The Mollusks
When you are old and full of sleep, they stick
you in a box and sink you thirteen fathoms
deep off Florida. Un-magic kingdom
of the drowned undead, the great pacific
reefs suspend a sessile efflorescence
of retirement arcologies
till world’s-end, till stars swim in the sea,
until taxpayers rescind that immense
last dignity extending franchise into
senescence, Pilgrim, and cut the juice. When
tides turn we’re blinkered: the pearls that blue
our scalloped eyes suck death beyond reach,
flush catheters, and bless our great-grandchildren
who reinvent these golden years at the beach.
What We Have Done to Deserve All This
The fight we’d started leaving the apartment
for the couples counselor ignited
into screaming in the business district.
It still licked at us when we were invited
by the florid therapeutic hierophant
to show a bit of spite, for heaven’s sake!
We did, and he denounced us as unfit
for love, commanded that we separate.
Outside, we cried: so helpless, so abandoned,
certain no one else would have us. We kissed
and made it up, though we hated each other,
really, and would fight again and again
later, and curse and hit and cheat and twist
the knife, betray, defeat, and stay together.
