molly
the waitress
at Town diner

wants to be a model
or a nun,
tells me she's a poet

we're sitting on
a couch in her apartment.
molly takes a poem from
a foot high stack
on the end table,
hands me a poem,
"FIRST BRA," by Molly C.
it's about buying
her first bra at 12.
"i was big.
i needed a bra at 11,"
she smiles.

now
she doesn't wear bras.

she tells me
rod mckuen
is the most read
poet
in America.

"what about walt,
plath,
hughes?" i asked.

"no
no,"
she says,
"mckuen is the MOST
popular poet
in American history,
no,
really
the greatest American poet."

molly loves rod mckuen.

i love molly.

"if the public loves
rod mckuen,"
i tell her,
you've got a shot.
you could be the  female version
of rod mckuen."

molly smiles
takes me by the hand
and leads
me up the stairs
to the loft.

she takes the ribbon
from her hair.

i lay her down
on the bed

and bang the hell
out of
the next
most read
American poet

She looked pretty enough
to **** the boredom between his legs
and he was drunk enough
that she could make him beg
and bark and do anything
she would command
and it was ten past desperation
and a quarter till nothing
but the cold embrace of an empty bed
and nothing really mattered
between the pages
of a dime store novel
drowning at the bottom
of a wishing well
full of bad pennies
and poor luck in the matters
of fairy tale love
and she was too broken to care
and he was too lost to find
and they found themselves
exchanging plastic smiles
and hollow laughs
and there was more ***** and alcohol
than blood inside their veins
and the regret of bad decisions
was something that
they didn’t seem to mind
and neither one could remember
whose house that they were in
as their clothes and inhibitions
were both lying outside
of the bedroom door
and they couldn’t tell if it felt good
because they couldn’t remember
what good was
but he grunted and barked
and she gasped and she moaned
and at some point they felt the need
for cigarettes
so they pretended
to be done and satisfied
and they didn’t speak a word
that didn’t end up in a laugh
and they were both the punchline
of a joke that no one else could hear
and they both decided to drown
in the bottom of another bottle
so they couldn’t see their tears

when people are in love
they often say
they simply fell
tripped over their own two feet
face forward
and into the arms of their beloved

i did more than simply fall
onto the ground of your love

you, for me
were an ocean
and i dived
headfirst
roughly
harshly
almost painfully
into the waters of “you”

i knew i could not swim
but i did so anyway
i was drowning
entangled in you
surrounded by this being of “you”
engulfed in this feeling of “you”

and i did not know what came over me
but i let myself drown
i did not try to swim back up
because if i went back to land,
releasing myself from your grasp
that would mean losing the feeling of “you”

and after
submerging into the depth
the love
the passion
of “you”

how could i ever leave?