Drink with me,
at the Mexican restaurant
on the wharf that serves
mezcal with chili salt,
we'll talk about all the things
no one wants to talk about.  
The lost loves, the harsh
self-treatment, the way
you're recovering nicely.
I'll share oysters,
but I'll leave soon,
my mind full of her,
full of her, full of her.

We are unfit
for these lives
as we lead them;
betrayed, moon-sick,
palmfuls of our pills
getting washed down
with the cheap wine
we hide under the sinks;
even the streets
are depressed
under the vinyl sun
with a lion's mane
of cloud, anxious
in the passing;
I don't know
what life I would shape
for you to make you happy,
but it wouldn't look
anything like this one.

The green night
draws a little farther in.

I'm feeling it -
Your face in the black glass,
your face over the wine pool,
your face that drifts away
from my reach
in buttons of smoke...

I'm feeling it -
The wallpaper crawls away,
the red chair moves its tongue,
the green night closes.
It's a bad intuition,
a javelin of thought,
that maybe it's less than OK.

Your face shrugs the black glass,
your face escapes the wine pool,
your face keeps drifting away
in glencairns of Longrow,
in pyramids of regret.

I close the windows
against the electric moon
as language pries me open,
as the wallpaper crawls,
& your face won't stop
drifting away.

There are those children
out your window again,
but I'm trapped over the line
in the seething yellow dusk.

I count the gapped lintels
the next building over,
count to ten, twenty,
it doesn't stand.

I take up post
by the oven to hear
your anger at those children,
those ****** children.

A scent like a sword forged with the acid
of plums found by a road,
the sugary kisses that linger in the teeth,
the drops of life sprinkling on the fingertips,
the sweet ****** heart,
the yards, the haystacks, the inviting
secret rooms in the vast houses,
mattresses sleeping in the past, the raging green valley
seen from above, from a hidden window:
adolescence all flickering and burning
like a lamp knocked over in the rain.

I'm always being born -
even this morning,
when I was thinking
too hard about it,
curing myself at 8:30
with scotch that reeked
of dense iodine
until a bray of laughter
became a choke
as I returned to the scene
of the ******,
pushing a belly of snow
back into the past;

I'm always being born,
blinking in surprise,
drawing this breath,
instinctively turning to you.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
in the mind, in the nightmare
where ink drops from the desk
& splashes across the floor
in the shape of his face
though he's been dead
for years. It's a blow,
a reminder of the grave
in the air: this wound
never closes, there is no scar,
& sometimes no memory
when the nightmare closes
itself as a raven's wing,
more black ink folding in.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
so coffee is the sword
& the shield.
Keep sleep short,
don't dream,
& don't think about it,
just sit still, read
the newspaper you stole
from the building's front step.
The Dow is down,
but tech stocks are climbing.