Love is a blanket to hide beneath
to fend off any social disdain:
I thought you didn’t like me,
she said. If I didn’t like you I wouldn’t
be here now, he said as she stapled
another set of papers unnecessarily.
True, she laughed not nervously
nor with any hint of the coquette.
He picked up a book casually, as
a distraction to an original phrase
she would rue the day she ever took
up with him like a toy paper spear
thrown across the room in a delicate
arc collapsing onto the snowy ground,
in as much of a manner as most
fantasies ever come to erotic conclusions.
He wonders now if Americans are killing
themselves by the millions every year
with defective rubber tires that get hot
and blow up, like his flirtatious attempts at love.
(June 27, 2014)
seed text: On The Road by Jack Kerouac
not a sonnet
subtext 