Youve Never Seen Everything
listening to Cockburn he was reminded of the fools hed
met who told him Stop!
theyd
seen it all
--
There aint nothing new under the sun or in Paradise You might as well quit looking
they were older than he
and it seemed these
Aged wanted those who were younger than them to throw in the towel
concede
to their experience
where the hell had they been
looking all this time
he
couldnt image
his xperience dictated he kept
his eyeballs peeled
on occasion
something
waft before their unblinkered untethered watch and asked --
Didja see that
-- The fuck I did
-- Whawazat
-- Donknow Never saw anything like it before
a night earlier he rushed to
his grrlfriends cry in their bedroom she
was curled like a snake
at the head of the bed against the wall their pillows a dam at her tortured bent
knees
her finger pointing accusingly at
a black writhing inch-long thing midbed
-- Whaddafuck
-- Kill it!
-- I aint killing something because its
ugly Hell if that were the game I wouldnt be here
-- Well
do something her voice rising with every letter of the words
she uttered
-- Right back
-- Where the hell . . . he was
back before she completed the sentence . . . are you going
he kept a small mason jar and
lid in his bookroom just in case
she
wasnt good with insects
he wished he knew what he wasnt
good with
once in captivity in glass they
examined it to determine what it was
-- It crawled out of my laptop
-- A virus
-- Just because you saved my life dont think for
a moment Id spare yours
she ran a tough bargain
they ran entomologies on her
evacuated laptop and figured it a snakefly
he
read
-- Snakeflies molt more than ten
times before they develop into mature adults
As adults
they prey on insects and eat pollen
Babe
theyre like my spiders theyre on our
side
-- Your side
-- Benign creatures are always on
our side
she had no tolerance for ugly
creepycrawly or slither
but she kept her eyes open
she was susceptible like him
they had roommates who died
years ago and had learned their names and called them in the middle of the
night or stood in the bedroom doorway cautiously and when they realised they
saw them from
their bed theyd back out of the doorway and evaporate in the hall
they made stomping sounds in
the livingroom or jiggled doorknobs which forced him to rise
to be sure it was
just them and returning to bed hed
say --
Yous wanna keep it down
please
Were trying to sleep Thank
you
the
whole while their cat stayed in bed with her alertly but without any vigor interest
or curiosity
for what happened outside of the bedroom
a real tiger that one refusing
his mantle as Guardian or Man of the House
or their scarce thin visages floating
over their faces as they lay in bed curious watching
there
was nothing to do any more than parent would look
into their childs face and gently
urge them back to bed It wasnt time to be up just now
and
theyd sift away with a kind of regret
it seemed to him the Aged who
had told him otherwise about Life had lost a playfulness and curiosity
and
deferred the inestimable once-in-a-lifetime occurrences
which could be missed
in the bat of an eye
and that
so very many inevitably were
he didnt get it
but
it wasnt his to get
he wouldnt concede
and
he trusted that his and her accedence stilled the cork in hand and left the bottle
open
spilling its contents
until all manner of things unknown had escaped
twisting and tantalizing the eyes and senses of those who
steadfastly watched
holding their breaths
each and every damn one
a voyeur
2142, Twosday,
2 9. 14
