dreaming of the mediterranean

By the wayside at a busy highway
Bill waits patiently to talk to people unlike
me. Yet he finds me stumbling in,
in dire need
of company with my uncut nails clutching
the damp butt-end of an unlit paper toy.

And the usual salutations lead into unlikely discussions
and contemplations of cultural misgivings
and missed opportunities for travel.
Here, along the remote roadways of rural Pennsylvania,
my words stumble around the concrete blocks
that make up these states
and that word so
choppy,
and I revel in the banter between
this man, my father's age, as we talk women
and of the fathers of our lady-friends and how they always scare us
men.

The words stretch out into the distance with the trailing highway, never
knowing where they circle and bend back into themselves.
Bouncing headlights smack our ears and the weariness escaping his
body clasps that from mine and clings on for life.

I take my leave in hesitance -- the rented room awaits but I am
sorry to leave this self-proclaimed ignorant redneck
with no one to talk with in the middle of chilly night
that creeps out of the trundling trucks' noisy exhaust pipes.

to a child in a business suit

as murmurs of shouting
from without stumble through
my windows, i resist the temptation
to walk again through half-lit
corridors, instead wishing to hold
on to traces of intelligence within, never
keeping my mind in its rightful place.
where are the questions i so easily asked
of you, once when you were a child in my arms, once
when the twitter of centipedes knocked n'once
on my doors?
the crackle of burning twigs, minute and crushed, now takes the place
of your breath, the hours of waiting for you to wake
up again, to afternoons of placid existence, when you would
speak so shyly of your dreams and hopes.

the marketplace of emotions lifts its shutters too soon,
i am not ready with my wares yet -- instead asking
to sleep in and dream of days gone by.
the murmurs muffle all signs of compassion and i hold on
to strands of the flailing whisks of words once spoken so boldly.

ticking along

the yellow walls, along which
my hands run smoothly, raking up
the dust from older versions
of myself, take a minute to step
back and open up to the sunlit
yellow house behind us.

the dimming sky, within which
there are no snickers left
from prating globs of light,
takes a second to swoop down
and spread its arms above our
bowed heads.

the key in my pocket, waiting still
by itself, away from the jingle of its kind,
to find the moment of escape,
pushes against the thigh of another,
still asking questions that never will matter to any of us.