Overruled

In the window with coffee draining.

A butcher's night sleep piling fragments of flesh here and there.

Tell me how the earth feels when you are on your knees. Tell me where your hands go when she sits on your thighs.

A steep sky scrawling.

My peace rose only blooms while I am away; even now, it readies.

Saturday's shadows fatten and hot elephant air leaves the delicate trampled in its wake.

Just get to the lake.

As a kid I sucked the color off my M&M's and nibbled all the breading from the chicken McNuggets and squished my doughy dinner roll into a ball the size of a quarter to eat in methodical morsels as if it was the last bit of food for a stranded survivor.

And on the way home from catechism classes we would sit facing backwards in the white station wagon with wood paneling on the side and velvety blue upholstery. We held hands in the dark and pretended to talk about school while we watched scurrying asphalt being devoured by the perfect cover. He wore Drakar sometimes and a gold chain and a Chicago White Sox cap with a crooked bill. His girlfriend was popular and pretty. I was a good kisser and not allowed to date.

To feel alive is to ride the calamity all – the – way – up. At elevation, peace billows in a tumbling plume from one's gaping mouth.

An adolescent kiss.
A moonlit 9th-green kiss.
A bass player kiss.
A swimming kiss.
A not-yet-tasted kiss . . .

Rear-facing partitions to change the view of the very instinct we try to overrule.