Collaborations > Collaboration with Stephen Pitters

Sitting at the Table
by Stephen Pitters

Their relationship first sparkled with promise.
then folded like a weak hand of poker
that missed the inside strait.

Our gentile manners had carefully orchestrated a great bluff.
These two years squared.
And set rain to fire.
Our transformation was the sadness gained
That couldn’t withstand the deadly injury,
We on ourselves committed.
At the close, it was a gambler’s Aces and Eights,
the Dead Man’s hand we secured.

I had given her far less.
And beauty wants not.
Its back turned after witnessing the ruination
of a once adorned bouquet,
coming to decay
in the table’s centerpiece jar.

Such is, as we do.
if we do not see better.
What we can be.

Conflicted emotions constrict love fruition.
And blights its domain in storms of animosity
That aids one’s decent
Into wild frenzied pursuit,
To control the and’s, buts and what ifs
Which rubs raw the already ache of fulfillment’s loan to affection.
these indulgences were the events given in words
that marked egress like the threat of termination.

Faced with this burden they refrained with their demands
And accepted its warning.
But stung by their guilt
Was like sitting on the head of a pin.
The discomfort kept burrowing in deeper.
And the truce exploded like their future predicted.

Their rabid syllables danced out their mouths
And chaos again reigned.
Havoc crept in frightened behavior.
The panic in them wielded increased disturbance.


Our lives were a travel log
to foreign places without a passport.
We expected absolution from cataclysms
To nullify further pestilence.

Hail Mary full of grace
The Lord is with thee opens the prayer.
But how will we be measured?
And this crooked tree straightened?

“Go ahead love me”.
“I don’t care”, he said.
Her heart not her ears assisted
Their coming tumultuous brake-up.