Ted Burke LIKE IT OR NOT

Imbroglio, Intaglio, Ingress

Let's be pan-and-scan-buddies
to the degree
that we stop traveling
so damned far
and instead BECOME
the point between two alienated orbits.


In novels, characters
walk through many doors,
in and out of many rooms,
often times in a sequence
of inexplicable locales
before any of them discover
what the author was trying to get at.
The weather was said to
be night and morning
low clouds of
wadded typing paper,
followed by continued
grumble storms until
either evening arrives
or the Muse leaves.

In detective stories,
this means getting hit over the head
and coming to later,
finding someone you've never seen before
staring down at you and begging
for to be forgiven for the untidy welcome.
The concussions continue like that
until something gives or the author hears
a strange noise in the kitchen,
which is usually the cat
playing cards with the dog again,
taking him for every bone
he's collected and buried
in holes deep as one
can get before a water line gets punctured.


The two of us ought to be in pictures,
the centerfold of our times, making history
as we walk out of theaters looking bored,
acting as if the staples weren't even there,
coming down the center of the halves we're trying to join.