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 
against his back.  
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.



08 dec 01
M Madison