Ten

The Ten

Figures remain anonymous

not people but types

each with a secret

sneaky ten percent.

10% subtlety. Ten percent aloof.

When you're super sexy

you can be missing your front tooth

flipping pint glasses

in low lighting

and the girls are likin' all of it.

I know you, faceless blotch.

You're that paint stroke

in the precipitating audience

moving too and fro

like a field of flowers with their faces

pointed at the sun

eating free sun beams.

We, all, matching in little bits:

You with your low brow

second hand ol' diamond in the rough.

The common interest is forming

a tribe.

But

Your 10%

a filigree form that shutters inside constant

and pulsates a hum electric

Your ten percent speaks German

and thinks that the screwdriver

is to a screw a molester.

Ten % is kept in that letter

you have. I have.

Hidden and preserved with the careful, clammy drawer

that keeps so few things

so commonly used.

No, a mass of bodies here.

Not identities but types.

And the 10% hovers above the room.

Home

Home

Your hat all hung
a drop of laudanum,
a tendril dangling on the brink
of a shallow glass:

sight budding,
open me up how I want to see.

The narrative calls itself home.

Home,
the house that gave birth
to coevals: stories securely boxed up
inside its humming walls;
we leave her when what is unwritten
seems to hang on the wind
ringing chimes outside the window--

bells that resound always home.

Home,
separated bodies of water
the growth of vegetation
pulled from warm soil.
This verdant earth is ours
it’s worth dying for, but we can’t just stay here.

Home,
That standing on the water’s edge, we look on at the far reaches of our
letters
our tiny prayers adrift like a gas above
home.

That home is the distance between us and our occurrence.