SECRET WORLD

the gravity of the needle drop
always fascinated me
never more so when my father
bought my mother
a pair of 45 RPM singles
as a parting gift upon their divorce

“too much too little too late” by deniece williams
& johnny mathis, and “count on me” by jefferson starship.
I remember thinking, “did he miss the mixed message?”
i would play these records over and over
looking for hidden clues
as to why I was even looking to begin with. I kept searching
for my father’s voice in the words, but the maudlin lyrics made
me loathe him beyond the obvious.

my mother didn’t like records, or music as entertainment.
one day, when the whole family
was to spend some quality time spring cleaning,
i put on an 8 track of the Beatles, thinking I would see my mother
pep up to the catchy beat of her one favorite band. when I went in to
the kitchen to catch a glimpse of her at the height of domestic bliss,
she just asked to me to turn it down.

I had been unwittingly let in to a secret world
where communication is a currency all its own

EXIT STRATEGY

the door closes quickly
as a loud commotion
commences
there are still roads to traverse

it’s an exit strategy
the appeal of inner calculation-
your garbled gable senses
an advantage without a reverse

consent, complicating the totality
of our image- an irreversible reclamation.
this implied construct of allowence’s
deception could not erase the curse.

the archive of our functional commonality
dissipates in a hissing enunciation,
a sacrificial dissolution of the harnesses
that tethered every verse

this vapor of vacant tonality
delineates the idea of qualification
a predetermined absence of consequence
with lips coiled tight in a concealed purse