Pillow Talk

A truncated, poem form of work.


Pillow Talk

Under the covers you and me
Drowsy from this many afternoons
You thinking “baby penguins”
I thinking of you--
apple bottom, and watermelon Saturday, finding the chocolate chips
stashed behind the Tupperware
Rocking in the lull of heart hum
You say “hmmmmm” and yawn in
Let us talk about the span of the universe now when everything rhymes
Rocking
Let us get it all right for once
No talk of Hitler and his babbleplatz or sailboats, because I want to talk about sailboats. And dogs. We know we already agree, puppies filled the void of God.

Let us get down to the basics so we know where life should go from here
I won’t be abrupt, this won’t hurt
Occam’s shaving cream, I will be gentle

I hear you and your metaphysical inclinations, your causes, bumpkin
Or at least I think I do, perhaps I am one track too
If we see the inclinations as foundless beliefs,
though they may be perfectly right,
all that you can know is that you exist…though we feel that we exist…our emotions tell us we should care about each other
Our emotions will be passengers, though
we will couch them in softness
but won’t couch our meanings

If you could hear me out in your polar chapel
If only there wasn’t the crosswalk of precedent,
or the pragmatics of your bunching socks

Metaphysics is persuasion.
Well…it could be…I must lounge my words in probability not pope talk
Do you understand me? Did I sway you?
So we will bathe in the same cloudy water and rummage for the soap
It must be right under the surface
We will go together, we will find it
Let nothing get in the way--
the pale ceiling, the knotted skin,
the wealth of fanlight on your white ass

What do you see?

I see holes, holes,

Black holes, they get larger the more you fill them

What is a hole that knowledge cannot fill?
Some call it god.
But our gods are comb-overs of the aging.
Is it one life, that’s it?
or Infinite lifetimes?
Can you reason your reincarnation?
We kill over karma

Don’t give me that path. That cobblestone bath. That varnished cobblestone path which society says is so, reality is not up to the majority.
Just because whales don’t vote, doesn’t mean they should be vanquished if your suffraging neurons elect
What would the whales say?
No cetacean without representation!

Do you see anything?
Only the hissing highway, the open door, a cat moaning outside in the frost.

No, don’t be tired, this is important, I see why the tired, though--in lifetime perspective. Funny that the grave can flash mutate into the repulsive
In years the smile dry melts back into the death snarl
Don’t give me those gloss eyes, as if meanings get mold,
as if they needed a refrigerator
I will remain here, while you glide your feet over the swimming pool, skin silk on the cold railing and call you out to the expanse of buoyant ego death.

What separates man from beast is his discomfort,
his itch never to be fully pleased with himself
To build his worry into a house
Queasy at his meals,
Cro-magnon vomited from the loyalty of Mesopotamia, and itched for sunburn and frostbite

Everywhere you hear “I eat meat, what of it?
I kill coyotes, what of it?
I fight pitbulls, what of it?”
Collateral
Dogfight
Incisors sew into the neck
Suicide bomb hit
teeth knitted into the wall
A bandage around the head
stitches go in and out
To find out now is to have proportion, balance, to help end unnecessary suffering

You look at me crab style
Utilitarianism is untilitarianism
Either we die out in another few hundred years or we expand faster than we destroy ourselves and huddle round small stars that burn for trillions of years

Everything is a mouth, there are mouths everywhere. The walls are like a honeycomb with teeth now eating through the soles of my shoes, now turning my feet into flesh spaghetti. Now knowing the end--that we cannot know yet and maybe ever.

I have forgotten you, bumpkin
Please forgive me
I will not be this unfaithful again
In this odyssey from ape to man to beast again, we’ve come full Circe
I will always fold into the fold. It is so cold, let us shield ourselves here, and shift around the bitter burden of righteousness.