a rare discomfort
Sometimes life
hands you a boner. You look
around thinking, “Now what
the hell am I supposed to do
with this?” and you sit
there squirming in a yearning
ecstasy like an unfinished yawn,
or an unrealized sneeze,
at the back of the bus groaning
in fine tweezer limbo,
between pleasure and pain.
It is a rare discomfort,
delicate and forceful in its tension–
an aching hot
tender throb.
You see the swollen
purple-brown flesh like a manatee’s
fat, infected eyelid puffed: raw, poking and exposed
through a tear in your jeans you can fit
the tip of your pinky in,
at the bottom of your fly.