Elatedly poisoned
with the bourbon
your grandpa gets for cheap
at the military base
out by some forgotten
airport—

turning your secretive
insides a
suburban green
tarred out
in tennis courts
and virginal gardens
before you:

is this
where you
flirted with
expiration dates—

with glistening mortgages
and
the slick wires
of orthodontic
summers?

I've staggered upward
the endless
ramp
of the landscaper's trailer

to brush
the back of
my hand
lovingly across
this perfect subdivision
where

the windows
no longer wish
to break
the bones of
our forearms
with locked jaws

as we grab at
scented money
from the
early June
sky.

When the wind and
light
change with an abrupt
unbecoming aggression—
nothing but hot breath
insisting and
repositioning
our houseplants
presumptuously—

I sit then
in Papa's immortal den
with
Dorito-dust fingers

sucking at
my annoyance.

So fragile is our
perfection
that even
the bitchy weather
can brutalize it
with a pushy
punctuation.

How horrid—
how wonderful
to madden with the stormy breeze
that
commandeers the maple branches
for its tongue
its larynx
its showy
operatic hissing
in a circular
pounding
of intensifying
vanity.

Could our perfection
be any
more
high-maintenance
if it tried?

In Papa's den—
even on the outdated
desktop monitor, a
dense paperweight morgue—
the Facebook profiles
of not-so-recently-deceased
high school
acquaintances
will load in unpredictable waves
of resolution

rushing and lulling
as if manned
by an invisible wind
within the system.

But to suck at
the greenery when motionless—

as if the new summer
has stunned itself
by the chemicals
of its own existence

(like the pubescent

himself
frozen
in his parents'
bathroom

agog at the odor
and hair
germinating
in
little summers
across his every crevice)—

to suck at the puberty
of the world

as the grandfatherly blowhard
or the late-20s
heir
to
the
wilting garden
of car batteries
and fertilized
carnage
our sweet
sour bodies
compost

to suck at the puberty
of the world

to suck and suck
and suck
is
the only
heaven
there
is.