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from Falling Past Love by Tobin James Mueller |
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the cigarette... your hands work as if on stage a sudden graft of someone else’s elegance elbows relaxed and eyebrows arched within the practiced context of props and their finely scripted securities patterns change, of speech and gesture as eyes squint through curling smoke someone else’s eyes and the deftly lit cigarette fills your mouth someone else’s mouth cool words vent with the mouth’s exhaust no longer the oracle that sang to me like a kiss cool words and heated smoke screening your face, and I wonder how many people there are inside you burning like a sparkler flashing on the fourth of july the end of your smoldering hand traces the space, the growing space that encircles you, smoke defining in the busy night air the conversation’s end looking offstage as if for a prompt you try to say what is already in one eye and take a drag, tasting the sound then finally the words, arrogant as a thrower’s knives “I can’t handle this yet, you know? Not yet. Not me.” and it all seems so reasonable as you nod, agreeing with yourself and each promise made is lanced like a balloon and each sweet vow is swallowed as the scrolls of our moments, poems all (i had believed), are rolled and stuffed and turned to ash then casually flicked into the oncoming traffic in the time it takes for another match to flare |
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text © 2004 Tobin James Mueller
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