smoke and leather

The first boyfriend smelled

like smoke and leather,

just like each one since.

Sixteen years passed,

still the same reaction,

this scent trails like a

musky orchid

and my lips tingle,

my stomach floats.

Smoke and leather guys

end up smelling like

bile and rubbing alcohol

and take too many drugs

and think they're turning into skeletons

and cut their arms with broken glass.

A man should smell

like pollen and cut grass,

like car parts,

and jobs,

and a good sweat.

reduction in force

the cookies rest sedately

on a work counter

under fluorescent light,

a simple reminder

of how it crumbles underfoot,

slides with the tide of apathy,

slippery,

slipping.

a living wake for my job,

that I still get up and go to.

a living wake for my family,

very much alive and breathing.

a living wake for my spirit,

fading fast with each passing of the day.

the sweetness of the cookie

tastes like a bitter pill

or a heavy load of syrup.

so I take the whole box

and give the mess away.

mountain

nothing wrong with

being sweet all the time

letting the sweetness lift and lift

my heart, radiating

up, up

filling the atmosphere

with warm pink light,

orange gleaming shine,

prismatic dust motes,

golden cream seashells,

fierce tiger lilies and red rose petals

raining,

misting down,

radiant.

enclosed in a dark diamond sky

white snow glittering underfoot

a sense of a dome

vast, dizzying, upward

up, up,

merging, growing, magical, unearthly.

floating in this little room

this temple, our spaceship

adults tucked like sleepy children

by a roaring fire on Christmas Eve

bowls appearing from the ether

singing their deep circular sound

ringing around the tiny room

merging, merged.

bursting forth with love

a crack of sunlight

in winter's gloomy gray fortress