“Where we can dance for an hour like a couple rainbows.”

MayDayChallenge, day Five: I return to my childish roots.

Hot potato

would you like a hot potato
before we leave for Chicago
sour cream and salt and pepper
loads of butter and some cheddar

in the oven we will bake it
in some foiled tin we’ll take it
to the plane across the city
over land and lake so pretty

and when we land in Chicago
we will unwrap our potato
in a park all filled with people
we will eat it until we go…

la, la, la, la
la, la-la, la…

& later on we’ll be feeling fine
we will slip through the crowd and take the red line
all the way north past Sheridan
to where the line turns purple up in Evanston
and then I’ll take us to a place that I know
where we can dance for an hour like a couple rainbows
and after that we’ll have a cup of tea
and find ourselves a couch and fall to sleep, Zzz, Zzz

“As if you needed to correct some small accident…”

Day Three of The MayDayChallenge: a troublesome duet sung by two strangers in a double bed.

Napalm and Cake

Yesterday,
with a tumult in her eye
She tried kissin’ me, and I don’t know rightly why
But I’m about to be
Caught up in the storm, she brews next to me

Keeping my body warm
In this double bed
That perhaps from too much drink
I had let her in
And I can’t allow her to think
She’s got the upper hand

But I can’t recall her name, and she’s lyin’ on
My arm that’s half asleep,
And my knighted pawn
Moves to the words she speaks
In the morning light
Her skin a sheath of down, and her heavy sighs
The wind before the storm that she clarifies:

“Yesturday,
When I saw you standin’ there at the dim-lit bar
With your wild, unkempt hair
Your eyes seemin’ far
As though set on something wrong
In a distant land
And I could tell your will was strong
In your heart & hands
As though you needed to correct
Some small accident
And if I would interject
myself in your plans
You’d change my insides for the better,
Here…”

And she moved her hand astride
My listenin’ ear
And she moved her body high
On my body, and
We unmade the day with that gruesome act
Of napalm and cake
And her hurricane
It scooped the dirt from my guts,
The scum from my brain
And for a moment we were one
And all but the same