She laughed,
The high-pitched laughter
Of border girls.
In this treasure trove
Of insanity,
Blood clot is king.

Her heaving breasts -
Now less appealling,
A freckled gutter queen
On a motel bedspread
Playing with my emotions and
My service revolver.

Pressed against our naked backs,
The salty by-product of lust -
A crumbling matrimonial altar.
She has traded her subterfuge
For lime slices, cancer cells,
And my doctorate of sin.

We talk obliquely of
Scarlet fever,
Flightless birds,
And her hocked baby grand.
A concertina redux
Of blood- tinged insomnia.

I wish for my fevered coma;
So weary of this
Daily wet-haired diatribe
Of her drowned twins.
Awash in Wyborowa
And byzantine regret.

My eyes instinctively follow
The viper's slime trail,
Dried and hardened.....
To a note I scribbled to myself
(How many days ago?) -
"The lion- tamer was right".

04/08/2006

Posted on 04/08/2006
Copyright © 2025 Terry Olynik