the lichen-covered rocks
stood stoic and damp
mute to secrets, confessions

they had seen others
the others before me
and during him.
listened to their sighs
felt the pleas set down at your feet

I gripped at their cracks
tried to get a pulse
felt a timeless cool moisture
moving at a crawl

the red in your lips
preserved by the snap
in the early fall air
I gripped between your thighs
found your pulse
in the tilt of your neck

you drove down the
curves with urgency
ignoring the buzzing
and the cliffs that you could
dive from

biting your smirk,
in control
looking toward
the confusion
and back at
a legacy of ifs

and into
the whats

away from index

© Tom Watters  7/28/06

it must’ve been the music

unkind at best
to the power that you
once held
you cheat!

unfolding a tenuous wing
sorrowful, brittle
marrow and sap
snapping in the coming

drawn inexorably to
the solar flare of
passion and mistakes,
passion and mistakes

unconscious influenza
brought a carcinoma of
your own damned design
that picture
that frame of influence
that two-car-garage of shame

I stand at that edge
and look at the one foot drop
that would have been a chasm

when I was a moral
of the story
in a unsurprising play
that ran for years

© Tom Watters  7/19/06