Chronic Humid

Just now I’m wondering if
 I’ve spent my life wasting
 the game of poem that matters much.
 Everything always begins just as I imagine,
 and then, ideas leapfrog with aspirins. 
 It’s the meeting of distracted equals 
 each wearing the season’s newest. Do you get it--
 how this crossed my mind?  Rearranging things
 into chevrons, geese go where we won’t:
 to impressive elfin panoramas, shimmering mountains.
 Even the boldest risk-takers can’t sit still
 for that portrait.

 As my vitals leave my limbs, I come bearing
 enjambment.  I do not do laundry.  I do not launder.
 I throw wine.  By plugging-in the holiday machine,
 I think I’m overcompensating for my lack 
 of feminine feels.  I’ve never even known a horse.
 And then another thought—this one not as flashy
 as the one before, but just as soft.  My children
 will be named after salads.  Then, we’ll wonder
 how being female passed over me.  (Note, too, illogical
 pronoun progression)

 (I realize this has been a heavy exchange,
 a senseless zone.  But, my first version
 was overdone and not my own.)  One feels this way
 when voice fails.  The decision to sleep
 becomes some kind of heroic deception that chides:
 Live off the fictive bread of illogic…join abstracts
 with prepositions and never mind if we can see the thing.
 This is not a botanist’s life.  Rather our rhapsodic love
 evokes dull sequins not unperplexed by the absence
 of light required to glisten.  

 Sequestered after a while, once more I breathe.
 Cold air etches illisible sketches of medieval tortures
 onto lung dry wall.  I reject the advice to simply
 wear the air.  That is, be invisible.  (Raw bones, she likes them.
 But clearly absent these days from the lather-frantic milk club.
 She forgets to eat rounded meals.  She codes, then decodes.)

 Just now, I was going to ask if you, too, have slept
 on liquid grass—exploring the color of some life.  
 Surrounds you, life and all, but two fish don’t go 
 the same way.  It takes three to make fire and flood.
 Consider this:  If I owe you, I am sorry.  Melodrama
 drains cleverness with chairs pulled from under us.  
 Luck plus tricks blow the ashes from your face.  
 I’m not afraid of you.  I’m not against the wonderful planet. But,
 when the gifted plunder, love’s rate trails.

 Slow purpose by midmorning, and what’s wrong is 
 you once said the world is complete regardless.  Then,
 I was your swan, which pissed me.  Appeal, dissect.
 Harm. Correct.  A tree bears its own body daily.
 The weight of roots and earth press on 
 through the leafline blood.  It goes not where it wants.
 In chronic humid, one clear image emerges,
 and you liken me to a peony.  This is where non-friction
 leaves off, and if you touch my shoulder, then what?
 I’ll wait but not to wonder.  No one unforgiving,
 explicitly thin (for now, but not in months to come).

 We should’ve thought I may not
 leave this energy.  We should have found a way
 to liven up my look.  The room lets sun in, 
 slow purple by midmorning.