July 5th

on some jambalaya tuesday,
when the riots died down. you,
in your evening gown, went round the
apartment, lighting candles, humming softly
under the din of the dying refrigerator,
under the din of the drunk, dying riots.

on this tuesday, jumbled like your curls --
unkempt, unspoiled, the pipes had broken down --
a roach gallavanters across the tile, leaving
a tiny trail in the thinness of the dust, scurrying
under the refrigerator, doomed to die
like the refigerator, like you, like me, and
the sluggishness of this slow crawl --
our slow death, the death of the slow riot,
the riot against all of the sluggishness --
it slows me, slows the flames in the candles.

and so, sitting on our private perch above the square,
the wind gently moving neither here nor there,
where rioters square themselves against the squares,
i turn round, stare at you -- you, humming,
lighting candles, haphazardly hee-hawing
from kitchen counter to bedside tower, and
the sluggishness of it all somehow satisfies.

suddenly i strive toward a slowness in the sequence 'fore i die,
a slowness never found with fists thrust high into the sky;
so i shut the door on rioters, their din now dead and done,
and i move round, blow your candles out, and pour myself more rum.

JHS