September

A True Story

A melancholy Sunday, and yet you glow with the same lightning of years past and their verdant desperate grinding of soft kisses, nothing more, and how the tenderest ornament was placed atop the highest broken limb.

I dreamt of you, what with brown eyes searing a late summer's night of longing leaving, and awakening I found my bedclothes twisted into a limp shape of your fragile body clutched in my arms and us quivering in every night being the last night the last kiss the last knowing glance tracing your tattoos with my fingertips. Those summer nights I would have died. I may die yet.

You taught me love beyond reason and I've drug that cross ever since. I will wait on your doorstep trodden and I will sob this rock to mud, and I will never surrender your luster in my memory to these cold demons of rationale. Wait for me at the doorway to oblivion. You'll recognize my scars and I won't forget your little yellow dress.

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I have no room in my heart save for the desperate,

as the idiots go caterwauling safely to darkness

I am left alone in purity's embrace

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Boys Strumming War

I will not die for some stamped cause

let their children's boots tremble

not me, not mine

I can scarcely win this war of living

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Is it wrong to be so jealous of the ground you walk upon,

of the moon that watches you sleep?

I'll spend my days staring at setting suns,

waiting for the cloak of blindness

to make a religion of memory

and a faith of forgotten faces

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Another Drink

It occurs I don't need another drink,

I don't need to walk on unsure knees

or fall asleep already sleeping,

to pour another glass of rum

in a houseful of friends already retired,

not one more ring of dizziness

to cloud my vision of night and cat,

and I will go to bed as unfamiliar as I am

and rest bashful sober and quiet.

A poet's work is never done,

which is why I'm a line cook instead.

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I spent today a grinning skull,

lost in the awful wonder of the world

losing all sight of the gunpowder lessons

hammered through my heart,

losing all sight of who I had Been, who I need to Be,

just sick with amusement at broken bones,

a shrinking banner of pride

limply waving in air never so chilly and heavy

with the smell of bedrooms and hair.

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I've found this beast bloating beyond my comprehension,

rearing up like jagged mountains that eat sky and drink daylight,

crawling on its belly through my gut,

pulling at my hair until my eyes roll back into my head

and I stare into nothing, nothing at all,

just the jaws of the End and the ripple of my sinking heart.

We are willingly drowning in a lake of roses.

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I'm creepy, man

diving into navels

finding none so deep as my own,

dancing dead little circles around lovers,

snorting state lines for kicks

and heartbeats pushing sweaters above waistlines,

just creepy and asleep

cross-legged

mouth sagging

bile

fade to wide-eyed concession

that this night was not mine to win.