Florida: Part One

By Morty Diamond

They desire of you
All the two of you
Your love, a docile or languid one
Your soul a captive
A centaur with clipped wings
The flying creature you used to be
Around a year ago
There is a black trench coat
There is a smell of pine needles
I’m waking up in a car on the freeway smelling
What’s been covering my eyes
A bottle of drops to ease and heal
And another bottle to keep my skin purple
There is a metronome in my pot belly
There is a peppermint candy melting on my tongue
There are one or two residual pills so caustic they re-soak my spongy tissues
My right eye shorts out
I’ve never been good at standing stalk still
So in third person I went with her
Knowing I would take my leather jacket
And never see any of it again
Dozens of townships
Two bouts of diarrhea
Six mars bars
I began to see
What she had been looking at
A guy like me
With jet fuel for a heart
I was an easy passenger
Drunk on my own pain
Not so hunter/hunted as much as giver/giving
Yours becomes mine and mine became yours
Liquid, smoke, rummaging, entertaining
Two pleasures refilling in tandem
As large as grain silos
Two smears, red lips, blind passages run into each other
I was cut right down the middle
Slipped a pane of glass between the two halves
So she could see, at every step of the way
Where I was getting wet, hurt, pumping, shriveling
But then there was Florida
Florida made all the difference
Florida was the daylight
They always want your mouth in a smirk
A plain t shirt, a clean shaven face
They wailed to me ‘It’s here!’
But omnipresent danger was all I felt was ‘HERE’
Photosynthesizing
The sun yarrow colored and hazy
Blended red and blue milk shakes
I was two weeks sick
She begged me to stay on
But when I cried “I’m casting shadows!”
She waved goodbye to me
Solid and carefree
Like driving a new car off the lot