Dialogue #5

To be in love is to live in bondage
Where honor and discipline are redundant oddities

She carried a blue-gray bag of pearls.
One by one they fell on the sidewalk.
If leant upon
you fade away.

With a mouth full of chalk, I choke modestly--
no protest to the militia boy prodding me along
But fastidiously I kept your antique clothing
splendid-- no larvae, no splotches, no leaching,
and searched underground for a palisades or a grotto,
paid off the bouncers, stole a burning palm tree,
I cling like silk as it climbs to your side,
Sputtering in the showers at the spot your shadow was,
Prophesying in a puddle the pangs of the proud.


(italicized stanza by Moira Scheuring)
circa 1990