Up the black, sticky stair,
break into the wet street
just before eleven; a girl
with lopped lilac bangs snarls
in profile while curling beams
seep from her cell.

I walk home, avoiding my reflection
in the shop windows, mumbling
the pine bird sermon I heard years ago,
when I was drifting drunk
in the fire yard, full of honey and ash,
bottles popping in the pit.

Let the night slide on -
let the black gull draw down -
The door closes so softly
on that old smile...
The sheets on the bed
grip me with soft, cold hands.

This is my left hand in the mirror,
twinned and pinned to the glass,
hanging in the black valley while a song
rips me along the old perforations,
& the whole moment splits -
the light wavers over the mantle,
a ball of ghost, a past thing,
memories sold away in ingots.

This sordid exorcism hinges
on night pictures that I can't shake:
a backward lens, a frozen belt-step,
a long lawn with green marrow.
No, that dream is just watery pulp,
like when you squeeze a plum too hard
& the juice sticks and stains
in the white noise web of your fingers.

Something withers in the gut;
a light goes out. Air dribbles down,
down, settling in the soles of my feet.
I'm alone under the wing negative.

The seething mottle of clouds
brushes past, old bruisers.
I am trapped down here,
in the memory cycle that lurks
inside all the glassware.

Everything that came before
seems like it happened to someone else.
There is no after; slices of globe
are dappled by thoughts that get lost
in the salt-surf marrow. Rain claims
an errant soul with bolt-iron drops.

I dabble with shadows,
eating them like hors d'oeuvres,
but nothing's enough for the broad yawn pit.
A green altar sways in the vowelish breeze,
a light blinks on, but suffers back blank.
Imperfect things, loving imperfectly,
sweep down the road, thin as eyelashes.

The stair-shadow bar
a blackwood twist that swims
& recurves under elbow and pint.

Eyes knock in the false, exacted twilight,
against the yarded backdrop
of felt puddles stroked with chalk.

Here is a glass of rye - it waits
in amber for the pink warm wash
of my prowling, kissing palm;

here is a glass of Powers - the sweet
scent flowers the stale angles,
fumes away beyond the lip line.

Things can't quite be read -
what does the canted shoulder mean
when it turns my way?

Words tumble into the chrome-crumbled
struts of the barstools. A kölsh floats into me,
then two, small columns of silted yellow.

On leaving, I am amazed to find
the cheer-charred night, rude gestures
of moon sweeping the towers,

& a fearful silence that finds its harbor
deep inside the glen of my ribcage:
a barking heart, chained to its house.

See-saw thunder dives in the eaves,
whipping rain snaps and jaws,
lightning wrinkles the pale cheek
of the sub-city in the distance:
lit windows are yellowed eyes
in a ashen face dotting the fat flat edifice
across the road. Steam-oars extend
from a pinnace-cloud that races
across the flooded jowls of the evening.
I offer these things to you, sweet reader,
because she is not here. Join me
in this storm as it evaporates upward
into the strange and blankly lidded salt of moon.

The great key is twisting in the lock -
the keyhole moon is spinning.

Empty bottles rise like grass
from the ceramic tile.

The scattering people on the street
slice little hunks of joy

from the black slab
that squats over the city.

The sky is vacant,
the stars vacuumed away

so casually, replaced
by a fat cobalt shroud.

The scents of gin and ****
finger up through the humid cloak

before disappearing from human record.
This bed is a pit of silence,

a soft red hell, a place
for lonely drunks who turn the world,

waiting for her to come round,
come round, come round.

There is a cough and a bark
& then a roar, and suddenly
the green night is singing.

A light rain hangs like a history,
the silver toad bus squirms stop to stop,
the street racers flick rubber kisses.

In the opposite building, a woman
undresses before watching a movie:
the rain begins to flop and hook.

A bicyclist shines and streaks down
the sleekish funnel. The moon is forgetful.
A love story is playing out on the sidewalk.

The green night cascades smokes
with sharking clouds that drift north
into Maryland with their lethal line.

The cat sleeps on my great-aunt's rug:
I am alone in this quiet. Something is dying.
I watch the rain dry on the summer road.