Evaporate

 

Evaporate

 

Like as this hot sun’s breath brings oils

to clog your pores, shut down doors,

just as her sticky skin grows boils

that your typical sweaty student delights

in heated squeezing, a busy night’s

brass rubbing with grit felt fingertips,

so it is that your fevered brain lets slip

those ideas that were clenched by it.

Only yesterday it had you gripped

you thought it easily recollected,

could make some verse out of it yet

coin it, an original, some idea so neat,

once conjured from air, once created,

it could be dashed out, celebrated,

a baby ripped off Lady Macbeth’s nipple

and slapped onto paper to flourish.

But – wretched -your blasé boldness

made manifest, a notebook neglected

an arrogance, a feckless recklessness –

(if that’s not an oxymoron) all is lost.

Now you wish you’d written it down,

don’t you? Who was it who said

only fools leave notebooks by the bed,

beneath the bed, the bedside table,

anywhere, but here, oh, damnable!

It was you, wasn’t it? So near, so far,

here you are, chucked from the car,

in unexpected freedom from the herd,

only to find empty mind. Transpiration:

water rising from plants’ recycling,

evaporation’s fully more frightening.