brief encounter in a field of poppies

I remember her eyes –
pale vacancy, aggressively hands-on-hips Wonder Woman,
trying to pick my pocket for What’s Left of Me,
stabbed into fondue.

recall the artistic insensibility of her mouth,
robins with lava-splashed wings, chained to Earth
by licorice, the exclamation point for all gathered wool.

conversations were catapults
to the rooftops of suburban Existentialism,
through the Fourth Wall, I’ll be the Davey
to your Goliath, and we’ll convert the world to
the Church of David Bowie.

our first dance was the Beastie Boys,
our last chance was Sinatra; we can’t climb
mountains on Mars without our space helmets,
but we can’t wear our space helmets
and breathe.

I kept forgetting to replace the batteries of
that mechanical nothingness that trapped us in bubbles.
so much trouble. that thoughtless rubble never paid
a compliment to the ashes of our
Properly Controlled Forest Fires.

The late 1990s. We looked sideways,
you threw me a key, moved to Tennessee.

I sat on the roof of my ’87 Chevy Celebrity
and waited for catharsis, shooting BB pellets at tidal waves,
whispering discord, so I couldn’t tell if you
heard the knell when I

dropped the key into the mouth of Hell

and walked back into Purgatory to tend to the vines.