A Season’s Sporting
by Rob Rice
One
I never called you back because you brought your bag to the bathroom and that seemed like secrets
Memory gone as of ’05’s accident
Thought it’d be funny to ask if you remembered
What accident
You thought
Not funny
I guess we didn’t fit it
Your trustless crumpled posture
Vertical fetal position
And my seated intention to euchre you
As you scolded yourself for expecting
Two
Exclusivity by demeanor and fashion’s
Integral to some self-esteems as it
Justifies the distance
They educated between us
Though like money it’s relative
Comparative purpose objects
Are no value less the idea they buy
Which is valueless if you have the object too
Rock
Paper
Scissor
Three
Remnants of the front
Of the war that exists now in as many bodies as can hold all the blood it spilled
Then, soaked up the confused purpose, salvaging it
Filling future generations
So furtively ire’s semaphored
Lost
Those must-be-moments of apology eye contact
Pre-bayonet
What do they count for
And how to appraise them
Me? incapable of a moment like that’s solving in a lifetime
A clear liquid’s not being water flips me out
But then I see it run; endlessly cold ethanol’s endless cold being my fault
The ripples in it poured are like heat distortion
Four
Rightly it’s impossible
The little croutons of contact
Day by day wearing it
The salad of each other
Us obsessively dieting
Swear by it
Fills us up
Swears
Isn’t it ironic that most muffins come already wearing Spanx?
And mixing Dew with powdered milk for breakfast
Into the frosted flakes
Lights ‘em up!
Five
Passing those guys on the street with their tongues screwed out unaware
They pass people everyday
Just not me
They say
It’s good to stretch on either side of the Matins
And is it easier to measure tablets or days?
Most people die with so much love still in them
Probably sadder than paying for the rental company to do a full tank
Then not even driving it in empty
(i.e. the losing money)
I wonder how many of the people I assume are sad are
They all seem it, and each one I’ve asked is
But they all talk tall tell of others
Laying in the lambent lap of
Having been heard of
Politics
How can you trust a person who wants to be a leader
That should immediately disqualify you
What indelicate world is it that we let people have power that want power
That’s a wrong trait
And their mixing media
The seat of civic somnolence
Who never even noted
The great bizarre truth in
How Oprah’s Law of Attraction
Relates to Pasolini
At the very least they want to be a conduit
And to feel it run through them even
Taste it on its way
Never negotiating with forces on the ground
For our release
Six
Tell me a story or I’m turning a TV on
Open up
I’m the quiet sage stalking you
My primary source
Unbeknownst I’m bivouacked on the street
Seven
I see faces I’ve never encountered when I close my eyes
but I recognize them they’re these fully formed people
Enough so that I can get a sense of what they’re like
I supplied them
I’m always attracted to them somehow
How they are seems fine to me
I never kept
Chaff or fleeced it
But I can weave
I know I can
Spiking the hook
With wire and lacing up a bobbing string of days
Globes that I’ll use to drape the railing
On the patio in festivity
Where we’ll have wine
Despite my not being totally sold
On the outcome wine
My not knowing about structure
Politics
Snuff films for sale
Snuff films for sale all taking
Place in an elevated ash boardroom
With a standing line of people shuffling circles
Their hanging hooded crania
And him seated at the slab oak head
One by one they arrive to face him
Bow permission turn
Oak-draping belly down
Avoiding ally eye contact while lowering their pants
Allowing him thus inspector’s access to their genitals
Which he considers
And then shoots into with a rifle
Gathering up pants
Cupping the bleeding
They resume the recovery line
To generate some resolve in
In the small interim pre-resubmission
Having updated their résumé
We’d expect
wonder if a piece of beef is going to go into the deep fryer – with dust all over it? how to sauce that properly?
LikeLike