25 or The Lovers

Number 25 from The Knockouts

It is pretty modest
I mean it is no leviathan
It’s okay
Thomas Payne was a hopeless
Case
Eyes bleeding
Like some
Stigmata
Or what happens when you get what you
Deserve
For
F*****g
Up
The
Formula
Screwing the pooch
In the cat’s cradle
Curiosity getting the better of you?
Turn the corner
Keep walking
Nothing to see here
Holes in the head
Brains
Exposed to sunlight
Startling contrast to the tile and carpet clusters
Next to the bright yellow taped off cans of
Turpentine
Someone has to clean up
Keep up appearances
Save someone
Might see
Spill the beans
That is what it looks like
Broth on the floor pooling around feet
Spreading down to waist level
Beans on white washed wall spread thin in the splatter
Pancakes or biscuits maybe
To sop up the gravy
Sponges and sirens come to sop up the slop
Red and whites
And it was all well a week ago
Wondering what shoes go with that
Shirt
Same song and dance
Slacks and
Turtleneck
Tucked into pants
Pleats down the front
Creases in your forehead
Curved down in brown brow
Beaten down days
Dog-eared
Desire folded over and over and over
Clover fields in
Daydreams
Halogen
Hydroponics
And greenhouse garden
Just a little too perfect to be true
Meditative trance
Off with your head
Bring you back to reality
Mass transit traffic in your stream seems trivial pursuit
Now
Drawing at straws
Stall in the spaces
She stands
Death
Defying
On the edge of the train tracks
Dangling her
Feet
Delivery girl hat and boots
Good morning heartache
She wakes up the day after
Pill
Pull hair up into hive
Mind
Mine is low and lovely
She spins her tongue in her mouth
Swallow
Sip of water laced with saccharine and
Something to take the edges off
Strip the siding
In the way of
Things
Swallow another handful and feeling a fitting one
Indeed
Heed this warning that there are two more
Star-crossed
They just never met
At least not face to face
Head to shoulders
Knees
Toes
Locks of hair
Jazz rifts and
Epitaphs
Passing
Masking the 100% perfect
Pleasure
“Do you one better?”
Want more again in the afterglow?
Wallow in the wonder
Full of life with a good head on her shoulders and a hole in
Her heart
Pedal pushed in gear and step
Guts churn
Glass gouging into intestines
Esophagus gag on the come up
Come down
Drowning in her own blood
God
Why can’t it always be like this?
The devil makes it feel nice
Incinerator in your soul
You never get to think twice
The lovers do not know their role
Fear is flashing headlights
There is power in the numberful and
Panic
In the break lights
Pause
Button
But there is not another game
They say Hell has frozen over and that Dante is to blame
And Virgil should have steered him wrong and sank while on the river Styx
That Jesus Christ was born again and martyred for a crucifix
F**k this
It is just a spot past the heart
That is just the way life is
Isn’t it?
A pound of flesh from lovers’ breast
It
Is
The
New
Fashion