Look at them, the rain-spotted Lovers:
hand in hand under lathered moon
as the bars flood out at cold close.
The night grass is April swaying
as they bluely stroll down the road,
unaware of anyone, anything else -

there could never be anything else -
isn't that the rule of all new lovers?
No care for a bright-cheeked road,
no anxious looks at a dartboard moon,
just two pairs of shoulders swaying
closer, closer, closer...

Yet now that the bars are closed,
they must join to something else:
a long laughing file beerily swaying,
a newly louched breed of lovers
under foam-headed moon,
carried down a water-hearted road.

Perhaps they sweeten the sotted road,
these two who veer so close
& share this last garnish of moon,
carpaccio of stars and space and something else.
Cars throw dapples across the Lovers,
shy white coins in spotted sway.

We drunks of course are also swaying
vaguely down the rained road,
but how different our rhythm is; these Lovers
tie spring breath tight as twine, and close
their fingers like mating snakes - no one else
seems tide-locked like earth and stubborn moon:

since this frozen-faced scrap of moon
refuses all requests, it's we who must sway
with them, at least until we find something else
on this cloud-tented tar-sown road
to hold us oh-so-close;
they're home, these Lovers,

& so someone else must follow the lolling moon
to become the newest Lovers who will sway
on wetted road as night closes off behind.

Cool Hand Luke has permafrost eyes
as he smirks down the fiftieth egg.

Lawrence doesn't mind that it hurts,
holds up a match and blows out the sun.

Frank Booth huffs his gas, "now it's dark,"
& new parents replace the old ones.

The lights come up, the professor
steps to the lecture square, underneath

the once-flickering wall's altar wing,
& gathers thoughts like garden stems.

Some of us were baptized into celluloid,
we opened our eyes and were submerged

into a breathless 100 minute night,
a wilderness of grayscale myth.

Charles Foster Kane dies today in Xanadu:
his life shuffled for us, as if it means something.

I am flying over Vietnam
watching night clouds slaughtered
by the sleek plane arm
with engine hands.

My book has become tedious,
my partner is sleeping,
so my thoughts spin awry,
a mad turnstile oiled with grief:

Where did my father go?
Where is his mind now?
& What about the curious pull
of the undertow in his soul?

These questions that have no answers
fall like rain into the night sea;
I, too, am part of the cloud division:
drifting along, severed into air.

Please tell me why the scotch
Swirling around the glass
Stokes the fires in my soul
As it swirls playfully along my tongue
To incite the words brushing against the smoke as it leaves my breath

Till the glass is empty
and fires go cold

This is for Liz, who once sat down with me
& spoke of terrible but necessary things.
Her eyes browsed me and I paled:
she locked our minds together
to make sure I understood
exactly what she meant.
Liz died last Saturday.
In our joint years of poetry
(filled with unexpected stings
that left our arms in gooseflesh braille
'til she digressed to dogs and leather)
she taught me this: that sorrows should
be shared - cultivate them, let them ferment -
so we could drink them down like Cabernet.

Bartender, bartender, tell me a tale
while you sell me a pint of whatever's on sale
-Traditional

Barflies stuck not in amber
but in soft varnish on pine,
steel pole legs scraping the planks:

men bluster in bleary candor
while women lay it on the line.
We at the bar give golden thanks

for this wet and flickering space,
tended by our good mistress
who heals most open wounds...

but not mine. With a tired grace
I slip outside, dissatisfied, listless
under the frozen starless dunes.