A Thing’s Not Finished Till You Give It Away
You
were sitting on your ass
My ass was sitting on you
Our tongues darting out like morays
Of the eel variety
Exploring the caverns of our teeth
Juicing the synapse, clobbering
The pronominal distinctors
I’m
in love with you like at 18
When you told me how the show should be
Political and risky and funny
And I didn’t know how and you had no power
Now
you’re the big CheezWhiz at a major record label
And I’m political and risky and funny in front of people
every night
Swagging break down and exploring with word headlights
The way our tongues did the smoky dance
I’m
in your lap again, Lover
Did it all for you
And I love your wife, too, Lover
And your children, I adore them
And I know I’ve got this cynical overbite
So you don’t believe me, you’d like not to
But our toss in the hay is metaphysical now, Lover
We’re in the Householder Phase, heading to the Monk
And
my other lover, I told him all about you
And he loves you too, like totally
And yeah this must be heaven
Because its all Sunchronicity Street, your having set
him up
With his own label imprint, for Spoken Word
I’m
rambling like the way our fingers lived their own
Electric rain sparking to the deep spot, the fragile hair,
The burn, read me in a wash of orgasm, Lover
Into your ear can you hear the tear
How we suffered like the workers we are for years
Nobody listening, licking stamps with tongues
Thinking of mouths and navels, doing mailings
Sorting and press release airplanes to the abyss
Till now we’ve become who we knew we would
Survived to an economy of wholeness
The deaths of our friends, a new ocean
And
maybe I’ll be on the Label, and I don’t even care
I’m just working, not for the Happy Ending, Lover
But here, naked in your lap, you hard naked
We’re still clothed enough for television
Cause we’re always on now, it’s cool,
We rule, to set the rules, explode them
What
the whispers crescendo about
Is how it’s never an ending, never-ending
And how it’s never done till you give it away
© 1997 Bob Holman