We are possibility.
Nothing undone:
the red key swung,
the pins aligned.
     Spite and Malice -
you won in Burque;
in Buffalo, in April,
I'll be writing in coffee shops.

Cage made fake acrostics
and clamoured more than us.
He watered himself in blenders
tacked his piano like stigmata.

But really, he just put the right letter
on the correct line (if he
ever wrote a line),
but our house was a mess
of books and skulls
and everywhere you looked
too perfect a nest,

so we tore ourselves apart.
Why don't we stop?
Someone will spend graduate school
anthologizing our correspondence,
analyzing the details we missed,
et al., hic et nunc.

The girls dancing in Budapest
and the guys making passes at you in the snow
reduce us to baser instincts
by counting how we
could, might, tentatively
hurt again
on our second-class driver's test.

Fortunately, I am with you
when you look at computer screens
and you're with me at the bar
when television commercials
show off their bras and the beer hits
harder than libretto
and snus drips down the candle wax
making arcs like the Scott Monument.

The imperfection is bliss,
the knots loosen and move
up our spines. We'll soak
the tub and swell
our glands with menthe
and tumble
     further down the mud,
until we either love or ****
what makes us whole.