A Little Number

Before I was born
Just a twinkle
In the universe
Of possibilities

Reflected in eyes
Both bluest grey
And olive green
Did you know me?

Or was the I of me
And mine all one to you?
My seedling promised,
But unplanned

Was a meeting of
Hearts and minds
Foretold in song
To bardic strains

Or merely Cast
Upon the plain and
Simple lines
That sprang and pranced

This two-fold dance
Of fire and ice
Your foreign couplings
Kept apart

By Mother Earth
Who did not dream
Of feelings torn
From the widening

Womb-like walls
And shallow shores
Of an underground
Kingdom

Nuts and Colonels
Carried away
With crowns of pine,
From slender hopes

To careful, caring
Tender traps in
Wadded cotton
Whose snoring sheets

Wedded Pluto’s
Darker dreams to
Persephone’s Oblivion
Before there was me

Over Heated

The girl on the desk
At the swimming pool
Did her job to the letter
To keep out the riff-raff
Insisting he prove
They had made him an offer
Their kind invitation
A member plus one
Gets in free this week
For the duration
Of the heatwave
But the generous proof
Remaining at home
In his humid back pocket
He declined the demand
And slunk away
Foul-mouthed consonants
Heating the air
Climbing the hill to home
With the girl
Who wasn’t good enough
For his gym to admit
To work off his sweat
With a body count
In the higher pixels
From the padded throne
Of his living room couch
He is still shooting aliens now
But in time she may
Venture to mention
The shower upstairs
Appears lonely for company
As she adds subtle cubes
To his dinner glass
And pacifies the cat