Something to cast lines at from the depths of my soul. It’s always about validation.His foot taps to a staccato rhythm.Fingers on the buttons
With a pattern of taps and presses, he can take it up or down
Or replicate life, crescendo to death… or both.Cold, crisp, and distant brushes of clouds…too far to fathom…drip horizontally from the highest peaks…
drawn Westward by the turbulent movement of air roaming the perimeter of the horse latitudes.
He thinks, he’d like to be bobbled in the winds as they licked acres of tundra
17,000 feet above a small peace of driftwood that rolls happily
onto the discovery grounds of a blond infant with a sand bucket and shovel.
Just wanting to be loved by the consummate authority for his essence.
The desire to share every arc of excitement from every new discovery
was evidence that he needed validation. He simply needed to be loved.
The electricity was intense, and the deeper in he traveled
from the orbits of the electrons and firing of synapses in his brain,
the more nothingness he found.
The writer is forcing experience down a funnel into an ink well…
Rather than drink from the fountain, he records the minutes
as the music spills all over the floor of his empty apartment.,
heard, but never really listened to.
He sits there drenched, although not a note, not a word, rained on him.
The closer the words get to the paper,
The further he drifts from the catalyst.
Its clearer now he is a robber of substance
And a graffiti sculptor.
Give him a glimpse of who you are and he’ll make it his.
You can’t have it back, you may only look.
But you’ll like what you see from the outside looking in.
He reaches for the pistol,
While, far away, the matador slowly drops his chin
Purposefully lowering his brow over the top edges
Of those deep dark Spanish eyes.
The metal is heavier than it looks,
No doubt that the density of a revolver
Far exceeds that of his shiny letter opener,
Which he has just jammed through a note,
bleeding into the grain leather top of his cherry wood desk.
An olive skinned picador gallops out
In a burst of intense hues, draws back his arm and
Jams the beautifully plumed lance into the base of the neck and
the head of the great beast drops…
and from that precise spot,
A latitude line was drawn to a location 8000 miles away.
At that precise moment,
As a silver trigger is slowly drawing back.
As the pride spills out, the bull stumbles and falls in a heap
At the feet of the Spanish hero,
The crowd rises to its feet in a swell of cheers.
that stirs the bewildered bull to struggle to his knees, without grace;
The grace with which he entered the ring.
There cheers were like no sound the bull had ever heard.
The judge, jury and executioner,
Always at the ready, even as the verdict is announced,
“guilty of stealing the meaning from someone…larceny of substance.”
The sentence, “Death.”
There is no click heard as a gunshot
Resounds in the empty apartment.
His head snaps back, and recoils forward,
gravity tilts him from the barco lounger to one knee, then tipping.
As his body soundly strikes the floor,
The breath of the collapsed bull rushes out
blowing soft dust
Onto the boots of the matador.
The slow motion of waving hands and hail of flying roses in the stadium
Made the execution meaningless.
The matador trembles a smile, and tosses his hat into the air,
As it fell, a smoking gun bounces once more on cheap carpeting.
Meanwhile his father cheered as the Eagles
Ran the pigskin across the goal line with only seconds remaining.
His mother sang over the phone to a disconsolate friend,
The receiver tucked under her nodded head…
The sound of chopping potatoes could be heard
As the TV shut off in the other room.
They’d get the call on Tuesday.
His friends would “ask why,”
We loved him so much.
A girl he asked out only days before
Privately reconsidered his offer…never understanding why she just
Didn’t say “yes” in the first place.
After all, “He was something to look at!
