The Ongoing In-between

Answers, as they come in sharps

Dirty dishes, broken and discarded by phantom culprits,

Porcelain bone left for you to lick of oil

Part and parcel of truths gone stale.

The rooms they are all the same

Every body apologizing for its falling feathers and cracking joints

Every breath a frosted storm of white logic and curdled regret.

Beads of styrofoam held suspended in geometric shapes

Cradling the magic coffee.

Sucking at foreign words more apt to deceive

Dulce est periculum and for the taking.

The bar still sands, leaking sawdust and sweat-stained limbs onto the street.

And they sweep this side of the street into erosion.

To have qualms is to beg for a new birthday

To have the cake and squash it between white knuckles

To seethe in saturated vapors of what’s left of the glass

And beckon the dusk back from the other side.

But you, with your salamander’s limb, are scratching

At the fine print in a book already smaller than its skin

This new organ aches for an itching

And you’ve been digging crosses for too  long.