That feeling, when you have a cold
And you lie on your back,
On the kitchen floor, long enough that
Your nostrils become wooden salad bowls.

I’m down there, sexy as a pear,
Grasping the stems of my ankles,
When signs of war
Static from your potato radio.

We fight. Fists like old potatoes.

Then, as has lately been the case,
You bless me with a
Mundane declarative statement to
Mark the end of the argument:
“The red onion is going bad.”

Mundane, I have discovered,
Is clay colored
And tastes like the rubber coating of telephone wire.

“Have you ever drank
White wine
While peeing?” –To continue in that vein.

A trap! Innocuous Chardonnay, ubiquitous traitor,
Sparks it up all over again.
Until,
Here is your little window!
Wait for his intake and then
Ride his huff out through the narrowing gap to freedom.
(Forget trespassing to pajama-dip
In Charleston-warm chlorine under a
Shattering of purple sky.
Forget the gateway phrase
“A plum aplomb,” mouth full of
Plump fruit and thin lips,
–Not yet apart tearing quips.
Forget rain rebounding,
Dancing on a trampoline of surface tension,
Misting your forward tilted chins.)

Instead, write.
Do this in the remembrance
Of how bad things can get.