playboy

very early on, I was scheming
for an out
not so wakefully, but biding
my time to
scalpel every glob of spume

and using those words that want
what they denote: short, frank, economy,
man will say half of what he's already halved
to time everything aright.

say this now when a word yodeled
does to be yodeled
yodel into flesh
the very mist of your loins

tug handfuls of hair but fitfully
not sure of the consequence -- the force employed --
the meaning of the knot uprooted

thereof, therefore, you say to yourself
exist two approaches: gentleman, playboy

the former bon-bons and starched collars
the latter all pluck and dash

who is remembered? in what haze of ideality do its particles die clean as all must inevitably blink off, one day, maybe at a bus-stop, you'd tap her on the shoulder, introduce yourself, relay a smile, consider the inverted arch of her lips relayed back, scour it of good tidings, and shrink

or, in a crowd, shoulder your way
she glances
you glance back
trade switchboards, flip switches
roast, blister, and suture
all with your molten ego

but too, too late, gone

arm in arm with half the man you thought you'd assembled
in a quarter of the time it took to braid yourself
together

and how much braiding held? enough tendrils to chafe you into the semblance of trying in the hope that that trying, truly unseen, might be borne out by the misting that pervades all like the rainbow
spanning this world and the next

all the while balancing a soap bubble on the veriest tip of your tongue
stood on the tippiest of toes

unable to ascertain if the bubble is still there
or long dead,
tickles you yet

for what we know of the matter, where we differentiate nuts and bolts from gas and mist
and from mist a cheek's blush and from a cheek's blush, cheap rouge, and make-up
from the luminous forms ensconced in the ether.

what we know of the differences induces us to bet on what we can toss
drop, kick, and dribble,
knowing that though the hackey-sack remains in motion
by dint of deft limbs, we'd put down on the hackey-sack rather
than the ether pervading it, truly sustaining it, pervading all as it
does it,
ensuring, in its sensibility that so long as a something can be experienced
a something is eternal.