Amber is the Ancestral Color of my Pagan Lover
Joseph Lee Meads
amber; a yellow light used as a cautionary sign between green for “go” and red for “stop.”
the favorite of my hypocrisies: failing
to wear a seatbelt in the back seat; filling
a vehicle with gas as the engine runs,
and playing on the AM of the radio, softly,
right-wing talk. meantime – I’ve forgotten
how to read the faces of clocks, watches
and humans; a dulling of my judgement
I only assume is a cancer of protective
mimicry? o, Lover, our old building froths
up black sludge downstairs in the basement
where our bicycles live and the addled
negligence of our bathroom animates
vermin in their developmental nymph,
larval and fully grown stages. but, enough
of those domestic platitudes; of the pawning
of wedding gifts: cherished Moravian Czech
crystal needing a polishing after nine years
of disregard: o, dear foreign mother-in-law,
to whom I'll always feign; for your daughter
has the exact same tics as I, incited habitually
by vodka and cocaine proceeded by risky sex
and reruns of The Late Late Show; our routine
a maggot-like ouroboros.
day drunk on a Tuesday,
a jest into Lover’s threadbare mourning veil
(her people are ever dying) and her crystalline
brain exposes my biological algorithms of hot
humiliations and shivers of aporia; then again
without a beat I exhale into her left ear words I know
she knows ad nauseam; words taught to her as a teen
in a small Latvian Protestant church with its long
dead patriarchy plastered on its crumbling walls:
“the Baltics were the last to be converted
to Christianity through the papal perversion
of pagan Europe.” I expect this to incite
a brief spat, she however chooses an anti-
climactic cold war-like mentality; no quarrel
equals no sloppy day sex. I feel 35 years older
than my driver’s license, with my senses held
steady at the amber of Lover’s amber pendant
dangling off a cord; and I feel ill like a social
media content moderator musing the suicide hot line.
Lover,
your King Kong-like "good-bye"
I don't buy; not man's petty math
nor Hollywood magic can destroy
this sad franchise – our needs
and wants are on a fast of devotion
and warmth; we have nothing
to give, nothing to take; all I see
are men fighting, scheming, self-
immolating, self-flagellating,
and/or jaywalking. you must now
know I'm far too close to death
for another sleepless comedown
into the extreme leisure of our sofa.
Lover,
your perception of my poetry being too academic is not unfounded.
Lover,
your Junoesque grace, caustic tongue, thighs enveloped in fishnet tights – your
high tolerance for yeyo and kitschy eyeshadow – all belie the unpretentiousness
of your sheltered, pastoral youth spent with boredom on upstate mountains; Lover,
please do not cynically quell with age your goth-video-store-girl je ne sais quoi.
Lover,
your political leanings to the occult are as amatory as you speeding
up the national expressway at 2am; with all 4 windows just cracked.
Lover,
let's ensconce ourselves in pools of amber only to be revived in a future
of no religion, capital, or sex; all the world for us to corrupt like pharos.
Lover,
let’s play disco and dice with a coven of strangers.
Lover,
let’s enjoy this shitty Lipton before tossing
into a dumpster last night’s transgressions.
Lover,
your procuring for me a cool, damp cloth at this wee hour is the epitome
of apology; for Godzilla is trapped in my skull and my brain is a Tokyo.
Lover,
let’s go do some crimes.
Joseph Lee Meads is a disabled, neurodivergent writer based out of Chicago. HIs favorite Godzilla foil is by far 1971's smog monster Hedorah. His work explores the intersection(s) of sincerity and the hypocrisies of reality. He has an adopted cat lovingly named Hunter Biden.
