permission
I forgot
to ask that color

or perhaps
desire cum flippancy was
harder to claim

so I sucked down
what my imagine
could prove

bare and innocent
not marked up with knuckles
truth with no teeth

there is no
agony in the gutteral
cat fight song

a fight after all
is just an
impassioned script

a play with
dramatics and
makeup after all

far beyond center
and/or the core
values held in the tabloids

and you let your
hair down at the
handcuffed moment

I can’t help
this crease
the hard grin

that dress so…
holding my thought
and your hips

thirty eight
is but a number
and it grows on trees

I can’t see the
forest either
blinded by inequity

and fucking hope
e-fucking-ternal
simple enough

© Tom Watters  8/14/07

a pear softens
to ripe meltdown
fingers perch
tentative and hushed
on the airstrip
of something incendiary

please remember to
close cover before striking

mentally tallying
the ascending tooth count
a tempered smile
as I read “xyz”
I breathe in
the squirm, suppress a
jaded laugh at the
blonde gasp

once again
I can persuade
a reading
beneficial and palatable
to a tarnished mirror
such as mine

near sightedness
now that I no longer
allow myself to
look into your eyes.

overtones that divide
in the absence of your
soft alto

all my coarse colors
derive from blunt crayolae
hunted and pecked
from the recollection
of words…

watercolors
those words

lies that you could not tell
have unwrapped those
in my busy lips

© Tom Watters  8/4/07