Dust in the tread

A walking boot – Brazilian dust still in the tread –

protects the senseless foot. You’re an enemy, Door Jamb.

‘Threshold me! – Try lifting this boxy rig, loverboy!’

(Tubular steel / Mind the wheels, romance’s inscription in health.)

No one has died. No grief allowed.

Grievous harm is the merest term –

decades of life decay, day and day.

‘Get over yourself!’, beneath all clambering beauty.

Absolutes, superlatives, bomb-plumes of exclamation

tell my reduction. I’m histrionic, max vol, shoutish thinking aloud.

Lovely-couples-walking-lovingly-in-love, walk past,

walk on by for bliss. No offence. No delusion – of you.

I am not alone, and love is not luv and if this

is bitterness it has no direction, or never yours –

I’m all ifs and buts, justified unjust. I crave self-applause

and my anger mopes:

hand-in-hand’s trekking hyphenation

                                                                    dashes hopes.

We cannot love back to forest path, secret shore,

to dune, to view from Version 1

(from Paraty, from São João del Rei, Ben An).

We are compelled to be humbled,

laid low before stroll, amble.

There never was a photo of the happy couple –

imagined self-containment takes 1-2-1 snaps.