Contracted Lies

A Poem

Published in

Scuzzbucket

May 8, 2021

A half-dark that is
not contracting, no one
hired to fix copper pipes

loose to wind

wave, without flags
without the dire feelings of
drowning

and passing schools
of marlins
and other spikes
bridges calling — the fires
already lit

Here you move
towards
the sweet

crushed caress taking
consciousness
into patterns of falling
and touch of any kind
has been so
foreign

Your clothes
are staying with me
but why —

What part of you
is revealed
in these leavings, or why
am I making them
matter?

No bodies
contracted any more
or left
on the ship
a quarantine of doubt

hassled into
another photographic memory
with a message
in code

The lies already slipped
determined direction
and the shoddy
work of choice
shows up like rust