--- D A V I D   F L O Y D

--after Karen Cassandra Burk's "To The Man That Doesn't Exist"




You are alone at the Hollywood Diner 
in Delaware on X-mas--no snow,
only the memory of white like an echo

trying to repeat itself.  
I'm trying to wish myself there 
next to coffee and paper placemats,
 
not knowing the difference 
between wanting and needing, 
thinking I might be served up 
 
with the food of heartburn 
and soiled spoons.  You are writing me 
on two-bit napkins.

If this were happening, I'd steal a skull
and crossbones ring-you could wear it
around your neck on weathered lace.
 
I'd engrave your name in my arm 
with a rusty blade, carve verse 
on a box elder, initial it with X. 
 
If this were happening, I'd want words 
to ebb from my tongue like bubbles 
of rain from a catalpa leaf;
 
I'd want my words to be like twigs 
that take root and sleep in dark soil--
awaken as branches for sky--

with earth still clinging to their uprising.