importunate

And does it please you to caparison me in wishes, in stuttering confessions, clever and feckless, then I will lean into it. Full weight renders the symbiotic crush fruitful and I will gladly bide for vintage conclusions. Do you speak in conversational tones, then I will remind your tongue how delicate the palate, how swiftly the bouquet spoils upon conceit.
Tell me more. Tell me more. I should be so lucky and thrice times over.

**********

And so. I have no quill, no ruffled sleeves, no plunging bodice. My hair unwashed and wind-torn, a silver keyboard, half-finished drawings of teeth bared and eyes heavy-lidded. Cheap beer and jasmine rice, bladder straining, somewhere a muttering. Spine compacted, sitting overlong gazing at bitmapped palimpsests. Last year's shoes planted flat to the floor, the ones I left outside of temple thresholds in Thiruvannaamalai.

I want to enunciate each portion of my life, as stammered avowals. I want to trill them all together, as an Indian would, replete with sideways headbobble and twinkle in the eye. Absurdly poised I recount Whitman, of contradictions and multitudes.

Do you?