our own olympia

a team sitting at opposite sides of the
table-and-bench-welded-into-one.
you and i with our private thoughts and
then public thoughts at every half-hour.
training day would touch night while
we breathed, ate, knew of each other -
because other three men or one woman and
one man teams were rivals to our team focus.

at night the final events took place. and
suddenly like a dream, we were rivals
for no reason [our team was like a dream,
anyway]. i won the sprint, you pulled ahead
at the gate hurdle despite my two-step
technique. there was a draw at the bag
hammer and the railing high jump so we both
won gold medals from the munjen old residents.

but we never equalled our record on that
warm quiet night. citius, altius, fortius
morphed into roll over and die. so our team
lost, you and i lost. never able to jump the
obstacles or outrun the the people that
mattered. quietly in the night you and i parted,
you into your own mind and me into mine,
our team never to reach our own private olympia.

pourquois?

it was a question of why
i said the things i
did, before my darkest
summer, after ridout
and downhill pillion-riding.

and a question of who
we were and who we
wanted to be, and all the
while, there wasnt even
much that we could be.

be a stevedore in an arab
port, sliding around on
a goan daze. 24 hours just
you and i, crazy. never a
question of what we'd do.

a little hint of when, if
ever, we'd do the things
we would [after we were less
young, but definitely before
our autumn fell].

but there is nowhere on this
earth, i know, nor in our
minds where there can be a
perfect fit of you and i and
time and place and why.

we were a question of who and
how, of time and place. but
always - more than anything -
of why and why not. why you
could not and why i never could.
why? summer past and autumn
fallen. why? why?