Botched Awareness of Jettisoned Body

 

To say I want you to embosom me

with our conversation

and shepherd me into latency

would be a kind of poetic thing to do

though conversation is rarely that

unless

of course

we’re waxing.

And if such a thing were to occur

I’d most likely be watching your hips move

like a pendulum made of bone

on a clock that tells time by counting moments of pain.

You’d be in the bedroom naked

and I’d want to crawl inside you

to discover your machinations

against my bolted grain of consciousness.

On the rug trying to kiss your reflection

as it slipped purple fabric over your breasts

I warped my body into some mismanaged collection of organs

within which I produced the ancient rhythm of the mumble.

I wish I could melt between conversation

the way limestone dissolves itself

into layered fingers pointing out the sky’s atrocities

from the comfort of pupil darkness

though blind spots aren’t ever really there

until the retina decides to take vacation

from its support tissue

in which case photopsia

or orbital heaviness may occur

but don’t confuse me for a disclaimer

I’m merely trying to avoid head trauma.

Slowly

from the carpet

I stood to meet you

halfway between the living

room and the bed room

to embrace you

and

to think

I embosomed you

while you cried.

All I could offer at that point

were particles of truisms

about the rapidity of decay

the vaudeville called Stasis

and the fact that the only thing any of us

are inarguably good at

is dying.

 

Joseph Lambert recently graduated from the University of Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s in English.  On August 30th, you can scoot your browser over to purefrancis.org and check out another poem of his.  Currently, he spends his time avoiding “real life” by writing too much and recommending terrible films to unsuspecting people.  Battlefield Earth, anyone?