Your love is hard
like rocks
in my belly
in the morning;
like starting the countdown
to a three-day drunk
a week later,
at every turning point,
every shadow
of an angle,
I am taking roads
I have never
crossed,
I am watching
water run
in crystalline rivers
toward alleys
I've never known.

When they ask me
for money
or Marlboros,
I say yes,
please,
I would like those too.

I would like to eat
bagels
in the sun
with crinkly paper in my teeth
and sour cream cheese
sweetening in the liquor.

My landscaper's shoulders
and granite deltoids
are now green with lime
and lichens.

Girls like to run
their
hands over them;
but they are hungry
for your hands
and the lavishing footsteps
of your fingernails.

When I wake up
I put enough water in the
coffee-maker
for about
twenty cups,
and enough
***** in those
twenty cups
for a three-day drunk.

Your love is hard like ice-cold *****
and boiling coffee
that
mutilates tastebuds
and
makes my belly feel real good.

But not talking to you for awhile;
it's easier to warm up in the morning
so I can cool down at night,
and by the pink dawn
of darkness
I could get back to working my belly
with *****, rocks, and
Marlboros.