Wheat in Wind

Your alibi has disappeared
Can you stand there empty head
And tell me seriously what you want?
The blade may have been just wide enough
To keep the secret safe but now
The air is keener than smelling salts.

Look just below my chin
A ruddy war within
Collides without a shirk or doubt
With your stupid state.

The past still ushers in the now
What kind of neophytes are we
To slouch on purpose like there's no history here?
A doorway--that's no place to learn
The legs you count on all the time
Won't necessarily work when the feet get cold.

This tryst of sweating palms
Oh, ego aves calm
The nerve of one another's breath
Break his aegis yet.

Why did you come up here?
How can you get so near?
Do you hold all that fear in your mouth?
Think I'm unaware?
No face is that damn bare
Takes me awhile to care if I do.

Sometimes, more often than I'll say,
I get my hands around the why
And to no one appeal for a hand-me-down.
"All things have reasons," blah blah blah
What else, dig deeper, onto-
Logically it's nothing short of a cul-de-sac.

Your time is bungling on
The weight of age upon you
Now and then the need is there
For a pushing-off.

Oh, for a gavel and a can of spray paint
Instead of hindsight and the rue of what ain't
I wish we'd slap each other full blind
So we'd stop this squinting.

Backed down, backed into corner-stances
Like neurotic linemen
God, as if unnaturalness were our nature's fruit.
And here our basic difference lies
‘Cause you would surely fly like this
But I just can't accept that we're wheat in wind.

Et tu, Brute, perhaps
But no more weaponed laps
Around the factory-headed mare
Caught its death of cold.

Why did you come up here?
How can you get so near?
You slipped and all that fear shuddered out.
Think I'm unaware?
No face is that damn bare
You want to know I care?

Now we turn on heels
And leave the air congealed
The door will seal itself.

Copyright 1994 John Brocato