I took a detour on Decatur Street
for the rains washed away my worn trail.
Smoking skeletons in alley ways,
the visible breath of babies in sleet,
and a burnt out apartment complex dotted the trek.

I saw a ghost of you.
Short red hair, eyelashes like vines crawling up sideboards in fast motion,
the freckles on her face like islands floating in her milky skin.
I wanted to pull your twin close.
As if entwining with her, scraping off a pinch of her perfume,
would bring me a few miles closer to you.

I'd phone, but you'd just tell me about Paul.
So, I send whiskey prayers and cigarette smoke signals
to the heavens for your personal misery instead.
I daydream of the torturous night shortening the distance.
You offering up laughs of compromise,
and I offering empty love to make your bed less lonely.

I'd phone, but you'd just tell me about Paul.
He's your man.

In an idyllic garden behind Hank's old apartment,
Grace stumbled in high heels toward my then sturdy arms.
I'd finally gotten her drunk enough to notice,
and I was finally sober enough to appreciate.



Grace left before I woke in the morning.
I haven't seen her since.

That was 300 miles ago,
and a decade away from here.

I met Virginia in a wave of sleet.
On Decatur, a hundred winters ago,
with a black iris, black hair in ponytail,
with a tongue like a nightcrawling widow,
Virginia whispered tornados behind the backs of the
grey-suited saxophone players, going blue in the cheeks,
under their blackface.

Under a flimsy sheet of moon sliver sky and a dim streetlight,
Virginia kicked a soda can along the cracking concrete.
With each bar we passed, I hollered, "Thank God we're alive!"
and danced a shapeless jig.

Near Williamson cemetery, Virginia's white knuckles laced into mine.
"The amount of time we have cheapens whatever purpose we have,"
Virginia hissed.

I caressed her serpentine neck.
A lone car's high beams
made Virginia's silhoutte tower above the cemetery gates,
made Virginia's black irises madden to poisonous yellow.

She loosened my grey necktie.
I let down her hair.
A sea of collected strands fell
like a closing curtain.
The distant saxophone ascended to heaven,
leaving me below,
leaving me below,
leaving me to spend the night bellowing for above.

I exit the beige bedroom with no blood on my chin,
Jesus sensations through fallout cigarette,
God grows old - ashes and finds cradle within wind,
Holy Ghost of perpetual memory chains wrist,
winks from across the corridor on tram # 11,
circuital -

if you come searching, my thorn-eyed love,
I'm where I always was.

I cobweb like Christ on a mobile cross,
I've seen that old library, that gated community penitentiary,
even that blackbird over and over and over again -

heaven.

In heaven, my thorn-eyed girl, arrived.

There's nowhere to go from here.

The dried petals of a once green love
snake through the beige carpet--
along with potato chips,
along with icy *****,
along with grey ash of cheapshit incense,
my empire soles trample in after work.

Susan smiles and tries to reheat the leftovers.
Our bulging bellies match from a marriage of coping strategies,
stretch mark'd and daydreaming of
other seasons; sweat on foreign sheets,
other napes; Mediterranean baby's breath,
other scents; a choice between gardenia and gasoline,
Susan's a liar.
Of deceit--I've grown tired.

Newspaper, newspaper bring me a bullet.
Doorbell, doorbell bring me a blushing nomad in need of bruising.
Ringtone, ringtone bring me DHS and an actual Friday.

Susan tucks me in to the Lullaby of the Infomercial,
her fingernail seeps into my lower lip.
I roll onto my side.

"I'm madly in love with you."

"I wish that could mean more."

"Me too."

Tethered to concrete,
enlightened by laptop screen,
the summer went out with a scream,
autumn ends like flicking light switch.

I'm cashing in time cards with three,
Diseased, daring to get off cheap
with three sets of teeth,
crooked spines,
and
milk thistle dreams.

The bluebirds you can keep,
over-the-shoulder vultures--my scene.
Death hands me a cup of coffee for free,
and I have written up to the ending.
I have written up to the ending.
Ending the writing,
waiting for you to compose
the siren's song--
whether in hospital gown
or naked and strapped to splintered mast,
autumn ends by flicking a switch,
while your screams echo backwards
in the chambers of my memory.

"I don't know how to say, what I want you to say."

"Please try."

pullplug and silence,
pullplug and sentence
fall from skyscraper woman --
another arrogant 12-story --
I, an edgy wrecking ball,
pullplug and dine,
pullplug and I'm divinely
base jumping to remind
I'm not ****** but old,
I'm not conniving but bored,
pullplug for ritual of ice,
pullplug for relation of stone,
sprawled in an empty bed,
while you talk in wasp nests,
I'm happy alone --
and made a worthwhile point--
identical towers are
terrible together.