The Malady of the Quotidian

Let's workshop this bitch!

The Malady of the Quotidian

The heart stirs him awake just before
first dreams and he rummages at once
through the nightstand drawer, mind
enough to be quiet. A morsel of mind
is the price of sharing a bed with one
not to know. His creeping hand calm,
composed, his heart goads the search 
with pumps fiercened by the actuality 
of the search—a pause for every clink. 

Each drawer item he knows by touch.
The knowing is verbal, articulate, as if
he were not permitted mindlessness.
The deathbed wristwatch from his dad;
the bottled yacht from his son—no item
would do. The handball might get stuck.
The bottle might shatter. Cockleshells
are prickly. The watch was—not right.
If only the handball had a tethered string.

The flare of their histories, thoughts
of the dangers, guilts, that would come
in using them, the what-ifs, splinter 
the nugget of mindlessness he clings to
in vain, in vain simply in that he clings.
He reaches deeper, knowing there to be
a candle somewhere: long, honeycomb, 
ideal girth. Papers ruffle. Bed creaking,
the snoring ceases. He awaits her turn. 
 
His eyes open into a daytime mindset
judgmental about his plan. Too late 
the hand comes upon the lotion, one 
of the two wanted elements (and good 
at least for a finger or three). Dead now,
though, is the moment. Limp, knowing
it to be the lavender Johnson’s that burns
anyway (left from when his boy was but
a baby), his ear-pulse dies in the pillow.

*This poem is unpublished

Painting: “Self-Portrait, Masturbating” by Egon Schiele (1911)