My little beep-beep my troy ounce bosky thicket
how did we get here from there (there
being the gun in which I was chambered). My
vitreous body smoke halo,
must we live like this,
in separate laments, in the drift
of shifting cadences? Once,
under the greenish glow of plastic stars,
your body burrowed into the give
of mine, we talked of the world, openly beautiful. We
dreamed of lands where giants roamed; impossible spires
on which the birds of the world convened
to discuss the day’s chorales. All we needed
was a little raft to set upon
open water, a pitched craft, sea-
worthy and solid.
We drank cheap wine. Listened, spellbound,
to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, to the dark
and the greater dark, candles guttering
like tiny oracles on the sill. O, pulse skin
of my skin beautiful
cloud of unknowing, we salted our hearts
with a stubborn faith, being young
and full of the grief
of invention. We said yes! and yes!
because yes meant all the stories were true. Now
we don’t sleep beside each other anymore,
don’t swim down into the wide and seamless trench
where the phantoms of need and desire reside.
You are dreaming, alone
on your raft, of a big blue sky, a land of giants,
a wind that will lift your sail.
Note: The phrase “My little beep-beep” owes a debt to Maureen Owen, whose second stanza in “Goodbye to the Twentieth Century or Adios, Busy Signal,” opens with the line “O little beep beep beep” to indicate a busy signal on analog phones.
Steve Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of two poetry collections and a chapbook. His poems have appeared recently in The Iowa Review, Typo Magazine, Cream City Review, Cold Mountain Review, The Pinch, Jet Fuel Review, Thrush, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Facebook: Steve Mueske Twitter: @SteveMueske Instagram: @themuesk
Photo by solarisgirl on Foter.com / CC BY-SA