellised like
(your)
ties tarred under the clacks
(back)
trackety clack morning come

3
I exhaust you like
air and gas mixed
and burned under my
hood somewhere up
ahead of me on the
road north toward home
and hearth whose fires
burn glacially slow
and don't exhaust me
enough but for you to
say "it makes no difference
to me" and steel your
self against hot gasses of
need to feel and not to not
say no

"I like" I said
"to play with fire" and I
did and did consume my
self and you in flames
of gold and brown
pumped out the pipe
in swirling black and white
chessboard squares where
black queen takes white king
in three week moves against
soft skin and eyes that blink and go
blank in a haze of determined
smog roll on the road sliding out
from under me away south at
76 miles per hour trying to
exhaust my need for you

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