Real Time

Low slung ‘51 Mercury, flat black, rolls
through a fog in Mitch’s head that can erase everything,
a gray that can prevent the world from happening,
twist the real into maybe, or the hoped-for into done.
Lights on, glowing, it looks to tell the same tale
as the ship about to crash into the island of King Kong.
The old Merc lives in Mitch’s language of dreams
on a list before or after the blonde sunbathing nude
over the backyard fence, images of fuel, moments
of reverie on moving into legend with your friends.
Yes, stories can rise up, so much evaporation
off our lives, true or lies, facts or fantasies, until
we never know for sure what all  took place.
Same as a Merc sailing off an ocean road:
“There was a fog, sir, that’s all I know...”
All stories start with this purpose...to retell a world
beyond that we actually lived
into something that roars out like a proof of heaven.
All stories fail.
Every living thing dies.
Erasure  wins.
Yet none of us believe that.
The Merc is eternal.
The blonde’s still naked on a lounge,
atop her blue and pink cotton towel,
below a California sun
and the length of its famous tongue.
Now she’s drinking Chardonnay!
Poets know one thing for sure
while the physicists lack proof:
we live forever in ecstatic time
orgasmic time, other time.
We appear to grow old,
get sick
and die
without choice, which is illegal
to Mitch’s way of thinking.
He holds a plate of raw meat,
his wife is out back, lying naked
between the K-Mart pool and the Weber grill,
as Mitch zings zest into the phonelines,
“Right now, buddy, time is mine!”