I think we liked the end of Inception for very different reasons

The tedium of watching a slow rotation:
the grudging quarter turn of a bolt
while kneeling on the side of a highway,
sweating, while cicadas hum in the scrub
we tighten a stubborn screw in turns.

I'm indebted deeply to spinning
noiselessly in space
it's a function of the universe
that I have always found charming
and perhaps a little
ad hoc

but if
the universe is a perfect
conical construction
spiraling down from the vastness
of infinity to the minutia of elephant
and again from fingernail to ion
if the twist we fail to feel
is in the blueprints
a feat of engineering laid out in advance
then, well, I am surprised

instead:
knowing what I know of delicate work
it seems to me that perhaps the first thing,
whatever item on a great oak desk
signifies the whole
of, well, everything,
was probably set to a ponderous wobble
by the fat flank of a chubby cat in a work space
who believed himself stealthy

thereafter, we have damage control

I find a devious pleasure
in the idea of wild spiraling;
I wish, on dreary Wednesdays, to become
the reckless and gone spin of lost control;
to see the bolt strip, the ridges dull,
to watch a wrench spin free and away
from a tired hand

There is a joyous tension there,
relieved finally when a little top begins
to spin irregularly, to weaken, and fall.

Lunch and Soot and Sail

1.
Lunch and Soot
were my friends
before I learned to use semicolons
before pretension set in
like pneumonia
from exposure
to

all this, I guess

I liked the rattle of school, the
sound of the wheels on the gravel
when it grew intolerably hot
all of your weekends would roll out before you
unfurl like a sail, and we would mark our charts with schemes
ideas about time and ambition, before
the sailcloth would flump to the grass, and we remembered
that we owned no rigging

2.
When I eat macaroni and cheese, I prefer to use a spoon (because
I am a graceless slavering thing, who is primarily concerned
with the transfer of twists from bowl to maw);
I get fuller bites and besides
what did you mean to accomplish
with both a large bowl of macaroni and cheese,
unaccompanied,
and dignity?
I just prefer spoons.

When Soot learned dirty words, he used them like spoons,
on anything they could even conceivably hold.
He would have used two spoons to eat sushi, if he
had been aware of this analogy then,
or of sushi.

he swore with diabolic innocence
a little dictator
a prepubescent nuclear option
and a firm belief in Valhalla

the words themselves could frighten us, could fill us
with dread and life

 3.
You still like toys
and I still like that
but you really ought to remember a simple dentist appointment.

When you wake, or fail to sleep at all

slipping beneath centuries but
asleep in ten minutes
snoring hungrily
in twelve

there is a quality of malice in that specific type of breath
drawn like a bow
poorly
across the rusted strings of a cello

snoring can be adorable exactly once;
after that, it is the sound
of carefully plotted
murder

but:
in the warm light of breakfast
when we can be troubled
for that particular ritual

the dawn gives way to a few seconds
of space, and peace, and ownership

of faculty and forgiveness