“Sir! We have penetrated DEEP into enemy territory.”

“Good! Excellent!”

“There is just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re surrounded.”

 

After the journey in, there is the journey

Out, after he had to conquer like Napoleon she had to surrender

Like Russia, with winter

With unfamiliar and unfriendly and punishing

Territory, non negotiable

Needs that must be precisely

Met for constant

Attention and simultaneously being

Left alone. He wanted

The separation, he was tired of being

Domesticated and feminized with all truth

Covered like the commode seat in

Terry cloth, he just suddenly after 30 odd

Years blurted out that he wasn’t happy

And it hurt her but she knew

He was right that they had gone so far into

What each had become to the other

That only distance could heal the silence

Between them, but then he missed

Being told what to do, never having

To think too much.  He got his self back but

It was so damaged he didn’t want to accept it even

If the customer had a receipt as long as his

Middle leg.  A concerned friend suggested

The Marital Transitions Study at the U

But that turned out to be

Filling out clinical forms

Getting your blood tested

Being treated like a lab rat, actually

That might have been better

Than putting the experience in a

Meaningful context, ask any successful American

Businessman to do that you might as well

Ask him to smear his face with shit and go sit

In the middle of the freeway during rush hour

By day it was back to the atoms, molecules and

Random quarks of  adolescence and by night back

To being a baby in an old  person’s 

Body and surrounded by traumatic

Memories, the disintegration of

Community, boredom mixed with

Terror, the cries

Of dead selves you

Saw you conquered you

Came and something was supposed to

Happen and now the kid’s been raised

Your purpose gone

What’s left except the leaving the

Be my

You are my

Give me just

The one that cannot be

Two the two that cannot be

One

Two, three

Start over

The I of me the we of you of they of it

Without the arm around

Anything

That stayed and became

Staid in the

I of you as lie

Or cry, messages

In the old cold wind

Body to earth come in

Maybe we

Could go back and

No you can’t go back you can only

Go on, on a highway with no

Exits go on

Out

In

To

Do

Be

Do

Be

Take

Have

Hold

Held

hell he decided to just go

On a trip see some

Country, just

Watch

The thin round

Tire of his bicycle turn

Ing a

circle into a

straight

line.