The lucky newlyweds
wear designer straitjackets.
Perched at the starlit altar
in the middle of the highway,
they clench zinnias in their teeth.
The dazed lobotomized in metal
chairs gawk up at the anemic sky,
then back down at the pavement.
The priest swigs bleach from a flask.
He pronounces them husband and wife,
they blink, and that is that. Nobody claps.
In the 400 milliseconds of that blink, time froze.
By the time the time melted, they had lived
for a thousand years. Inside their eyes
contorted spiders spun gossamer webs,
dangled from their lashes. They stand
amongst silk dusk sinking into the earth,
straitjackets white as cocaine. In a past life,
they lurked these streets searching for it.
Now, they stare into the eye of the moon,
dream of snorting it with a corvette key.
They waddle to the fence on the edge
of the lawn. Beyond it, the clink
of beaming glasses and they’re back
at the altar, all those years ago.