My Best Brush with Greatness
(rough draft #4)
by J.R.
At a party full of purebreds, 99% imported,
Sean and I were scheming to abandon our art school girlfriends.
Morgan overheard this.
"What a waste," she shot, precocious bullets, precious trigger.
Tight body built like the jealousy of art or the perfected art of jealousy -
5'3 I'd wager - with lips begging for one thing and destroying another.
Blitzing my radar like a swan at a keg party
if a swan had lips and was a human being.
Toned. Like a gymnast, ballerina,
or a sexy bronze A minor from a golden tenor.
Cunning tiger-bird. Brunette angel nymph,
her clothing mere static to my imagination.
I memorized as much as possible,
digit by digit, divot by divot, curve by curve.
I saw her elegant Italian mother, her strapping dark poppa.
I saw her in a Mexican skirt ten years into the future,
coming home from the high stakes job and undressing in her studio,
letting the carmine cloth drip to the floor like a wide red petal.
I placed the art upon her walls
and named the books on her shelves.
I put the linens to her bed.
I opened her photo albums, connecting the dots of her past,
charting out a constellation of her problems.
I met all the men she'd ever slept with,
and saw their bare backs above her body.
On her mantle I saw the artifacts
of education and adventures she had not yet had.
Her assertion, "What a waste," hung
in the smoky air below her neck.
I had to squint to see it.
To look her in the eyes,
and down her shirt at the same time,
what a headache that was!
My eyes had bloodied up like tree roots.
She left the room and then returned to reach around the doorway,
and tug me toward the roof.
The October wind was dropping cautious fingers
down to Allston's tinted belly.
2AM by then had imbibed the city like it tends to.
"Stop wasting time," she demanded of me on the roof.
She kissed me so hard that her lips became part of her jaw.
Her jaw became part of her skull,
and her skull became part of her skeleton.
This skeleton was pushing itself on me,
the hot, clattering menace,
and I screamed to myself "Damnit!"
because right then, at that moment,
I saw the truth of it all and could not tell her,
because I was peering through her eye socket,
and seeing something rotten.
I was peering in between her rib bones
at a bright star in the distance.
My mind unwrapped the autumn wind,
and took from it a truth,
something of time and doom.
The massive accuracy of it all hit me, straight up the nose,
like pine-cone childhood cocaine.
A stranger could have pushed me to my death.
Please forgive me, I have not finished yet.
A stranger could have pushed me to my death.
Fully clothed and naked with one motion,
like a dream before you wake and break it,
Morgan laid the worst of jokes to me.
She pushed me and I tumbled back.
She grabbed my wrist and tried to kiss me harder,
as she hauled my body back from sure destruction.
I stopped it all and left.
Later, from my own roof, I watched the trains.
I watched the toppled scars that we call buildings -
to see if they'd do all we ask of them -
to keep us safe, to keep us warm, and give us shelter.
I watched the lights in all their windows go dark,
one by one by one.
(rough draft #4)
by J.R.
At a party full of purebreds, 99% imported,
Sean and I were scheming to abandon our art school girlfriends.
Morgan overheard this.
"What a waste," she shot, precocious bullets, precious trigger.
Tight body built like the jealousy of art or the perfected art of jealousy -
5'3 I'd wager - with lips begging for one thing and destroying another.
Blitzing my radar like a swan at a keg party
if a swan had lips and was a human being.
Toned. Like a gymnast, ballerina,
or a sexy bronze A minor from a golden tenor.
Cunning tiger-bird. Brunette angel nymph,
her clothing mere static to my imagination.
I memorized as much as possible,
digit by digit, divot by divot, curve by curve.
I saw her elegant Italian mother, her strapping dark poppa.
I saw her in a Mexican skirt ten years into the future,
coming home from the high stakes job and undressing in her studio,
letting the carmine cloth drip to the floor like a wide red petal.
I placed the art upon her walls
and named the books on her shelves.
I put the linens to her bed.
I opened her photo albums, connecting the dots of her past,
charting out a constellation of her problems.
I met all the men she'd ever slept with,
and saw their bare backs above her body.
On her mantle I saw the artifacts
of education and adventures she had not yet had.
Her assertion, "What a waste," hung
in the smoky air below her neck.
I had to squint to see it.
To look her in the eyes,
and down her shirt at the same time,
what a headache that was!
My eyes had bloodied up like tree roots.
She left the room and then returned to reach around the doorway,
and tug me toward the roof.
The October wind was dropping cautious fingers
down to Allston's tinted belly.
2AM by then had imbibed the city like it tends to.
"Stop wasting time," she demanded of me on the roof.
She kissed me so hard that her lips became part of her jaw.
Her jaw became part of her skull,
and her skull became part of her skeleton.
This skeleton was pushing itself on me,
the hot, clattering menace,
and I screamed to myself "Damnit!"
because right then, at that moment,
I saw the truth of it all and could not tell her,
because I was peering through her eye socket,
and seeing something rotten.
I was peering in between her rib bones
at a bright star in the distance.
My mind unwrapped the autumn wind,
and took from it a truth,
something of time and doom.
The massive accuracy of it all hit me, straight up the nose,
like pine-cone childhood cocaine.
A stranger could have pushed me to my death.
Please forgive me, I have not finished yet.
A stranger could have pushed me to my death.
Fully clothed and naked with one motion,
like a dream before you wake and break it,
Morgan laid the worst of jokes to me.
She pushed me and I tumbled back.
She grabbed my wrist and tried to kiss me harder,
as she hauled my body back from sure destruction.
I stopped it all and left.
Later, from my own roof, I watched the trains.
I watched the toppled scars that we call buildings -
to see if they'd do all we ask of them -
to keep us safe, to keep us warm, and give us shelter.
I watched the lights in all their windows go dark,
one by one by one.