Someday

I see the teenage striped stray loafing on a mound waiting for the scent, for the hour of the unreserved hellebores’ lemon green

Afros. Festoonishments foregrounded by steam-breathing soils. Reservoirs of chaos for stress dissipation. I didn’t even notice the clematis growth until I’d felt disillusioned and looked. And got hooked.

The need for painful experiences. Like attracts like. My neighbor, Mike, that walking crop failure, sniffs with sophomore ennui and tells me, they’ve “added incest to injury.”

What’s this?

“Criminy is a witch’s tit,” is what I’d heard said.

“I apologize if I’m lying,” I rehearse in my head.

This yard, this investment, is a hospital bed in a prison for crimes against nature. My will is among many a weed. Some not. Some pretty. I bucket the jerkwaters of where things lead. Plus, effulgence from the trusty nick of wind-borne seeds. We both suffer under sediments wet from belief. The shell smell of when, of rich dirts undersea. Everting: the muscular niche of over-fingered anemone. Such seductive middle ground is a predator. A fresh brined crowbar for those barnacles, bionic, avoiding agony’s dues. Future foods.

“They know these months are the last few their labors matter,” Mike says. “They’re burping themselves out, but for what?”

A clown refuge and a toilet. Symbionts. “Go loose in here, Skunk Ape,” the tentacles sing, fishing and flopping in the winds of the sea.

“What’s the best bang for my butt?” he asks of his task. “I’m not going to not for some goddamn skinny naturopath.”

“Which do you hate more, your tongue or your teeth?” I knew well just how little what little could be. “Persuade the mind to reveal competencies? How not to be what you cannot not be?”

“That don’t mean buck boo, man. Buy some new socks? Where is the luck?”

“I wait for the Gumpthress to thump from the deep. Medusa unmirrored. Mired are we as she breaks us and shakes us until we are more.”

“I got one of the good carts at the grocery store,” muses Mike.

“Recrudescence is real, and so are the lows. The ugly one knows how the ugly song goes.”

“Okay then,” he neighborly pats it. “I’m gonna make like a banana and shit.”

“You can’t prevent the stink, but you can provide the lid,” I say.

“I’d hope the shame for myself,” leaves Mike. “Someday.”