I am not the lion
I am the impala.
I am the cabinet
in the kitchen
left wide open.
I am here
for so much of my life
setting alarms
on my phone
for the next morning.
The ash tray
is filled
with exactly 73 cigarettes,
but not exactly 73 memories,
and not exactly 73 regrets.

I’ve never considered
that there was ever
a moment
that music didn’t enhance.
But I’ve finally found
a peace in my life,
however fleeting,
where the green light
on Grant street
is the drop
I’ve been waiting for.

What an inconsistency,
that the rain or her
bioluminescent smile
can cool
this sun drenched balcony
down to a place
that makes you
the good kind of cold
in early July.
It’s too ridiculous to seem real;
no one would ever give something
as ethereal away to someone else.
Or maybe that’s not true.
Maybe that’s what keeps
the asteroids from hitting earth.

Rarely, if ever,
the toolbox in the closet
comes out for some
easy fix.
Today it was my lawn chair.
But I can’t use a wrench
to fix the way you look at me,
as you try to sip
the entire Colorado river
through a plastic straw.
Part of me wants to let you
have your fun,
to believe that across
the table from me
you might find
your own wrench.
But stainless steel
has no effect on the cortex,
no effect on the river,
no effect on a sun
that has overstayed its
welcome.
Drink me
until the wrench
must come out,
but I have a duty
to warn you
that I am not
a lawn chair.

Some days I feel
like a guitar
that is missing
a string.
It sounds sad
but I assure you
it’s okay.
And I’ll never know
the sound that string sings,
but my foolish heart
believes that string
is the one that says everything;
the one that puts me in the veins
under your skin,
between the synapses that fire
in your mind,
between your inhale
and exhale,
and on the tip of your tongue,
so that I can taste you
before my moon
splits in two.

Only her evergreen eyes
and painfully pink lips
can pull an object,
a young fool,
14 floors towards the earth,
faster than gravity.
The longest day of the year
had a clock that was criminally
insane,
the hour hand
moved like a propeller
of a plane,
and flew me to somewhere
that felt familiar
but I’ve never been.
And the moon I told her
that was mine,
really belongs to her.

The Fernet-Branca,
sipped slowly,
seems to go well
with the pack of yellow American Spirits,
though I usually go with
the light blue pack.
Yellow does the trick tonight.

From the 14th floor
the city lights of Denver
are blurry.
So are the morning emails,
the slot for quarters
on the laundry machine,
the cars that pass on 8th
headed to wherever,
and you.