MARRIED MEN AND THEIR GIRLFRIENDS
Married men and their girlfriends
love by car window, sometimes at pool tables
or on tightly scheduled ferry boats
where waters and voyagers condense.
Airliners fly them, wingless in private music.
Cities disappear in translucent opus.
Long walks move as time itself is moving,
roving, pacing the barroom parking lot.
The upstairs room with a sad little bed sounds
like steel eggs dropped on piano strings.
"Hey! Hey! What do you think I am?"
Female reply. The sound of bed springs.
Married men and their girlfriends
hang socially upside-down, using sonar
to pick out certain objects from others,
filtering the sound of traffic below
and the love meter's constant ticking-away.
They barely sleep fighting the covers,
defying themselves like a swollen river,
rage pushing the smoothness out of bed.
Pictured above, painted hands are folded
and witless words are said:
"Hey! Hey! What do you think I am?"
Female reply. The sound of bed springs.
On the ground, cars wage war against time,
as married men and their girlfriends patrol
parking decks, hotly watched over the shoulder.
Nervous ticks of affection advertise the day,
earsplitting, screaming into machines
the nasty prayers of their prime with distant oaths:
"Kill me, now that you've had me, go on!"
They line up, listen and learn to rain and thunder
gratefully, hearing Chronos roll his bowling ball.
Male reply. The sound of bed springs.
Married men and their girlfriends break up.
Star signs that melt into summer will end
on a snowstorm of torn verses and pain,
a Wagnerian crescendo without bed springs,
like Saturn's children, like the ozone hole,
like a day you madly begin as the sun sinks.
ŠJimmy Warner Design, 2010