--:--

[rowens]

We touch below the TV 
and the score starts.
Passion is as passion does: then,
How do I know you're not playing with my credibility
when you say you need me?

You say I protest too much,
or confess;
there's something I don't trust about credible people,
that honesty is always worse when it's true.

But I see you on the screen,
I put you there in place of better things,
and turn it on and off on the rug.
You. I turn you on and off,
making you someone you're not:
still wanting you.

We flash together through reruns,
mashing repeat and slow motion on VCRs
that can never see through the same eyes
nor marry one screen.

Only you're not someone different,
you're the same heap on the rug
that I can come to or leave, through the same patterns,
every time. Whether we desire or anger, 
or abandon or betray:
the same heap left sweating on the floor.

Although we're played by different parts,
and we play different parts,
we're always the same boring person—the same,
all the time.

[Erthona]

...the self-made man said to the tuna-fish casserole we are always the same, always smelling fowl, despite neither of us being a bird, or a ball. So sad when truth is honest, what a brute, what cruelty to destroy my fantasy of dishonesty. Who are you to awaken me?


dale

[rowens]

I don't know about that. I had to get this poem out of the way. And more. It's a ritual.