Better or Verse - "M-80"

[Ed. Note: when fucking around with poetry {which is about ALL I can be said to do with it}, I go for mood rather than comprehensibility. There's nothing to "get", per se. It's like I told J.Q. this morning - "NO! NO! NO! SOAP IS FOR CLEANSING THINGS, NOT EATING!" Ahem. Poetry is for feeling things, not understanding.

But lest the more literal-minded of you get your Hanes Her Ways in a bunch... this is basically "Possum Kingdom" making out with "Only the Good Die Young" on the lawn in suburban New Jersey. This is the second thing which was going through my head during a recent late-night run through my childhood 'hood, the first being "AIIIIE SCARY FASTER FASTER DON'T WANNA DIE".]

One of those humid restless tangled-sheet nights
I went out back
Deconstructed your mind
Laid it out across grass in need of a mow
Like damp sandy towels
Or lawnmower parts

As it ought to be
I took things slow

And do I get the thanks of a grateful nation?
A lungful of Love's Baby Soft
The last biscuit from a drive-through box
Remuneration, meaning
A lil' something beyond
Eyeful of cutoffs
Quick grab of frustration

And, as the kids say, and I use the term fully ironically,
The shaft.

The dark sleeknesses that softly slide
Across the sides of new black pickup trucks
Could be headlights
But once I've trained your eye
Could be things murkier and more seductive

Petty vandals or
Translucent sprites
That drift on the bottom of swimming pools at night
And cling to you without your knowledge
No consent, but lesser harm
And much later, trickle happily away
From your hair, your skin, everywhere
As you sleep
They liked the warm

There must be something that I've earned
Light your eyes as the middle of a firefly
Show you where taxonomically-unidentifiable
Juiciness grows
Guide you through thickets that are best traversed
Without your clothes
Not for my sake, naturally
You should really let some things sleep late
Lest they drag you into the treehouse
Or your bathing suit snag on their claws

You go back to school in three weeks
The algebra, the too-high laugh
The trials, tribulations, two sharpened #2s
They're all you
But not walking too close to the tool shed
Shapes shifting in back of the sprinkler
Staring down the night with the lawn on your back,
the earth on your fingers,
galaxies in your eyes,
those words in your ear
Admit it or not it's all mine