Photo by Sam Te-Kiefte
We’d Wait in Line All Day Just to Go Upside-Down Again
Bobby Parrott
As if the lighting in the room had shifted
from primitive to orbital, the wine’s bright
notes make a visual music of her face,
a flicker of third eye. I always wear a hat
so my crown chakra must check with me
before admitting uninvited universes. But now
this? And even though the mouth may not
always see it, a pack of clouds goggles between
two different theaters. As if your voice comes
from a distant murmuration of starlings
all believing they are you. Please don’t look at me
like that. I’m radioactive, but still don’t know
for how long. Hydraulic bones, I go pneumatic
in how I work my saxophone on otherwise mindless
nights. Like the construction of paradox, my life
pirouettes on the turn of a screw, waves of idle woo.
If I could simply escape this bloodless urge, say
a more alchemical fondling, a classical meta-virus
of players who spring up, shoulder my coffin
across the canyon in a dance. How the stage rumbles
with cannon fire. Or no, was that four centuries
ago? Doesn’t matter, as long as it rumbles. Because
here, we oxidize slowly until we’re dead, melt
thru our skins to the next exit, shiny car adverts
winking out. See, even evolution never hopes to enter
this kind of sleep. Vacuum the vertigo of stars. If we
could only touch the oiled tracks of this godless roller-
coaster, then maybe we’d never be afraid again.
Bobby Parrott
As if the lighting in the room had shifted
from primitive to orbital, the wine’s bright
notes make a visual music of her face,
a flicker of third eye. I always wear a hat
so my crown chakra must check with me
before admitting uninvited universes. But now
this? And even though the mouth may not
always see it, a pack of clouds goggles between
two different theaters. As if your voice comes
from a distant murmuration of starlings
all believing they are you. Please don’t look at me
like that. I’m radioactive, but still don’t know
for how long. Hydraulic bones, I go pneumatic
in how I work my saxophone on otherwise mindless
nights. Like the construction of paradox, my life
pirouettes on the turn of a screw, waves of idle woo.
If I could simply escape this bloodless urge, say
a more alchemical fondling, a classical meta-virus
of players who spring up, shoulder my coffin
across the canyon in a dance. How the stage rumbles
with cannon fire. Or no, was that four centuries
ago? Doesn’t matter, as long as it rumbles. Because
here, we oxidize slowly until we’re dead, melt
thru our skins to the next exit, shiny car adverts
winking out. See, even evolution never hopes to enter
this kind of sleep. Vacuum the vertigo of stars. If we
could only touch the oiled tracks of this godless roller-
coaster, then maybe we’d never be afraid again.