eggs

They stood round the bed and spoke about my body. (i think he should be moved to that coffee shop by the thrift store;)
a cup of weak coffee for him and a jelly packet for her;
where the pressed slacks fold their papers into eighths;
the ring of a tea cup, startled by a spoon
begins another day.
Here Plato waits tables with Hobbes at the sink,it was their contract after all;
all those books and little hooks inside my brain
stretching reason like a tarp against the rain.

like a clock with the back removed, those spiked rings and
springs and clicking clean pressed things;
spinning like swirled eggs in deep brown butter on a boil.. ....

the way a mailman rests your letters softly in a metal box each day at ten;
the way the young drink attention from the not young.
how it was foretold in Leviathan and Walden and the Testaments . . . . .
carved on crystal tablets
now heavy with burned potato, toast and pig.

a simple turn of a simple head on the thin stick of a neck
from table two where Donne traded lamb and quatrains with Dylan,
to six where Veblin passed the sugar to Sartre;

to thirteen where a young woman
pressed a slice of grapefruit to her thin red, drugstore lips
and ruined it all by leaning over me
with a string of ancient beads,
composing a smile.

© Jeff Thomas 2009