"How to Overload Your Senses" (After Keros)

How to Overload Your Senses

after Keros


That night in the crusted theater
the dark flickered against your glowing face,
your angel's grace, rare for a full grown boy,
was crisping in the shadows. You and me
willing the Wizard of Oz onto the Dark
of the Moon, the smell and feel
of a dollar bill musting in the use.
A six pack between us. A tight joint
rusting out of repair, a sound dancing
on a lark, a rocking the baby to sleep.
Already, then, you were falling. Pink Floyd
couldn't save you. The leaking dopa erupting
into fists on the car, a kick to the wheel
of love; a draping of hardness over the windows.
Then, the witch was riding her bicycle away.
I overshadowed you shadowing you down
some alley of disrepair, some back lot
of the self where your reds blotched out
the blues and any blues was an excuse to party.
Was I the evil one? Tired of stomping on
Glenda, never shining like that part
you were born to play. You and I, a photograph,
a negative in relief. Your white blond curly hair/
my straight black mane, my witch's costume.
At the third lion's roar courage comes alive,
a soundtrack begins and a poetry lives
in the layers. The rolled bill in white tight knuckles.
The constant pass. The talking into nothing.
The talking back. Your anger, heaving.
My fallacy of desire, an overload of senses.
No sense in going back, of folding in on
ourselves like this unspent one.
Every time I dare to touch it, it lives
more and more skinlike, slough from touch.
I put my mouth to it and Dorothy
falls into a pit. The ruby shoes
belong to another. The great house
of the senses falls into place
and I exit; expunge; my listening ear
frozen to the Tin Man's chest.


Lorna Dee Cervantes
10/20/06