Poem 194

The dangers of discovering your loved one’s innermost desires … I’m imagining prayers as traveling by something like those vacuum communication tubes in department stores of yesteryear, then a fault in the system resulting in prayers raining back down to be read by possibly all the wrong people …

… title is borrowed from a Bob Dylan song …

Nothing Was Delivered

prayer punctures the ceiling
cloud perfectly
as a factory chimney

the chute bringing paper slugs
of prayer to god

a blockage
a dead mouse hopelessly

jammed
and our pleas fall about us
in the street

I discovered your dream your wish
flat on my windscreen
like a parking ticket

you plunged your arms into the sink
and felt mine stick across your wrist

you blew the foam off it …

we were both outraged