Spread Your Arms (poem)

Posted by ractrose on 27 Nov 2019 in Art, Poems

You’ll go out on a monitor

Hiccupping with your backbone wishing

for a final arch. Your chest cavity slumbers uninspired

Ten nervous snacks swallowed in the last hour

Your global gut draws its own gravity

“What goes on?” a staffer asks

The feeling is bubbly like root beer

The feeling is fear, like money on an island

sunk below the flood tide…that is all they’ll tell you

The feeling is retributive, victims sworn

to wayback themselves to the last good moment

And mark you with a dagger in the next

when the mathematics of elimination spot you

motioning with the notion you can dance

The feeling is rejoicing, of the most Bacchanalian asteroid

anticipation the feeling is peeve and irritation

“You don’t mean you haven’t called someone?”

Giggle. Hand over mouth. Eyes crinkle.

“Maybe he’ll get up again.”

“Well, I’m game. Let’s watch awhile.”

But then. You may rise, peer over one

shoulder and another, scurry to the toilet

and carry on like nothing

Your lips may pucker in, the way you’ve learned

to express the weight when no one cares for you

They lose, you have friends; and yet, suckers trust

Smart guys knew it for a sham

Can’t be harmed

Spread Your Arms