Veloured seating waves across
the room, impatient as a bony cat
to the rattle of a bowl.
Blood-red seats rocking, their
cushioned arms flail
bring on the second act.
Previews to the endings
are playing on the reel;
they surface on the central
vein of dim ambiguity and
fall to bits of brown
and yellowed paper.

Matinees of overtures, set
to pause before the cue.
The footlights
the stage
the front row seat; then
come the deadpan reviews,
backbiting straight through
the thick of it.
I had asked for fathers.
After all, I had sons.
I had asked lovers.
After all.

Expectations, infernal
pictures in my head.
They loiter,
prancing about in two-bit parts,
until they draw like shrunken wool
and pull in four directions
laid gently flat to dry.

Hand me the script.
I will write my own lines, where
the struggle is clear, where
evil barks like dogs in a car
as I smile from the parking lot.
They rip their own upholstery, they
scratch the glass and glare
with clouded blind one-eyes.

Hand me the script
and I will write my own
dichotomy, where dark arms
pull me in like oars to the
water of my curves.
Where the moon dissects the night
into places that cave in to dreams
and spaces where we take them
to be true. Where if they
end, they melt as
breathless colors of the night
giving into day; warm and
pale and blue as topaz light
in this December sky.
I had asked for lovers.
After all.