It’s said the middle’s most difficult
for learners, readers, chefs, and those in stride,
for those who sit at the Café de Flore reading Nausea over a plate of escargot,
the butter and garlic seeping into dirty uncut fingernails to be sniffed in remembrance.
“A toast!” she declares; as the lights flicker
we vulgar take up clods of the stinky stuff about,
toss and pitch our shame as if entrails to disregard,
’til the light, transparent, finds a bend between the night
with chromatic shadows stirring an ancient sprite
<insert neurotic disclaimer about not being worthy>
“But you’ve captured something for sure —”
A somewhat sticky moisture that expands the fabric
Was left by a one-eyed spy on a pillow case
that began smoldering with decay
leaving memories as fodder.
“For the fallow times to come,
I have only one thing to say:
be gone forever more
but leave the wind —
we’ve got rain to make,
a cake to decorate in sweet green icing.”
Like a striped pair of pants
the swaths of red blood and white gauze
reveal the time between and — expire.
