Put a few quarters
in me,
and look at the island
with the woman on it
swaying loosely beside me.

I don't know if I'll be able to make it
where we're going.

"Let's go!"
you shake me.

You go hard.

There appears in front of me
a lake of black coffee.

A caramel hand and its tiny bones
peopled by sweeter fingers
with fingernails as white as gondolas
stirs in a hurricane
of cream and sugar.

"Drink this,"
I sway to your voice,
but your body is as indistinct
as the sun split open
like an egg on the ocean.

Am I going to make it
through this night?

Stumbling out of somewheres
into the salt of Brooklyn.                                              

You
hold­ me
up
because it's high-tide
in Venice.

And I might've drowned
in the subways
without you
telling me,
"This is our train,
Get up babe."

And that's how we made it back
to my uncle's spot off of FDR,
you fording the waters
as I waded back
on broken oars.

I want to have a few drinks,
so I slide up to the bar
and put something
on the paper in my pocket.

When I run out,

you throw a paper towel
my way,
placing my straight shot
and a pen beside it.

I could see myself
rubbing your hips
as you rub
my traps.

We could press our sticky bodies
together
for a moment of holding,
later on
too much liquor
could put us in a closer position.

"What are you writing?"
You ask.

"Anything."

So I take that pen
and paper,
and talk about Iowa
with you: A girl with callouses
even on her pinkies
hailing from a little farm town,
with a voice
full of the South somehow
and ideas on how to get by
the pitfalls of religion.

I talk about
wanting to find places
to go
where I could write
and drink
until forever in the morning
in the city.

"I'm not supposed to tell
anybody this,
but there's a bar
over on 110th,
that stays open
all night,"
you say so close to me
that I could pick out your lipstick
at Sear's.

"What are you doing
after this?"

"I don't know,"
saying as you wipe the bar
down.

So I don't know's
become eventual
movements
between our bodies
to the door,
bumping your hips
against me
and me sliding
my hands
around your waist,
trying to get the bumps
closer.

And so maybe
with love from New York
I'll write somewhere
else
about girls
that understand
my obsession,
who throw paper
and pen
my way
instead
of fear
and unknowing.

Now he left you with scars, tears on your pillow and you still stay
As you sit and pray, hoping the beatings'll go away
It wasn't always a hit and run relationship
It used to be love, happiness and companionship
Remember when I treated you good
I moved you up to hills, out the ills of the ghetto hood
Me and you a happy home, when it was on
I had a love to call my own
I shoulda seen you was trouble but I was lost, trapped in your eyes
Preoccupied with gettin tossed, no need to lie
You had a man and I knew it, you told me
Don't worry bout it we can do it now I'm under pressure
Make a decision cause I'm waitin, when I'm alone
I'm on the phone havin secret conversations, huh
I wanna take your misery, replace it with happiness
but I need your faith in me, I'm a sucka for love
sucka for love, know you ain't right G but yet I'ma sucka for love

Whenever people see that dog,
they think of drooling,
hunger
and
boredom,
that dog
bit a few people
so they castrated him,
and he lays in the corner
all day,
licking at fur,
nuzzling out his pink ****
with his tongue,
and he's bored of being a dog,
he's just bored
of being alive.

That dog
comes to his bowl
like a ward of the state,
like he has to
and doesn't want to.

That dog
plops down at the back door
staring at himself in the glass
and the world outside
all day,
and sometimes they
rub his head,
most times
they just let him lie.

That dog
won't bark
for anything,
even when
he sees that *****
across the street,
he doesn't have it any more.

That dog
wants something now
more than anything else.

That dog
with his ability
to make you think
of ropes of saliva,
belly's bloated with malnutrition,
and watching tv all day;
that dog
wants to love something
the way he used to love
everything.

What'll happen
when they finally give that dog
a bone?

Why am I in this month-long
heartbreak?

Why am I starring
down the barrel of a night
the color
of shadows in the sewer?

Because I'm taking shots
at each and every one of them.

But the shadows reach out for my soul,
and their population
grows.

I'm still thinking about her,
for some reason,
realizing how much I cared,
when I used to think
I'd get away from this one
scot-free.

We weren't even together,
but I have these crazy drunk dreams,
and she's walking away
in every one of them.

So I smoke a bowl,
and take sips straight
from the bottle,
and she's still barrelling down on me,
making booms in the night,
making the shadows go boom,
making everything go boom
inside of me.

She used to run
her fingernails
down my sternum
all the way
to the bottom of my belly,
one little snake
tickling me
as she split me open,
and her jelly-smelling hair
coiled in jet-black
against my shoulders,
and her
amazonian lips
made my heart muggy,
so what I did
after she stopped splitting me open,
after she stopped
making trips from my heart
to my lower intestine,
is that I went to the coldest place
in the world,
but even then
I was warm with her constriction,
warm in the coldest places
warm without distinction.

So much sadness
resides
in my palms.

I rest my head there
in a pose of thought.

I position the gun of my mind
against the bomb
of my heart.