why desire smooch lips affection? be raked out lightening. dry grass painted yellow, Ames packing tubs, doldrums of late-day in a rural area, mildew taste of a mouth that hasn’t opened in a while. erase any challenging emotional sensation by vibrating in a brown bed. get sucked off by a man a friend compares to Rasputin. Why were his fingernails…? you think. His grease? Why was his cruelty charming? Leave while he is more asleep than you’ve ever been. Get back into the teal car, whole body rocketing of depressed fever, unable to breathe or give. How much time you hoard, faded. These nights blur the weeks grey. You are 65 without reaching your 17th birthday. Driving through a 6 AM countryside like a Hellboy’s scepter. People DO things, you think. How? Your life once a black expanse now barely lavender. Tea is pouring for a good person somewhere, a lawn is cut, dew sweating pearls. But where your tongue and eyes meet are the dying fire: smoke. At your bagel place, a woman sits in the corner, it might be me. Both of us look overheated. Both of us release the ill sweet odor of a spring flower you can never place.
Steinar Engeland