Stu n' Stephen

Apologia

STU:
We meet again, Mr. Chamberlain
hung like Wilt the Stilt,
I guess marrying at 18 is fine where you live
but it’s unheard of in my part of the world
a ham sandwich for two would taste delicious right now
since we couldn’t build upon our previous collaboration



STEPHEN:
Stu, polite and scribe-willing,
how you sate yourself on the smoothie-skin
that rises to the top of your lid,
making the actual contents last until
evening when you thoughtfully reconstitute it
and victual your itinerant mouse,
the name of which I know sounds
as soft as your intermittent coughs,
not their timbre, but how you’ve hung them
on the contracted muscle of trains.
You’ve not dispatched him, the mouse, I know
because when you first saw him submerge
in the hamper, his tail shaped like your
expert capital G’s, you overturned the clothing and
rodent into the filling washer bowl and left the room.
Yet you did not shower as planned. Divested of clothing you
ran into the kitchen and dove your hand into the water,
and bringing the spent body to your face
you vivified him with not a please but a plangent you’re welcome.
Christened him Royal, for the blue tint of his detergent complexion
and its concomitant susurrations.




STU:
Perhaps in retrospect
in a classroom that consists of
a braless bohemian,
a basketball biker girl,
a thirty-something pervert,
a hippie stoner who never shows up,
a pink-haired free spirit,
a hirsute creature that answers to “Buddy,”
a dainty young thing whose last name sounds like the Swedish version of Lipitor,
a former 300-pound man,
a suicidal emo artisan,
three pious Christians,
two Jewish princesses,
and a partridge in a pear tree…
why would I ever want to insult you?