Anger soaks the room abruptly,
I'm thinking of you.
Cleaning out my black bag
I find my tarot deck, waiting
in its green tin tomb.
I shuffle and deal across
the face of one of the paintings
I've been working on,
a red face scratched out.

The brown lid of night
hinges closed hard,
and lamps take up the slack
with yellow spittings.
I draw the Tower,
the Ten of Swords,
the Hermit.
Past, present, future tenses,
all corrupted.

But who's surprised?
I derailed it all myself.
Only the cat,
the palette knife,
and the lonely guitar
bring life to days
made thin with the grim
solipsism of therapy,
intolerable solitude,
and the conviction
that I am unsuited
for all of it anyway.

Of course, sometimes
the depression rots away
back into the sickly loam
where it first bloomed.
It's replaced by the mocking
low-key mania that howls
half-hopes, that each throb
like a throated singing bowl
combined with the profane
drone of an air conditioner.

In those moments,
things get done.
Bills get paid.
I reach out to other people,
breach the indifferent yawn
I feel between each of us.
I splurge, scrape a stool
up to a bar, borrow
an acquaintance for an hour,
or else drink hard liquor alone
until my teeth sing and drown.