Shotgun Wedding

Alchemical notions
gunpowder, primer, hammer, trigger, double-ought lead
thought purgatives
to flush my mind in a pudding spray:
a fountain of dreams and vault bone
erupting against the ceiling
bursting free.

Am I losing it?
These cold bores stare up expectantly
from between my knees
sucking me into reflections
killing the simplicity of an afternoon.
Have I lost it?
Again?

I have seen her hazel eyes
floating, one to a barrel, in the twelve-gauge depths
watching me watching her watching me ...
you see?
Her eyes are mine inside and out
and coincidentally
we see.

She looks at me continuously
while squatting in my forebrain peering out
and in.
I've no secrets left at all.
I'm saturated
emptied and refilled.
This examined life must die.

I'm losing it.
I have felt her swelling, inflating, uncoiling
a venomous adder awakening in her nesting skull
assuming shape
shrugging on my skin and sensibilities
like an old coat
threading her arms into mine.

Chuckling and heaving, her bloat fills me
sits down in me: deep sea diver.
I've been sounded.
Get up, smooth your suit
put away that gun
we're whole now, one now
mother and son.

Richard Cleverly
(C) all rights reserved