a romantic without love
is a pile of empty letters
strung together into hesitant conversation.

I see you now in memories:
you and I, half-asleep,
avoiding eye contact,
over coffee
and cigarettes.

here's the truth:
the parts I imagine
and the one's that I want to feel:
(all I want to do is feed you peaches
and tell you how beautiful you are).

I love you.
                    Say it more:  You're amazing.

"Look at all the pages you're using."

"You can cry if you need to."

approaching the end of slavery:
these moments are defining.

Therapy: and the way you explain things.
(you're different)
   ("PROVE IT!").

there are too many people coming in and out of these rooms.


empty spaces?

I'm here to fill you up.

            (if you let me)
(if you want me)

I love the idea of being with you.

where do I fit
in a place like this?

this is where I wake up:
the next morning
everything has changed.

I had to leave for inspiration:
that's where I practiced
mind expansion.

even there, I wondered,
with my head split open
to all sides of the city,
does he see the same love in me,
that I do in him?

I didn't ever want to leave.

"let's spend our time in here forever.
if not in love, in discovery of that love.
in the end: take it with us,"
I thought these things in grids
of hand prints stretched to the ocean,
for miles I thought, but never spoke.

it hurts to learn why
we dream in silence.

drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
****** bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a
madman or an
Idiot.
you ask for a *****.
you pour the ***** into the top of
the beer bottle.
It's one a.m. In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes
like machine oil.

you leave Madame Death there,
you leave the sneering bartender
there.

you have remembered where
your room is.
the room with the full bottle of
wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the
roaches.
Perfection in the Star ****
where love died
laughing.