humus

humus

By Joey Driven

September 21, 2012

Suffocating, you rouse to say something to me that you are not able to put together into words.  A doctor advises, a nurse injects.  In the moment morphine snows, Zeus, you go away from me…, you go away from you, god of happy hour draughts and Saturday afternoon chocolate ice cream sodas.  My hand goes over your hand gone cold…, unanimated.

Nights ending in disgust with the dealt, mornings awakening out of another underworld delusion that you are still with us, I think, ‘oh.  Where’d you go?’  Are you? where I gather? elsewhere…? down from above, up from under? in the tail-flailing squirrel squeaking ‘gather your nuts for the cold…’?  Wha’d you want?  How far further did you imagine us, and when?  And when will it turn out right?  In body animated?

A thousand years pass as a faster-tick, tapping away on your Smith-Corona to put words together neatly within the demanding timeline.  Humus I shall be…; when?  A Diaspora of who’s daily struggle…, when?

I pedal over to Newport’s A-Market.  I spill that I like her black leather, high top Chuck Tailor All Stars.  “…Women have the best in designer footwear….”  “Wow…, from Turin…, a writer…, me, too….”  “For The New Yorker…, good for you…” and for me… to get going, …not to catch why the big gold band is worn on the right thumb.  We exchange electronic addresses, not to collect whether there is a difference in between notoriety and anonymity, putting words together and sweeping sawdust…?

Tapping into the digital pterodactyl…, words whirr, the better speed in the time-luxury to say them….  Nothing is….  A ruin puts together….  The ‘that’ inspires….  Laugh shakes away sorrow….  Tears wash shards to estuaries, across tides, constant for a time, to smooth them in an undertow.  The making, a monkey’s fist to throw a line over to a ship only… ’dunno what ship?  How long a line?  And what is a monkey’s fist?

Same personnel, different time: playing whoops, stray ink in your devolving line, dragging your name through my blinkin’ bloomin’ mud…, grave Emily Dickinson shouting after, ‘be published!’ do you still think…:  ‘ruined’?

Blackened, in the night, a youngster squeezes into, through, up, out, red all over, steeled and sent to hurl…, capture, catch, drag…, gather, sow, pick….  Put up, pickle, smoke.  Salt, roast, and dissolve.  Put in, take away.  Thin slice, splice, and ’splain.  Vex, set down, stand up… wrecked erect, courage afraid, rich for poor, animated, desponding within the between… bobbling random, full-void stuff…

…under the Sun, under the vexed brow… has not all been done… save for the next now?  Matter absorbs what matters in the matter making, a photon is sent, a tickle overwhelms.  A character like you and me stops in a graveyard cap in hand spilling:  “Da…, Da…, I been a bumpkin fool wanting to be among whom I ought to’ve read…; it’s well over me head, most of what is written…,” spilling…, Zeus…, with you there… grasping.

Joey Driven is an American lyricist, composer, singer, guitarist, screenwriter, fiction and non-fiction author, and performing artist with furthest star media™.

© 2012, 2014 Joey O’Loingsigh Driven