Cameo 1

You didn't ask, but it happened. 

I'm not sure why.

We were both creatures locked up in the obscene, reaching

for Cassiopeia.

Now one of us a chained

Prometheus

staring into a widening, pretentious ¡yawp!

There's something brewing beneath the silver

of your eyes, like Iceland's

magmatic, sulfuric

like its unending

immortal—

Your awkward way

such a Dionystic, such 

an anachronistic—

It's kind of fiendish.

My friend,

your way is a fiend

and something alien

something twisting

something serpentine

Something delightful

and something unknowing.

Your way, embellished

like the scene in some

ironically disrespectful

avenue to the gods,

Cantoring our way into the obsessive

the unclimactic

the life

Your treat

They say it's because you acted that way

I say it's because you are that way

So inviting--

So delusive??

You opened your mouth 

and out came the sound of glass shattering

I stood up and walked slowly, deliberately, away from you,
glass popping and crackling 

under bare feet

I had wandered for miles on oven-hot asphalt

and you had my shoes

and you were walking backwards

My legs followed your legs

in intimate tangoes

your right leg back

my left leg forward

we danced for years 

in this way

Until you opened your mouth

and out came the sound of glass shattering

And at that moment

I stepped back

to notice faint strings rising

from your hands and knees

and you were still walking backwards:

we were two magnets repelling

though still gracefully in sync

The strings' paddles shifting

in the manicured grips

of two strange and grinning mothers

I could have laughed--

maybe I did--

but it was a bitter laugh

emitting from a sneer

while I did not even limp

as the glass rose through

my feet

and into my bones