Michael Stone's imagination is housed in glass
Todd Bersley
there are days when I long to return to that
car with the fogged over windows and let my breath
exhale drips of moisture touching her legs feeling
the curve of her sides reaching beneath cotton panties
but that seems gone like the midnight journeys
to towers of glass that harbored a cloister of girls
who smiled at us with our stones in anticipation
of the crash and fearing the slivers that would cut
and make them bleed like suicide pacts in the newspaper
but it is all over now and my superiors mirror the
rigid rock of complacence that 1 have tried to wrap
myself around and crush but cannot and instead 1 have been
enveloped by it and must rest with this knowledge and weep
it is the contrast between the vision of the beast that
kills children and pregnant mothers and the image of writhing
flesh wetting sheets in a heated embrace that troubles me
as I put on that grey suit for another interview adjust my tie
and wonder why 1 am cemented in burgundy shoes prodded by a
handgun that blankets my family in the gunnysack of night
and roses hardly touch me any more and my wife never reaches
for me anymore and my children are as confused as 1 am
so I take my trip along the Pacific coast listen to the
wind sing around my speeding car and think about the
waitress at the truck stop who smiled at me and laughed
at old jokes said I looked distinguished so I grabbed
her fat buttocks asked if she had an hour break and
the smell of sex still lingers on my clothes like
cigarette smoke so 1 drive taking deep breaths of the foggy
fishy air and wonder why I didn't tell her my real name
the hotel room smells musty and the bed is too soft
but there's hot water for a shower and 1 can call my wife
and tell her I love her like I told that teenage girl I dated
in high school that moaned and held my head when she gave me
her body so I count my possessions that aren't worth as much
as they used to be and I'll have to suck it up this year
to pay for Tom's college and Maggie's wedding in the spring
so here 1 am again in Los Angeles for the tenth time this year
dreaming of vacation in Cancun or Barbados where the women have
dark golden skin and shout foreign curses at you when you leave
I feel the dry needle ache in my back and wish 1 had a drink
but 1 will just lie down in this strange bed and go to sleep
and try to dream of glass towers and virgins
always the hero with stones to shatter naked mists
always waking in sweaty sheets with shaking limbs
knowing that my princesses have grown old like me
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