Poem with Gum on its Shoe

So it’s dawn and you 
and I are watching that fat sun 
smudge on up like an eager preschooler 
went to town with his Yellow-Orange Crayola 
and the sea air smells like some yahoo  
boiled a lobster yesterday and forgot 
to throw the (bath)water out with the baby 
and Baby, you look about as guilty as a 
man manning his own guillotine after he’s 
quite certain he’s committed the crime. 

And time’s a bastard that’s running 
out on us as fast as other things that run – 
horses, marathon maniacs, wet paint, 
washing machines on spin cycle. And 

I’m trying to hold my breath like my 
chest has pockets. And there’s a sea
-gull squawking like a schoolgirl 
complaining about her soon-to-be 
ex, and I just know this wave’s gonna 
bulldozer us on down into all this 
granulated sugar sand. 

And then you stand up like a soldier 
heading into battle who doesn’t really 
want to go and hasn’t written his 
Mama a goodbye letter yet, and you 
wipe your hands on your jeans –  
blue as denim – and there’s venom 
in your voice when you speak, like 
you swallowed a rattlesnake. 

Anyway, that’s the moment I decided 
we might be through – as through and 
through as a bullet hole, as through 
as a tunnel with a train barreling 
in from the other side. For this, 
like all dead things – corpses, road
-kill, ghosts – can no longer abide. 

::
Goodness, this one was fun.
For day 24 over at NaPoWriMo, we’re playing with hard-boiled simile, like gumshoe detectives. 😉

Day Twenty-Four

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