The habituation of dentists and couples

 This woman crosses the room to her wardrobe,
careful not to scratch the door with those long nails
The observer watched from inside the bedroom door.
Its blood tipped tooth stuck in the carpeted floor.
She thinks she's figured it out, but can't help but shirk,
somewhere in the shadows the answer lurks.

A shirt was pulled from the clean clothes.
Hands ruffled then smoothed the material like truth into lie.
A perfectionist's drive the elegant woman breaks and cries.
A formal dress she stepped into beside the bed.
As the mirror swallows the tears, the working hour nears,
drawing them upward in strange sliding smears.

Her man unconsciously opened the bedroom door.
She searched for care on his face, her eyes bore.
His eyes were routine his body language between.
One task and another with an anxiety felt but unseen.
That dried her eyes and the stairs down toward the business.
His footsteps continued behind her, for she couldn't convince,
climbing one step at a time toward the home office.

The mirror caught another tear all sorts of panic all sorts of fear.
Had she not pretended enough, how emotions impair... signs?
Another blood tipped tooth and unpaid fine.
She looked down to check the damage.
frown compounded patience ended fast.
then looked back to her feelings in the glass.

Reuben the tallest

 The bar started to fill up with rich local patrons.
One of which had an entourage his name was Reuben.
He towered almost seven feet looking down at everyone.
Not looking down just because he had the height advantage.
He looked down on each one of us on purpose.
His glare a lazer of nausea.
His friends jeering and goading gutless prospect thugs.
They were overbearing, hovering, badgering and bothering us all.

Blond ginger hair nand a grin that said the opposite
A redness to the skin like that of a man rubbed up the wrong way.
Sporting some sort of socially acceptable opinion.
He'd squeezed the best of himself out in boarding school.
What he couldn't achieve in intimidating the whole bar,
his friends finished easily.
On their second beers the volume went up.
How tall the man stood, the bravado the guy transmitted.
Their obtuseness became a sculpture piece under exhibtion light.

That night i checked behind the bar we had enough guns.
We just didn't have a coffin big enough for Reuben.

Her bathroom habit

 She heard his key clicking in the lock downstairs
swept the powder with slender hand from the glass
Wiping the counter clinging to new hype in her temples
hiding the rolled note inside her handbag

At dinner she watched his hands across the table
His wedding ring catching the apartment light
He asked whether she had followed the plan
Lifted her glass gave him the anticipated answer 

He went to bed she locked the bathroom door
Opened the handbag beneath the sink pop the baggie
Small white line beside her paler reflection
In several seconds she curves and snorts

Chemical syrup slides down the nasal to the throat
Whatever she was before is not what she is now
Unraveling the hundred and licking the residue
Thoughts move, heart jumps a sharper brighter reality

twenty minutes later the world is a drain
vampire of her essence
dawn is rockbottom
flavorless

VIP lounge Abstention

 The Vip lounge was empty
Great seating elaborate cubicles
Large one story fire place
Huge wooden framed windows

The bar maid made polite conversation
Her hand placing a drink infront of me
A name a category a flavor
Encouragement to lose myself

New guests arrived inside the foyer from outside
Puns and grins from the barmaid
Funloving banter
not a sip

A group entered the VIP putting down jackets
Putting down their bags and umbrellas
Scanning the room and sighing before seating themselves
Barmaid coax me to drink just a taste

The cocktail sat untouched on the counter
The bill next to it
Half dampened by condensation
Thawing ice inside the glass

There is something intoxicating
about refusal.

The coffee maker

 It sat in the lowest area of the paddock
Always on always dripping
All I needed was a cup
In the paddock cows and competition

I found a plastic cup clean and perfect
Like a pearl inside a shell
Half under a partially burnt log
I picked it up with shaking hands

uncontained gratitude
As I took it in both hands
Positioned it under the tap
I got my coffee

And the pasture would continue growing
As I slowly sipped
As I pontificated over the fate of the world
those cows would eat forever

Eating the wrong thing

 In their apartment above munich
Nala talked to her mother about her diet
About how she had been cheating
Eating those forbidden things

Munich was quiet listening to the call
The husband rich and distinct
Something she couldn't do without
her tears fell on the diet plan

Her mother's tone changed from accusatory
To something bordering on sympathetic
The silent contract that kept her figure
Her husband with those facial lines

She decided traced her trajectory
but soon enough her body would give her away

Your final thesis

 Read the books stack them on shelves
Pages turned by generations of obedient hands
Every conclusion has become a print, a stamp
Just fancy furniture nobody dares to rearrange

I watched the students repeat the language
placing famous names inside their sentences
Building little monuments from quotations
Repeating the bland content until it was their own mind

They forfeited their own wanting fingerprints
Their knowledge orbits around another person
Fear of their own skull breaking apart
And yet an original author is a rare tainted thing

So unique it conjures other worlds into being
While the chorus of the said and done heaves plaster

The old certainty enters and exits unaltered
Not yet aware of it's own over ripeness
Until the reader mistakes their nausea
For familiar intellectual residue