Back To Hive Mind

It was Tuesday, and it was back to work again...

The light was pouring through the windows,

And ornamenting his shower head,

Dancing on the washroom sink

In such a clever way

That one had to acknowledge it's beauty...

Bill had not fully identified the source

Of his biting discomfort,

But every workday there was a soreness, and a

Hypersensitivity to the soreness that hovered

Over his head

Like a cartoon dialogue bubble...

He had a good job, that was not the trouble...

He felt cared for and nurtured by his environment,

And colleagues, which made his problem ever so much

Mote puzzling, the way his mornings, and anticipation

For going in nagged at him like a mosquito

Buzzing in and out of sight,

Or a scratch he couldn't itch that was somewhere

Off the map...

Several plateaus to the left past an oasis,

And a dry patch...

He could see it on his face, like a stain

Staring back at him in the washroom mirror...

The strange insecurity of the lips, as they settled

Unevenly on the facial landscape like a wrinkled mask...

Was it simply the feeling that he was giving up

The keys to himself,

Like a borrowed car to a friend?...

Ah, but his flesh was so much more then a

Material possession...

Or it held so much more infinite weight...

When he cut himself,

His mother would dress the wound when he was

A child, and then as he grew

He learned to dress the wound himself...

He learned what foods tantalized him...

He learned how to touch himself in order to rev

Up his own sensual engines,

And how to pleasure someone else,

By pressing certain buttons, and listening for

The right cues

In a lover's face or in their labored breath...

He learned by their eyes that his body was

Doing the right thing, and when he

Had flubbed he learned he had missed the mark...

...And perhaps that was why it was ever so

Much more grievous when in the morning

He prepared to become an expatriate

Of his own precious psychic world...

Donning the war paint of cold water

From the faucet...

Laving his hills of scruples up, and

Attempting to rinse them down the drain

With a staunch ferocity;

Though many of them still dangled and swung

Like loud and heavy tribal jewelry

As he tumbled into his Work Self...

Now wearing the new perspective,

And psychically protective head gear,

Like the blinders on a horse...

Hoping that this time maybe he had shaved

In inch more of the anxiety of last Tuesday,

But my God...

Would one ever lose the weight

Of the shackles, and financial bondage

Of the day to day grind?...

Bill wondered if he would ever find

That answer in the solace of

His return to comfort later that night, (or any night)

When his ass could finally slip back onto

The casual cushion,

And his mind would be allowed to drift again

At it's leisure like a boat upon the lazy river,

Without Captain but the confines

Of his own wary mind...

9/25/24

Bunny Villaire

Edit #2