Tendonitis                                                       ­                                                                 ­                                        
is a small price to pay for euphoria.                                                        ­                                                          

he gasped at the brink of
                                    success
mouth agape and strained
like pulled taffy
This project
embraced him entirely
consumed like a long lost relative
Sometimes we don’t climb.                                                           ­                                                                 ­        
we dance.                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                      
It was no longer clear
whether he climbed more than
the earth climbed him: she clambered inside,
ascending further into his psyche
with every
stretched, pulsing
muscle grasp
happiness bleeds into our                                                              ­                                                                 ­     
contorted                                                       ­                                                                 ­                                          
torso-Grace.          ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                
like water running the                                                              ­                                                                 ­           
pigment lines of                                                               ­                                                                 ­                    
saturated paintings.                                                       ­                                                                 ­                      
He cried out
impassioned,
shedding the skin of his palms
again-
upturned and reaching
like a caustic supplication
endowed with
vibrating desire,
quaking faith.

This time
he fell hard.
and again,
slap mat against the grain
of success
flung downward
like a thrice worn shirt

But wait-
and watch.
She calls him weeping-
a contrite lover
and he will return
to her brutality
nursed with humility-
intoxicated with exhilaration.

Life is the prattle of an old lady.

She squawks either too loudly
or makes you crane to hear.

as she sits rocking,
her senile nonsense numbs your intelligence
until you sit bleary-
gaping at the air
like the fattest fish in the aquarium.

your every comment drowns
in the mush
of her tapioca voice.

you sit uncomfortably in her fishbowl world of
cottage cheese,
faded floral print- lace doilies
and contemplate your deft superiority
as her denture clicks gnaw on your sanity.

as soon as you think
a vague plotline surfaces in her mumbling
a new great aunt’s third cousin’s baby
weaves its way into the conversation,
and you are hopelessly thrown
like a reused dryer sheet
back into the colored load.

occasionally you attempt to establish a connection
between you and the venerable wrinkled smile
but she mishears and begins another
disconnected strain
featuring Bobby, the lad turned soldier.

but
just
as soon as you gain confidence
that you know how to handle this doddery senior-
she slams you with a small token
of sage advice
that shatters your naïve sphere
with its mind-wrenching validity.