The Chosen Span of Lifetimes

by John Pursch

Parquet lore in paranoia screeds
scour fully cyclic swimming ghouls
for sluiced pendulums and
checkerboard turnstile terriers
on pummeled hopscotch rodeo release,
served hypothetically to over-eager
ceiling supper speakers on sabbatical
from supple sheathings of
Pleistocene facemask runes.

Nodding to potential cubbyholes,
shoals of kindly carded plunder age
in stubbly floral primping disarray,
scaring up slumped turpentine
in smoldering seedbeds of
yeast deflection corrugation
seizure’s momentary fog.

From cheese to shining postcard tramps
on flavored idiosyncratic creature compounds
of searing molecules in tidal slats
pawned niftily in daylight trading’s
posture outhouse silence,
high school crushes wax in mudline faults
to geriatric gelatin companionship,
held softly in the chosen span of lifetimes.