You know the deal

It’s time for the Flash Fiction Friday unveiling. Poem this time since I am tight on time, but I hope it’s still enjoyable. Started this while at a conference this last weekend in between going to sessions and presenting (or should I say doing some verbal acrobatics that left me with my ears flush and my colleagues laughing  — and, yes, it involved “blows me” and “away”). So, take my extreme embarrassment into consideration as you read this and be gentle :).

Complexity Revisited

Life would have been easier
If he’d just said
No. To the tree’s green canopy
Straining against sky;
To the whiskey’s ringing
Against his frontal lobe;
To the ignorant bliss of moon,
Wet grass and frog croak;

To the body shudder;

To the smell of tobacco and cologne
And the memory his first love;
A woman whose foot twisted
Toward her knee, whose green eyes once

Scanned, scanned

In a darkness such as this, on a night such as this
In a place such as this, whose lips breezily brushed his
Like beautiful music gently tugging;

To the beading sweat dampening his hands,
His forehead; To the wife he never had, the child he
Never held, the world he never pierced;
To the earth’s lumps boring into his back;
To the tremble and bump, the shake
And scream of cell against cell,

Time against, time against;

To the jaws last clench, to fingers
Final touch, the eyes blink and shudder
The body’s single and lonely wonder

To the water that sprayed and satisfied;
To the tearing of bread; to touch and giggle
And orange-red sunsets; to the first
Steps, the first words, the first gazes, and the first sobs;
To the letting loose of one’s self;
He simply professed

“I am witness, I am witness.”

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.