silk slip, kimono
washed the worries, permanent press
standing naked, very unimpressed

can you? will you?
swill me?
why?

who's heart breaks
in the ache
between the "hi" and "why"?

when I recoiled from your kiss
I only knew why
it's because my bed and I we were amiss

why I last told the other goodbye

plastic casing of grubby cash
avoiding the truth of my priviledge and circumstance
thirteen bruises and grabbing some ***
and here I am drunk, doing a dance

walk around
turn around

pop the lid off a beer with a fork
and remember, so sweet, and so cold,
how young you were fourteen hours ago

trudge in the mud of sculpted strip mall gardens
hedge around a wedge of forgotten iceburg lettuce

and let me know between the waves of coffee and Lexipro
what it must've meant
to turn twenty-two, a month ago

I say, I say in a tortured tone.
For while a pitter and patter of idle time streams between your feet you forget,
ever so cruelly, that the starch of the sun that saturates your being waits for no man
no man
and that here you clasp some life in your being and it moves like a coward in a silence, escape.


So soak. Soak up every spot of sun with your hips, swiveling to face the new and the truth that lies wavering between the touchable and intangible.

For now, you soak up the sun, but more importantly...taste the night.
Taste the crispness in a colder and indifferent world that reminds you with a bleak search for darkness that by God, you have explored truly nothing of this world and that all you can see is the stars.

You have yet to explore this world and yet all you can see from whence you came when you yawn at the night is the tiny lights of the worlds unknown.

By God,
what are you still doing standing still?
Taste the night.

A little bit of death will occur in two days,
between enough hours to tell me that after
three nights (maybe even four)
I found a clasped hand and the grace of a man
who knew me not
merely a week ago

and one who will survive, a little death while longer,
beyond a great veil
of a sea, a prairie, and a prayer.

a burned chair
six cigarettes stubbed out
an empty bottle of champagne; absinthe

"If only."

a long whistling breath precedes a long draught of red wine.
a long day.
a longer remembering.

"If only I weren't stupid."

I rub my feet in silence.

Deep as the motives of an empire,
his chest rises and falls
as quickly as kings through centuries.

---

You may be marooned in my bed,
     but of all the boys that have been lost
in the blueish depths left on my neck,
     I'm glad you lingered there

I did not hesitate when I boarded the train,
caught between the salt and German time;
with fingernails yellowed with cigarette grime,
to come to Paris for it's tepid, sweet rain.
Nor I did tremble with with fear and strain,
flexing my pride in Prague with the prime
that only is granted to the young, at nighttime.
I left nothing back by or in home, but I feign--
for crookedly placed by the cold Danube,
I felt a finger of hurt despite my endeavors;
for as water pooled in those iron shoes,
I felt everything that I didn't wish to remember.