breakfast euphemisms

An old crow on the orchards
out the back beaknibbles,
scratching the wrinkled skin of
bark for luscious fruit,
a day’s worth of life wrapped in juice
and pulp, rolled with a stem
and hung.

A snap and the shot is done,
exposed and left, composed.

The backdrop of a black photo album
with too many creases, fingerprints
and an artist who will be gone
by the time we seep into nostalgia.

You and I in our long backed,
bone bending leather chairs
(with holes and moth mansions)
smiling like we used to.

In the evenings we try to match
the squeaking of our rocking
to the click of nightfall poetry
whispering off cliffs and pantry shelves.

Our fingers, together, form a leathered
flesh chessboard, your hands painted
from waving at the morning sun coming,
and my own, white from hiding
until I was dry and hanging.

We should take a picture
in this evening light
but it is much too dark
and mourning is not too far.

a work in progress

“heard of centaurs?” he says,
stirring a pot of coffee in a cup,
overflowing onto bone china and sipped.

“half man, half horse,
trotting on two legs.”

and with that brief explanation
he begins to divulge the very
essence of a non-political
conspiracy theory, that man is
like this mutant in hind.

but where the beast was cleft in twain
and human joined to equine,
man was borne to man,
but not to man the same.

“You see,” he says with a grin
“I have the legs of Freud
which is why, rather than walk, I lie;
astute, sweaty and coy.”

the entire sexual prowess of a man in his mid fifties
summed up by Austrian geneology
and a rusty upper lip
“you see, it’s not just a horse thing
to go around wearing someone else’s head”

he eyes the stuffed noggin of a moose above the counter
contemplating just how many stitches it would take
before he too (by two) could be transformed
into one who is worthy of mounting

my thesis went in
this morning - very happy
and relieved I’m done.