Split// keep it upstairs

in times like these (which
cannot even be called time)
even the silver lining is too bright
                        Somebody presses pause
(your picture swishes towards me like a broom)
                         these incidents bleed a piece of art
                         I couldn't steal even if I wanted.

so these days, let's be honest
we've both grown grassy kneed with thoughts
we've swallowed up- lillypadded and bolt locked-
till they stale inside us now-
                            mine are buried upstream-
                            electrified tails of a rattle-snake seismograph
                            howling
                            out of the blue coronation
                            of predatory census-takers
teeming
transmuting
and pasteurized

like throbbing fruit in my pockets
                                  everyone agrees it's no big deal
                                  but just in case, i stay put.
/
                                  crunch-time cyclones and the breeze is   

                                  ours again
We were humans then, down in our holes.
Sparking like empty lighters,
lighting matches of ourselves.
                                   You'd think I'd stop apologizing now,
                                   stop mince-meating the mark up

                                   with gloveless thumbs  

                                   but those proverbial power-tool thoughts of mine
                                   are a prickling kind of brick drip
they are bolts pleated like 

a blunt-soft water jet

   into my kingdom-come.