Dear Spouse & Children or While Driving to Work I’m Simultaneously Contemplating Our Abandonment Issues and Considering Not Coming Home
by Daniel Flosi, January 10th 2023
Perpetually drifting in perpetuity
driven like the parolee
on course, of course
this coarse tumult of the slow lane
on the one lane highway
pulled by the snarling dogs, wild,
though that I’ve leashed, somehow
managed through these snow laden hills
rooftops, treelined, doe-lined, bare and I fear
that I might not be willing
to let it go, that I might just follow
the beasts through to the other side
where I might not come back—
You should know
it’s never about God, sweetheart
unless of course by God you mean loneliness
that muscular veil which keeps us
from knowing each other, tendrilled
cavity, earwig, lotus bloom, You,
who is spit from the moon,
I, who upon having a bad trip
called mom for a ride home,
who upon hearing about the vast
mushrooming of outer space
discovered the same inner distance
sacred space, tickled by
reckless abandon, these nude hills
nippled with cows grazing
papillae of economy, too many
it’s not that I want to leave you
rather, it’s that I want to fish
these coffins and tussle the jackfruit
studded knot lines, it’s just
that I’ve discovered felicity on
this hillside horizon driven as I am,
down the soft valley of thigh
stitched with train tracks of copse
limned pubis, gnashing soil
churning deposits of blade and husk
we used to talk a lot
about the way things used to be
about subtle distinctions between the times
now, though, I rub the backs
of tenement owners as we laugh together
at the tenants cowering, shoulder blades
same as the grenade thrower who
has been (m)othered out of existence
truth is I’m sick of lying awake at night,
dreaming dreams about scratching through
this feather-lined, cloud stained
billows pillaring & columning
stacked like mountains, or at least
looks like from here
and I have nowhere else to go
with one thousand dead hands,
one as useless as the next, I could tell you
how tired I am, how seized by fear,
but I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe it
just know that while I drift, I’m searching
for a way through the mountain façade
& of course I realize that the leash
I’m holding also holds me, leashes two
don’t be fooled, these scars are ancient
and though sewn over hundreds of times
they are also ripe, blistered, all this time
and I’m still trying to hide,
call me Shovelhead, call me Fire Escape,
call me Hide, call me Hull, Mask of Freedom
that trembling you hear is my heart-cave,
echo chamber, gasping for air