A Panic: inside & out

Exterior Night.

My friends were all either killed or maimed by those markets,
of course

it could have been worse

it was as bad as it could get

we should have known better

The knowing looms up slowly
like a sugar maple slipping from cold & creeping fog;
its bare bronchial branches,
too twisted
for flow chart or pie graph,
almost lost
in the dim supplyside glow of fairylight.

They took all that they could carry,
shivering jellyfish chills,
they slid across those long lawns,
slick with yellowjackets & soppy streamers.
Worrying that weight
into the woodframed safety of adultery.

Interior Night.

She had to do it twice
just to make sure
she had no excuse.

The knowing grows out greedy,
part of the floral pattern
of any sleazy couch,
and anyone could smell it,
the bar-b-que stench,
lingers & lays in the secondary shadow,
the shattered scrub pine, the Valium and all that whiskey.